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The Office of Personnel Management. Excellus Blue Cross Blue Shield. The unclassified network for the Pentagon’s Joint Staff. Sony.
Unfortunately, the list of hackers’ targets over the past year includes these organizations and many, many others. Stories about such breaches now make the news on a regular basis.
To be sure, cyber threats are real, growing and among the biggest security challenges faced by private industry and public institutions at the federal, state and local levels. We all rely on the Internet and connected systems for much of our daily lives. Plus, our economy would not function without them. Such dependency also applies to operation-critical systems in every U.S. sector. Trouble is, this introduces new and evolving forms of vulnerabilities that threaten the security of our networks and critical infrastructure, such as the power grid.
Decades ago, the National Security Agency pioneered what is now called cybersecurity. Tackling cyber challenges in the public and private sectors demands close collaboration. That means cybersecurity must be a team effort. Partnerships are a force multiplier, saving money and investing assets to develop innovative, efficient solutions against common threats. And to its credit, the state of Hawaii clearly recognizes the need to make the issue a priority — and is at a unique point in time to position itself for an even stronger future.
Government, business and community entities here are innately interconnected on island. We are faced with similar vulnerabilities as well as a shared opportunity to lead by preparing for and meeting cyber challenges head-on. This is the imperative for the state of Hawaii — an imperative that, for the first time, appears to have truly energized everyone.
Stakeholders will meet this Wednesday and Thursday at the Hawaii Convention Center to discuss a whole-of-community approach at “The Future Focus: The Hawaii Innovation Initiative’s Forum on Energy, Cybersecurity and More.”
With the Hawaii Business Roundtable and the University of Hawaii leading the charge, this event will provide participants with opportunities to examine cybersecurity issues and explore solutions. More important, it will bring together the best and brightest to discuss how they can improve future partnerships.
There is no time to waste.
Consider: From the first quarter of 2014 to the first quarter of this year, there was a 117 percent increase in “distributed denial of service attacks,” according to a May study by the private firm Prolexic. These malicious campaigns attempt to make an online service unavailable by overwhelming it with traffic from multiple sources. The state of Hawaii is not immune.
The importance of cybersecurity cannot be underestimated in an increasingly interdependent world. A reliance on collaborative efforts will not only strengthen and promote a vital civil defense system, but also increase Hawaii’s overall resilience.
Undoubtedly, the decisions that we make today will determine the economic stability and viability of Hawaii over the next decade.
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ON VACATION:
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd is off today.
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