Global Cyber Terrorism: Pakistan’s Cyber Security in Perspective

Abstract

The world is facing different forms of Cybersecurity challenges. Cyberterrorism is emerging challenge that has become a real threat for the peace and security of many countries. During the last decade and half use of cyber technologies to challenge the national autonomy, disturb the social and economic fabric of countries has been established. Hence, Cyber space is accepted as a fifth operational domain after land, sea, air and space. The goals of Cyber-terrorism can be social, political, ideological, religious, or similar. For instance, the motive behind state-sponsored Cyber-terrorist attacks can be political. Cyber-terrorism activities carried out by anonymous groups may have social or ideological agenda. Cyber-terrorists achieve their goals through a number of acts, such as destroying critical infrastructure and information systems, compromising communication systems, obtaining classified information, spreading propaganda, intimidating people, launching Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks, and planting Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs). This paper covers some of the recent Cyber-terrorism incidents in order to understand the impact of Cyber-terrorist activities on peace and security of the countries. The paper also highlights Pakistan’s current Cybersecurity approach, the internal and external security challenges in the context of Cyber-terrorism. Paper also reviews the capacity enhancement technologies in cyber domain such as Cyber ranges and Cyber drills and summarize the recommendations that can really help the country in improving the overall Cybersecurity posture.