A COVID-like characteristic Cyber Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken our economies and societies to the core, and shown us how vulnerable we are to biological threats. in the digital world, similar risks are being overlooked right now. A cyberattack COVID-like characteristics will spread faster and further than any biological virus. Its reproductive rate would be around 10 times greater than what we have experienced with the coronavirus. To give you an idea, one of the fastest worms in history, the 2003 Slammer/ Sapphire worm, doubled in size approximately every 8.5 seconds, infecting over 75.000 devices in 10 minutes, and almost 11 million devices in 24 hours.

Fortunately -at least until now- cyber-attacks have not impacted our health the way pandemics have. But the economic damages, and their impact they have on our daily lives, have been equal and sometimes even greater. The only way to stop exponential propagation of a COVID-like cyberattack threat is the fully disconnect the millions of vulnerable devices from one another, and from the internet. All of this in a matter of days. A single day without the internet would cost our economies more than 50 billion us dollars, and that is before considering economic and societal damages should these devices be linked to essential services, such as transports and healthcare. As the digital realm increasingly merges with our physical world, the ripple effects of cyber-attacks on our safety just keep on expanding and as a a faster pace that what we are preparing for.

COVID-19 was known as an anticipated risk. So is the digital equivalent. Let`s be better prepared for that one.

The time is now.