Alice, not malice...

One of the most interesting illustrations of the scale of the issue is this interactive map from antivirus software specialist, Kaspersky, where you can while away many a happy hour looking at worldwide cyber attacks in real time.

However, while the risk of a malicious cyber attack from outside is undoubtedly increasing, there is an argument that says that rather than losing sight of the bigger picture, we may in fact be in danger of losing sight of the smaller picture. When things go wrong in the US, there is a saying that goes along the lines of "nine out of of ten times it's Alice, not malice".  Or in other words, some well-meaning (but incompetent) individual has tinkered where they shouldn't have and unwittingly caused problems.

In many cases this could be prevented if personnel were only granted appropriate level of access to an automated system or process, yet many companies do not fully utilise access control, or even set proper usernames and passwords. As well as helping to avoid unscheduled downtime, this will also help protect intellectual property which could be way more serious in the longer term.