How does a community stop burglary? It teaches citizens how to improve the security of their homes and businesses. And it studies burglars' activities, as well as current home security systems, to look for weaknesses.
If our communities stopped there, however, there would be a lot more thieves out there, and a lot more victims. It's not enough to build a strong castle and wait for the thieves to attack. We also need to go out find the burglars and to what we can to disrupt their activities, to make it harder for them to do what they do.
So why is cyber crime any different? Instead of just studying vulnerabilities and building more defenses, why aren't we out hitting cyber criminals where they live?
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The net of this week's developments is that just as people forget to lock their car doors or turn on the alarm, the best-laid cyber defenses may frequently be ignored. It just isn't enough to do vulnerability research and improve security technology. And even if end users always understand security policy, it won't stop them from ignoring or forgetting it.
To be successful in stopping cyber crime, we have to not only build the best defenses we can, but also do what we can to make the criminals' lives difficult, too. In addition to building the castle, shouldn't we be disrupting their markets, breaking their channels of communication, and exposing their identities?
It seems to me that the IT community is doing a pretty good job of building walls and defenses, but not enough is being done by law enforcement -- or the community at large -- to really break the chain that makes cyber crime so lucrative. In the world of burglary, there are laws against buying and selling stolen property, and entire units of the police force dedicated to infiltrating and disrupting that economy. There's even a law against failing to report a theft.
We need to add more of those elements to our cyber crime defenses as well. Sometimes, the best defense really is a good offense.
-----------------------In my view, this article is right on.
It is important to note that this good offense should be rooted in the community and should work closely with LE units.
I am happy to say that there are some groups that are taking it to bad guys....they are active in finding and exposing the bad guys in their homebases.
Teams like Shadowserver.org and Castlecops are great examples.
And those teams work quietly in the background, rarely with a "thanks" from the public.
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