STM Released “2016 Cyber Security Threat Report”
STM released the “Cyber Security Threat Report” for 2016, and according to the report, cyber-attacks will continue to increase this year with new and more advanced methods. STM indicated in this crucial report that cyber threats are considered to be one of the greatest risks in the current information era. Examination of cyber threats, the assault tendencies in 2016 and the recommendations regarding countermeasures to be adopted against the attacks, are mentioned in the report in which a reemergence of cyber security is seen in the agenda following the cyber-attacks towards banks in December 2015. According to the report, Turkey is ranked as the 9th country after USA, China, Germany, England, Brazil, Spain, Italy and France, in the list of countries which faced the most cyber-attacks. Meanwhile, as stated by the American Security Association Arbor’s report, in the second quarter of 2014, cyber-attacks declined worldwide by 68 percent while cyber-attacks against Turkey increased by six percent.
In the “2016 Cyber Security Threat Report”, it was pointed out that maintaining the security of information and communication technologies utilized in critical infrastructure sectors such as energy, communication, water resources, agriculture, health, transportation, education and financial services were becoming a part of the national security and it was prognosticated that the cyber-attacks will most likely continue in 2016 without slowing down.
E-Government is a Focal Point of Cyber-Attacks
A special section was assigned to the e-Government Gateway services in the report. It was underlined in the report that E-Government service applications, giving access to governmental services in various areas such as justice, health, social security, assurance etc. was appealing to the attackers’ appetite as it contained a large volume of personal data of the users. It was mentioned that during a potential attack to E-Government services, with approximately 26 million users, that it would be possible, with stolen information, for fake companies to be set up using citizens’ personal data and drawing loans from banks.
Target Based Attacks are the most Imminent Threat
Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) were indicated as the most important threats of the upcoming period. It was mentioned that the APT attacks mostly conducted by actors supported by countries and were conspiratorially and imperceptible compared with the basic cyber-attacks and that they were used for both inactivating critical systems and leaking information. In the report which presented the overall features of the APT attacks, it was stressed that these types of attacks targeted the strategic institutions and operations that would cause public unrest.
The Counter-measures to be adopted against APT attacks were explained in the report as well: “Against the APT attacks which constitute a severe threat for Turkey, initially the establishment and maintenance of an institutional information security management, precise assets management, monitoring of all network traffic, analysis/correlation of the records via various sources, establishment of effective defense mechanisms such as firewall, e-mail safety, data-loss protection, anti-virus system, network monitoring and recording system and monitoring of all these activities by the Institutional Cyber Events Response Team (SOME) formed to work in coordination with the National Cyber Events Response Center (USOM, TR-CERT) established within the Telecommunications Communication Presidency (TİB) are deemed necessary”.
Increasing Risks in the Utilization of Cloud Technology
Moreover, the various security risks emerging due to the increasing utilization of cloud computing technology in Turkey and in the world in the recent years, has it enabled vast amounts of data collection and storage of personal and institutional data. Detailed information on the “2015 – 2018 Information Society Strategy and Action Plan” issued in the year 2014 was given in particular through this report. As noted by this action plan, the developed countries’ governmental institutions transferred their services to cloud computing, the new ventures preferred cloud computing due to its cost efficient service fees. Turkey’s efficient utilization plans for cloud computing technologies in the upcoming years was also mentioned. In the same report, it was underlined that if the idea of “governmental institutions’ obtaining services from a single pool via the utilization of cloud computing technologies” was launched in Turkey, then this system would most likely become the initial point of attack during a cyber-warfare. In the report, referring to the point that Turkey was one of the five countries which had grown rapidly in the data market in 2015, it was stated that this growth would attract the interest of hackers and therefore cloud services would become one of the most enticing attacking zones in 2016.
Ransomware Pose Hazard
Additionally, a type of cyber threat known as ransomware attack was widely mentioned by the report. This software, named ransomware, is a type of cyber security threat based on the attackers leaking into the system by taking advantage of the deficiencies of the users or systems, and thus locking down the system or encryption of the data, and then demanding ransom from the users for unlocking the system or the data. In the case of the encrypted data or if the system is not backed-up, then the only way for the users to re-gain access to the system or recover the encrypted data is by paying a ransom to the hackers.
Turkey is ranked as the eighth country in the world which is exposed to these types of attacks composed of the attackers finding exposure points and seeping into the system via this harmful type software.
The report underlined the fact that the ransomware threat doubled in 2015 compared to its rate in 2014 and it stated that ransomware software had targeted end users in previous years, and currently it has started to direct its attention toward targeting institutions.
