Cyber Mayday and the Day After. Daniel Lohrmann

AFTER

      A LEADER'S GUIDE TO PREPARING, MANAGING, AND RECOVERING FROM INEVITABLE BUSINESS DISRUPTIONS

       DAN LOHRMANN AND SHAMANE TAN

Copyright © 2022 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

      Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

      Published simultaneously in Canada.

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       Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is Available:

      ISBN: 978-1-119-83530-1 (Hardback)

      ISBN: 978-1-119-83532-5 (ePDF)

      ISBN: 978-1-119-83531-8 (ePub)

      COVER DESIGN: PAUL MCCARTHY

      COVER ART: GETTY IMAGES: AERIALPERSPECTIVE IMAGES / JOSE A. BERNAT BACETE

Introduction: Setting the Global Stage for Cyber Resilience

      We worried for decades about WMDs – weapons of mass destruction. Now it is time to worry about a new kind of WMDs – weapons of mass disruption.

      –John Mariotti

       Tuesday, May 1, 2035

      Something was not right.

      As Julie stood by the front door of her parents' home in Park Ridge, Illinois, her A-ride (slang for autonomous transportation) was nowhere in sight. She was going to be late for work. “My new boss is going to be furious,” she inwardly panicked.

      This was the one day a month that she actually was required to be downtown for a team meeting, and her 7:15 a.m. FastUber pickup (with nonstop express service to the Chicago Loop) was nowhere to be found. And FastUbers are never late.

      “Miranda – where is my ride? What's going on? Where are all the cars?”

Strange, no response from her automated assistant, which usually answered her questions before she even finished her sentences. Julie momentarily thought about her grandmother as she peered angrily at the small speaker over her glasses. She briefly smiled when she thought about how she nicknamed her personal assistant Miranda, in memory of her grandmother.

      “Now I'm pissed! I even paid extra for express today.” As Julie noticed that both the children across the street and Mr. Stevens next door were also waiting for their rides, she realized something else must be happening. A new emotion overcame her – fear.

      Julie went back in the house and shouted at the wall. “NEWS!”

      A holographic image of CNN lit up the room, showing two reporters standing under a chyron reading: “BREAKING NEWS.” An artificial intelligence voice announced: “Widespread impact is simultaneously hitting global airports, Wall Street firms, international banks, the London Underground, Australian ports, and thousands of educational learning centers.”

      Julie posed her question to the hologram: “Do you believe this may be a nation-state attack?”

      A reporter standing in front of New York's One World Trade Center responded: “That's certainly a likely possibility. Mass transit has stopped, banks are down, some cities are experiencing power outages, hospitals are on emergency generators, school technology is down, universities have canceled classes, and, most shocking of all – trading floors from London to New York to Chicago are now closed.

      “Hold on a moment, please, we are receiving word that the president of the United States has just declared a Nationwide Cyber Emergency, under the authority of the Cyber Disruption Act of 2028.”

A NEW SENSE OF CYBER URGENCY

While this 2035 Mayday scenario is just fiction, the bombardment of daily security incidents is beyond eye-opening in real life. With the ongoing digital transformation, which accelerated even faster in diverse areas of society and every corner of the globe during the COVID-19 pandemic, the impact of cyber emergency incidents has been felt from hospitals to high schools, from elections to electric grids, from main street retailers to Wall Street bankers, and from small-town PTA meetings to United Nations Security Council meetings.

      The following quotes are very real, coming after an unprecedented barrage of cyberattacks hit global governments and businesses in 2020 and 2021:

       President Joe Biden: “We've elevated the status of cyber issues within our government,” President Biden said in a national security speech at the State Department. “We are launching an urgent initiative to improve our capability, readiness, and resilience in cyberspace.”¹

       U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell: When we talk about cyber risk, what kind of scenarios are we looking at? U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell responded to host Scott Pelley, as part of a 60 Minutes interview, “All different kinds. I mean, there are scenarios in which a large payment utility, for example, breaks down and the payment system can't work. Payments can't be completed. There are scenarios in which a large financial institution would lose the ability to track the payments that it's making and things like that. Things like that where you would have a part of the financial system come to a halt, or perhaps even a broad part.”Powell continued: “And so we spend so much time and energy and money guarding against these things. There are cyber attacks every day on all major institutions now. And the government is working hard on that. So are all the private sector companies. There's a lot of effort going in to deal with those threats. That's a big part of the threat picture in today's world.”Pelley: “How have we gotten away with not having a disaster like that?”Powell: “You know, I don't want to jinx us. I would just say we've worked very hard at