July 14, 2006:
The American NSA (National Security Agency) is now sharing some of its Cyber War experiences with the rest of the world. All in the name of increasing Internet security in general. The briefing, a first for the NSA, used the recent Cyber War competition between the service academies, as a source of useful practices. The cadets and midshipmen competed to defend, and attack, Internet networks. The one big lesson learned was "keep it simple" and be very careful with whatever you do. It was the simple and careful defenses that worked best. The Internet is fill of opportunities for bad people to sneak in, but it's not nearly as much fun to build defenses that work. The NSA pointed out that, unless you have an outrageous amount of money to spend on defenses, your networks are probably vulnerable to a very determined attack. But in most cases, hackers will seek the path of least resistance. So the strongest nets are left alone, while the more vulnerable get hit really hard.