Game Theorists Suggest a Better Strategy for Cybersecurity
Many countries in the world have been marred with myriads of cyberattacks in the recent past. In many instances, countries have not known the proper way to respond to the attacks. In the worst-case scenarios, some countries did not realize they had been attacked until after some time, even years after and the consequences are unfathomable. The most recent cyberattack was launched by Russian hackers against South Korea when the later hosted the 2018 Winter Olympics. Television transmissions and internet connectivity were hampered. Despite the situation having been redeemed in a short while, the impact had been felt greatly. Unfortunately, the hackers were undetectable since the IP addresses used in the attack were from North Korea. As it is in military attacks, the most spontaneous response is deterrence and retaliation. However, in this case, the most probable country to face retaliation would certainly have been North Korea, which did not facilitate the attack.
According to game theorists, retaliatory discourses in cyberattacks is more complicated compared to the conventional military retaliation against the enemies. Game theory dictates that it is not necessary to retaliate after every attack signal. Selective retaliation is the way to go. In selective retaliation, simultaneous detection of attacks and the tracing the origin of attacks is done so that the attacked country can easily locate the country involved for retaliation. The attribution element should be minimized for proper detection of attacks and their sources to be effective. Keeping this in mind will allow retaliation after the clearest signal with no trace of ambiguity because it is certain that retaliating after every attack only raises the chance of retaliating to incorrect alarms.
References
https://scienceblog.com/519953/a-better-kind-of-cybersecurity-strategy/
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