Question & Answer: With the recent cyber hacking by the North Koreans, what can be done by the international community to prevent…..

Cyber attacks or cyber hacking has become the new weapon for countries or groups with vested interests. This has happened in the past and will happen in future too. The international community can at best devise more controls to safeguard their data from hacking by these vested interests. There is always a counter measure as there exists missile shields for intercepting missile attacks.

North Korea is the latest to do cyber hacking and in the past the same accusations have been made against Israel, Russia and United States too. The countries affected by cyber hacking have already taken measures to build cyber shields around their sensitive and vulnerable servers storing data. As in crime, the perpetuators constantly work out a way to breach the defenses and will no doubt find a way to breach cyber defenses in future too. The international community at best can keep on upgrading the defenses to meet the constant threats.

Sanctions are one way to keep rogue nations and groups away from creating further havoc and this is implemented after the passage of resolution by the UN Security Council. Some countries though unilaterally impose sanctions on their own. Sanctions can be in various forms e.g. economic sanction, political sanction, defense sanction or information technology related sanction.

However, as has been proved repeatedly, sanctions only work to a certain extent and countries or groups eventually find a way out. Therefore, the best recourse for international community is to be alert and constantly upgrade their cyber defenses to prevent and minimize cyber hacking attempts in the future.