Be aware of cyber warfare, equip police to combat threats

• This is the era of New Age Warfare, the cyber warfare, and the new enemy can be combated only through the power of knowledge. Unlike the spies of the Cold War era, when collaborators would provide access to secret documents to physically copy and photograph documents, the new age spies do not need any physical access. Working over the Internet thousands of miles away, the hackers can suck out thousands of secret documents, jeopardising national security. 
• In 2006, the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) programme of US military, claimed to be producing one the world’s most advanced combat aircraft, had been compromised. In 2007, anonymous hackers, suspected to be operating from Russia, launched a massive cyber-attack on information systems of Estonia. For three days, this country faced chaos. Systems refused to re-start and ATMs refused to dispense cash, as the financial architecture, based on millions of lines of code, had crashed. Hackers brought critical infrastructure sectors such as banking and power to a grinding halt. 
• These two examples illustrate the vulnerability of the systems that operate in some of the most critical sectors of a country. From defence to energy, power, aviation and law enforcement, every sector today depends on computer networks that would need to be always protected and strengthened by a slew of measures against future threats. In fact, cyber attackers strike at places where such an attack is least expected.