No one knows when or when or where the next cyber­at­tack will occur, but it’s impor­tant to be pre­pared for them just in case. Due to the Ukraine inva­sion by Vladimir Putin and the Russ­ian army, there is a LOT of talk on the news about poten­tial cyber threats to large and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es, as well as an attack on our crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture. Many of the talk­ing heads have been men­tion­ing in their opinion/news broad­casts for the last cou­ple of months, and even going as far as men­tion­ing our own elec­tri­cal grid, water, and sew­er plants being at risk. These are three crit­i­cal pieces of infra­struc­ture for our coun­try to help sus­tain life. Not to men­tion that a strong cyber attack could crip­ple the already strained sup­ply chain cre­at­ing fur­ther dif­fi­cul­ty for fuel, food, and oth­er crit­i­cal sup­ply deliv­er­ies across the nation. It’s no secret now that the Unit­ed States is vul­ner­a­ble to cyber-attacks. In my Intro­duc­tion to Prep­ping class, I cite cyber attacks as the num­ber one way that our ene­mies will try to get to us before any oth­er type of attack. Take-down Wall Street, the Fed, then what? The take-down of crit­i­cal traf­fic infra­struc­ture (see the movie Eagle Eye when the AI mess­es with all the traf­fic pat­terns. The dis­rup­tion of the nine (9) major elec­tri­cal sub­sta­tions in the coun­try.

If a cyber­at­tack were to take down our elec­tri­cal grid or dis­rupt our cel­lu­lar net­works, it could have a seri­ous impact on our econ­o­my and way of life instant­ly. Don’t get me wrong, in my hum­ble opin­ion, you’ve got about 36 hours before peo­ple get wor­ried about the future, and that should be your win­dow for bug­ging out or for­ti­fy­ing your com­pound. Any­thing after 36 hours and peo­ple begin to wan­der out of their neigh­bor­hood, start look­ing for food, water, alco­hol, and start get­ting rest­less. I draw this expe­ri­ence from elon­gat­ed pow­er out­ages dur­ing Hur­ri­cane Irene and Hur­ri­cane Sandy while liv­ing in the com­mu­nist state of New Jer­sey. IN both cas­es I watch peo­ple from out­side my respec­tive neigh­bor­hood at the time start to per­me­ate mine in search of some­thing to do, gaso­line for their gen­er­a­tor, ice for their cool­er, etc. I observed and not­ed the tim­ing and more.

That’s why it’s impor­tant for prep­pers like you and I to be aware of the poten­tial risks asso­ci­at­ed with cyber war­fare and how they can pre­pare for them. Here are some things you need to know:

  • Cyber attacks can occur at any time and with­out warn­ing.
  • They can have a seri­ous impact on our econ­o­my and way of life.
  • You should also have a plan in place for deal­ing with the after­math of a cyber attack regard­less of the infra­struc­ture type hit.

What is cyber-warfare?

Cyber-war­fare is a term that refers to the use of cyber-attacks in order to achieve a strate­gic or tac­ti­cal objec­tive over your ene­my dur­ing or pri­or to a con­flict. It can be used as a form of attack, as well as a form of defense to crip­ple an attack­ing ene­my’s infra­struc­ture.

Cyber-attacks are typ­i­cal­ly used to tar­get com­put­er sys­tems and net­works and can include activ­i­ties such as hack­ing, virus­es, mal­ware, and denial-of-ser­vice attacks. They can be used to gain access to sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion, dis­rupt oper­a­tions, or dam­age infra­struc­ture.

Cyber-war­fare is a rel­a­tive­ly new phe­nom­e­non and has been increas­ing in fre­quen­cy and sophis­ti­ca­tion in recent years. It is con­sid­ered a par­tic­u­lar­ly dan­ger­ous form of war­fare, as it can be used to tar­get civil­ian infra­struc­ture as well as mil­i­tary tar­gets.

There is grow­ing con­cern about the poten­tial for cyber-attacks to cause sig­nif­i­cant dam­age and casu­al­ties, and there is a need for greater coop­er­a­tion between gov­ern­ments and busi­ness­es to pro­tect against them. Cyber-secu­ri­ty is becom­ing an increas­ing­ly impor­tant issue in today’s world.

So what can we do to pro­tect our­selves from cyber-war­fare? The best way to pro­tect your­self is to ensure that your com­put­er sys­tems are ade­quate­ly secured with up-to-date antivirus soft­ware and fire­walls. You should also be care­ful about open­ing attach­ments or click­ing on links in emails, espe­cial­ly if they come from unknown sources. And always make sure you have backed up your data in case of a cyber-attack.

Why Cyber-Attacks Are Successful

Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty attacks are suc­cess­ful for a num­ber of rea­sons. One rea­son is that many orga­ni­za­tions are still using the out­dat­ed and vul­ner­a­ble soft­ware they’ve been using for 20 — 30 years. Look at recent attacks in 2020 and 2021, most of which were due to old­er sys­tems, and which could help crip­ple infra­struc­ture:

  • 2020: JBS Foods: Meat Pack­ag­ing Plants: Infra­struc­ture Relat­ed
  • Feb­ru­ary 2021: CD PROJEKT: Video Game Firm look­ing for data. You have NO IDEA how much data on your chil­dren or your fam­i­ly a video game com­pa­ny has…
  • March 2021: CNA: Insur­ance Com­pa­ny
  • April 2021: The Colo­nial Pipeline: Gaso­line Deliv­ery, def­i­nite­ly infra­struc­ture relat­ed
  • April 2021: Quan­ta: Apple Engi­neer­ing Busi­ness Part­ner: Not tra­di­tion­al Infra­struc­ture, but part of the infra­struc­ture many use on their desk and in their hand on a dai­ly basis.
  • May 2021: Bren­ntag: Chem­i­cal Dis­tri­b­u­tion Com­pa­ny
  • May 2021: Acer Com­put­er Corp
  • May 2021: AXA Insur­ance: Anoth­er Insur­ance Com­pa­ny
  • July 2021: Kaseya: IT Infra­struc­ture provider for com­pa­nies world­wide.

This is just a SMALL hand­ful of cyber­at­tacks of infra­struc­ture (and some not so infra­struc­ture) based com­pa­nies.

Addi­tion­al­ly, many employ­ees in many com­pa­nies do not receive ade­quate train­ing on how to spot cyber threats. Now imag­ine for a moment your Mom, Dad, or Grand­par­ents try­ing to locate or spot some­thing on their com­put­ers that is a fake this or that that crip­ples their com­put­er, or worse, pil­fers all their per­son­al infor­ma­tion or per­son­al health infor­ma­tion, etc. And final­ly, many orga­ni­za­tions do not have ade­quate secu­ri­ty mea­sures in place to pro­tect their net­works from attack. All of these fac­tors make it easy for hack­ers to steal valu­able data or dis­rupt busi­ness oper­a­tions. It’s scary.

In order to reduce the risk of a cyber­se­cu­ri­ty attack, orga­ni­za­tions should update their soft­ware reg­u­lar­ly, train employ­ees on how to iden­ti­fy threats, and invest in robust secu­ri­ty mea­sures. By tak­ing these pre­cau­tions, busi­ness­es can make it much more dif­fi­cult for hack­ers to suc­ceed.

What’s Affected and How to Protect Yourself

Cyber-secu­ri­ty attacks can affect a wide range of tech­nol­o­gy infra­struc­ture, includ­ing:

  • Com­mer­cial net­works and sys­tems
  • Cor­po­rate net­works and sys­tems
  • Crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture, such as ener­gy, water, and trans­porta­tion sys­tems
  • Gov­ern­men­tal net­works and sys­tems
  • Health­care orga­ni­za­tions’ net­works and sys­tems
  • Indi­vid­u­als’ per­son­al com­put­er net­works and sys­tems

A cyber-secu­ri­ty attack can crip­ple a busi­ness, cause a pow­er out­age, or even endan­ger lives. It’s been wide­ly dis­cussed by the prep­per blo­gos­phere that if there is an EMP or a crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture fail­ure with the elec­tri­cal grid that 80 — 90% of the US pop­u­la­tion would be dead in a year due to crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture being unavail­able. It is there­fore essen­tial for busi­ness­es and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions to have robust cyber-secu­ri­ty pro­tec­tion in place. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump want­ed to hard­en the elec­tri­cal grid and upgrade crit­i­cal points of infra­struc­ture but was met with strong oppo­si­tion. As they say, ener­gy inde­pen­dence and secu­ri­ty are key com­po­nents to our nation­al secu­ri­ty and sov­er­eign­ty. I don’t think there is any doubt about that now that we see gas prices ris­ing and the Biden admin­is­tra­tion stran­gling the gas & oil busi­ness­es here in the Unit­ed States. But I digress…

There are many dif­fer­ent ways to pro­tect against a per­son­al cyber-secu­ri­ty attack. One impor­tant way is to have a strong pass­word pol­i­cy. This means requir­ing all employ­ees or peo­ple in your fam­i­ly to use strong pass­words and requir­ing them to change their pass­words on a reg­u­lar basis.

Anoth­er impor­tant way to pro­tect against a cyber-secu­ri­ty attack is to install fire­walls and anti-virus soft­ware on all devices that con­nect to the orga­ni­za­tion’s net­work and/or your home Inter­net. These tools can help pro­tect you and your sys­tems from being hacked or infect­ed with mal­ware.

Final­ly, it is impor­tant to have a dis­as­ter recov­ery plan in place. This means hav­ing a plan for how the orga­ni­za­tion will respond if its sys­tems are hacked or dam­aged. The plan should include steps for repair­ing the dam­age, restor­ing data, and secur­ing the net­work.

Orga­ni­za­tions and peo­ple at home that take these steps can help pro­tect them­selves from cyber-secu­ri­ty attacks. How­ev­er, no one is 100% safe, and it is impor­tant to be aware of the poten­tial risks and take steps to mit­i­gate them.

EMP vs. a Cyber Attack, Which is More Eminent?

There are many dif­fer­ent types of attacks that can be car­ried out against a com­put­er sys­tem and elec­tron­ics, but two of the most seri­ous are the elec­tro-mag­net­ic pulse attack and the cyber-attack that we have been dis­cussing.

An elec­tro­mag­net­ic pulse attack is an attack that involves det­o­nat­ing a nuclear weapon in the atmos­phere, which cre­ates a large pulse of ener­gy that can fry elec­tron­ic equip­ment. A cyber-attack as we’ve not­ed is an attack that involves try­ing to gain access to a com­put­er sys­tem in order to steal infor­ma­tion or dam­age the sys­tem.

Both of these types of attacks can cause seri­ous dam­age to a com­put­er sys­tem, but which is more emi­nent, an elec­tro­mag­net­ic pulse attack or a cyber-attack?

There is no defin­i­tive answer, as both types of attacks can be very seri­ous. How­ev­er, a cyber-attack caus­es dam­age dif­fer­ent­ly to a com­put­er sys­tem than an elec­tro-mag­net­ic pulse attack, as it can involve steal­ing infor­ma­tion or dam­ag­ing the sys­tem inter­nal­ly.

An elec­tro­mag­net­ic pulse attack is more like­ly to cause dam­age to the equip­ment itself, but it is less like­ly to cause dam­age to the sys­tem as a whole. There­fore, it is dif­fi­cult to say which type of attack is more emi­nent, but it is safe to say that both are seri­ous threats that should be tak­en seri­ous­ly, espe­cial­ly if used in par­al­lel with one anoth­er.

Conclusion

If you’re already a prep­per, you know what you need to do. Keep prep­ping, keep your­self ready, your head on a swiv­el, and watch your six. If you’re new to prep­ping or think­ing about pre­pared­ness more seri­ous­ly, this is like­ly the num­ber one way our coun­try will be hit, and it is very seri­ous. The cyber­at­tack will either come pri­or to any oth­er type of attack or in par­al­lel with some phys­i­cal type of attack to help divert atten­tion from the phys­i­cal attack. Get prep­ping, keep prep­ping, and don’t take it all so seri­ous­ly until you absolute­ly have to. By then, you’ll hope­ful­ly upgrad­ed some of your prep­ping skills, have an ade­quate amount of food for you and your fam­i­ly, and have a group of like-mind­ed indi­vid­u­als to col­lab­o­rate and con­gre­gate with to help you sus­tain life.

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