At Symantec, we have a meaningful mission to protect and enable the digital world. We have the best experts at the helm, helping defend our customers with leading products and services that are harnessed in Symantec’s security operation centers, integrated cyber defense and digital safety solutions. At the core, Symantec’s 11,000 employees around the world are credited with making a difference in identifying potential threats and protecting our customers from the next generation of attacks – they are the source of the Symantec advantage.

As such, building the security IQ and skill set of our employees is key to our ability to better protect our customers.  This is the reason why we invest in building and running CyberWar Games, Symantec’s virtual world that identifies tomorrow’s threats and empowers our employees to take on the role of the adversary. By walking in the shoes of the attacker, our people are better prepared to detect, respond and defend against new and emerging cyber threats.

What is CyberWar Games?

CyberWar Games is an annual event where we look at today’s emerging technology to analyze tomorrow’s threats - it’s a recognition and celebration of our most powerful differentiator - Symantec’s combined security IQ. This experience is an opportunity to invest in our people and also in our offerings as we apply our findings to enhance our services and products for our customers. It is a safe place for our employees to practice, learn and innovate around emerging threats and use cutting-edge technology to defend against them.

Each year, Symantec’s Cyber Security Services picks a theme based on where we see the threat landscape emerging. Five years ago, we focused on nation states. In year two, we explored oil and gas and SCADA systems. Year three studied the financial services industry as it started to adopt and integrate technology at a rapid pace. And year four was focused on healthcare and the impact cyber threats had on this industry that had the potential to affect the well-being of citizens. Insights from each year’s Games are provided to the industries and the world to help protect those global institutions. For example, when we held a healthcare-focused CyberWar Games in 2015, our findings revealed new attack vectors that could impact hospitals, pharmacies and even the technology employed by the medical industry. We provided our insights to the healthcare industry and helped improve this sector’s security posture.

Our 2017 CyberWar Games challenged the best of Symantec to take on the most realistic and physically immersive challenge of their career, the global supply chain, to explore both the risks this type of major cyber attack could have on the worldwide economy and the areas of solutions needed to protect from a global scale event.

Predicting the Next Cyber Attack

As we examined the potential threat vectors that could lead to a major cyber attack, what became very apparent was the significant pressure for businesses and municipalities to digitally transform their operations to lower operating costs and increase productivity. Modernization of technology has many benefits – such as simplifying day-to-day tasks for employees, building long-term brand loyalty among customers and automating processes for real-time management and performance analysis, however, security often becomes an afterthought when responding to external pressures.

As more and more key systems and infrastructure become increasingly connected, the surface area that one might attack expands and it creates more potential windows for criminals, since a defense system is only as strong as its weakest link. This connected network of devices can access and transmit information throughout business functions and across different industries, introducing the potential for a cyber attack scenario we call the ‘digital domino effect’. While devastating to a business, the ‘digital domino effect’ could have a greater societal impact by escalating a seemingly small cyber attack to an exchange of global power and influence by targeting the production and trade of important commodities like oil, metals and agricultural products.

The ‘Digital Domino Effect’ of Connected Systems

Symantec experts took a close look at how an attacker, whether as part of organized crime or as a member of a nation state, might target connected technologies as an entry point to businesses or governments. There are several examples of how modernized business practices may be taken advantage of and manipulated - including the use of mobile technology on access control systems, ZigBee protocols that monitor and manage SCADA systems responsible for running our power and energy grids and even emerging technologies like autonomous vehicles and the Internet of Things (IoT). Each of these pillars of our economy are connected through technology, and these connections are dependent on one another and when offline, could lead to the failure of an organization or a nation.

During the scenario, teams were able to infiltrate multiple entry points within a business targeting the fabric of connected devices. They were also able to use these smart systems to string together a series of attacks creating that ‘digital domino effect’, leading to an ultimate shift in the global power and influence scale through commodities trading. Given these results, we can conclude the next significant cyber attack will likely involve targeting the connected ecosystem of a major business, municipality or nation state, setting off, whether on accident or on purpose, the ‘domino effect’ that forces a change in global power.

Staying Protected

One of the inherent risks of adopting emerging technologies is the level of security these innovations have built into them. It can be nearly impossible to detect and respond to the unknown threats of the future because we haven’t seen them before. Immersive events like CyberWar Games allow our teams to build their skills and learn about the latest attacker tools, tactics and procedures by stepping into the shoes of the very adversaries they spend their careers defending against. 

With CyberWar Games, Symantec is able to create a real-world hypothetical scenario and often times accurately predict the next potential cyber attack because of the strength of our employees, the breadth of our global intelligence network and the innovative tools at our disposal. As we move ahead and businesses adopt connected technologies to manage the global supply chain, we’ll be leading the charge in helping protect our customers against the threats of the future.

[Editor's Note: This blog was originally published 06/01/2017]