Your Trusted Source for National Security News & Analysis

January 20th, 2025 | 11:50 AM ET

Breaching “Secure” Networks with Social Engineering and a Little Imagination

Tweet
Share
Pin
Share
0 Shares
Posted: March 26th, 2017

By Oren Falkowitz

Oren J. Falkowitz is co-founder and CEO of Area 1 Security. Previously, Falkowitz held senior positions at the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command where he focused on Computer Network Operations and Big Data.

An air gap – meaning, a computer without direct network access of any kind – seems like the perfect solution to the gossamer threads of connectivity. You can’t hack something you can’t connect to. But air gapped systems aren’t unhackable.

That’s not to say air gaps don’t have their place.  They can make life hard for hackers. Some really important servers – such as those that run power plants, train switches, backend banking systems or perform as command and control for nuclear weapons systems – don’t need persistent network connectivity. But isolating networks won’t keep them safe from data breach or disruption.

Access all of The Cipher Brief’s national security-focused expert insight by becoming a Cipher Brief Subscriber+ Member.

Sign Up Log In

Categorized as:Reporting Tech/Cyber

Related Articles

Search

Close