Embattled Companies, States Should Join Forces Against Cyber Attacks

We are living in a new era, with unprecedented industrial scale theft of intellectual property and company secrets. The most recent example is a vast cyber espionage campaign, dubbed Operation Cloud Hopper, made public this April. In this global campaign, a China based group targeted IT service providers, thereby obtaining access to their clients in multiple industrial sectors and enabling them to steal proprietary data belonging to businesses in North America, Western Europe, and East Asia. 

Earlier this year, the Swedish National Defence Radio Establishment, the Swedish Security Service, and the Finnish Security Intelligence Service released their annual reports. They all confirm a “new normal” in the Nordic region. Industry is under continuous attack, with state-sponsored actors stealing research and development material and other industrial secrets. According to the Swedish National Defence Radio Establishment (FRA), sophisticated cyber-attacks, with advanced code that can be attributed to states or state-sponsored groups, have increased. Tens of thousands of activities involving malicious code attributable to state actors tracked by the FRA are detected every month.