Why the Manchester Bombing has changed Cyber Security forever?

I grew up in the UK during the 70's, 80's and 90's. We were no strangers to bomb threats and mass evacuations, under the IRA era. However the IRA always gave plenty of warning, children were never the direct target and people were safely evacuated in the majority of cases.

Then came the #London bombings in 2005, which started to change the game. This was the first time that London had been successfully targeted by suicide bombers and many in the UK were left on-edge and genuinely frightened by the experience. 

Four terrorists detonated three separate bombs across the London Underground train network, with a fourth detonation on a double-decker bus. 52 people were killed and 700 injured, making it the Britain's deadliest terror attack, since the Lockerbie bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. It was also the first suicide attack and involved 3 terrorists of UK descent. The notion that these attacks were executed by foreign nationals was diminishing rapidly. This was the first wave of home-grown #terrorism.

We then witnessed the devastating attack this week, at the #Manchester Arena, just after Ariana Grande has finished her encore performance. A single terrorist detonated an improvised explosive device at the entry / exit point of the building, containing shrapnel which killed at least 23 people and injured around 120. This is the first time that a public event and a 'soft' target was the subject of such an attack, resulting in serious injury for many young teenagers and parents.   

This event really changes everything around how we think about physical security, not just in the UK, but around the globe. This is exemplified by the change in the UK threat level from Severe, which means an attack is likely, to Critical, meaning that an attack is expected imminently. This means that major events need more careful screening, more back checks, and additional skilled resources need drafting from the police, the army and from the wider population. 

This event has ultimately disrupted the entire security posture of the UK, which could lead to a number of #disruptive #innovations over the next few years:

• Facial Recognition - The ability for security forces to identify individuals in real-time, using facial recognition capabilities across social media, CCTV and mobile devices.
• Contextual Recognition - The ability for security forces to identify the context behind pictures, videos, conversations, linked to dates and places to proactively assess risk using predictive technologies, to determine whether associated individuals pose a security threat to the country.
• Blended Jurisdiction - The need to blend the jurisdiction, roles and responsibilities across the various armed forces units, and the local policing agencies.
• Sourcing Talent & skills - The ability to pull the relevant civilian and military skills, at short notice to deal with specific terrorist threats. This consists of physical, intelligence and cyber expertise.

I believe we'll start to see these types of technologies and their associated controls being adopted across businesses, and influencing our Cyber #CISSP and #CCSP certifications before too long. 

Cyber-bullying is one such worrying trend, which is having a huge effect on our children. How long before our kids are targeted by terrorists on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instragm, with the aim of grooming them to assist with such atrocities as we have seen in Manchester. 

It's means as parents we all have a responsibility to stay informed around security, not just the physical, but especially online and keep all our children safe. 

Let's stand together united and spread the #Cyber knowledge needed to keep all our friends and family safe.

#ManchesterBomb #ManchesterAttack #ManchesterStrong #ManchesterArena #FacialRecognition #VR #AR #MachineLearning