APT - Extension of Diplomacy by Cyber Means

The Term “Advanced Persistent Threat” often abbreviated as APT has been around in cyber domain for a while and is largely understood to be a threat vector associated with nation states with monumental budget, formidable motivations and persistence over time as compared to other known threat actors. While this is prevalent definition of APTs it’s worthwhile to delve into strategic objectives and motivations behind this concept which revolve around geo-politics and national interests.

Geopolitics and more specifically perusal of national interests of a nation state are orthogonal to comprehensive national power and projection thereof, ultimately serving its economic, political and diplomatic ambitions. With proliferation of information and knowledge-based economy and way of life cyber defense/and offense apparatus have become vital pillars of comprehensive national power. APTs have been very effective in covert operations like espionage, sabotage, subversion and coercion and steadily gaining relevance in overt engagements as well, Mainly due to asymmetric nature of cyber warfare and great deal of deniability while providing greater chances of success at lower risk exposure as compared traditional military options. Stuxnet is considered one of the most successful APT operations known in public domain while there are others like Sony hack in the year 2014 often attributed to nation state tied with political interests behind the attack.

While comparing options for achieving national objectives, A fighter plane for instance costs millions of dollars, is conspicuous, exposes people to cost of lives if used and sometimes warrants international criticism. on the other hand, if one could achieve similar objectives with multiple teams of cyber experts across the globe at fraction of cost, deniability and almost no risk of human lives may take precedence in minds of diplomats and strategists. While it could be to be combination of both cyber and traditional military action depending on the objective and scale however cyber is likely to remain and further escalate as a vital force in the global power equation.

Sometimes APTs may appear to be more interested in national assets like power and energy, nuclear and military assets other important sectors that were attacked in the past and could be targeted in future as well are financial sector, sewerage and other essential and basic utility to disrupt lives of citizens at large scale. when we discuss sectors, transportation and supply chain also comes in as vital areas with significant impact to lives of people thus ATPs pose significant to risk to private sector organizations more so with organizations doing business with defense and government organization as an entry gate into national infrastructure through a potentially vulnerable a vendor.

For both government and private sector to pose deterrence to advanced persistent threats (APTs) there is a need of a cyber risk management strategy with a holistic approach including Strategy, Governance, Operations and Incident response