Editor's Page: Online security

by Sean Kilcarr

Here’s a shocking statistic: According to analysis conducted by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the number of cybercrime incidents reported by federal agencies this year alone are up 680% over 2006 numbers. Such a huge increase in cybercrime should provide a big moment of pause for any freight hauler, especially if you think about just how much trucking is being encouraged—if not forced outright—to use electronic mediums for communicating all manner of data, especially cargo manifest information.

In case you’re wondering why this is a big deal, the call for public/private collaboration to fight cybercrime is a significant departure from previous policies that instead urged government and business to maintain separate national security and intellectual property defenses.

“Cybersecurity is more important than ever not only for the public sector but for the private sector as well,” noted Marcus Sachs, vice president-government affairs and national security policy for Verizon, in a recent speech.

“Our ability to fend off increasingly sophisticated attacks can be improved by pooling our resources and intelligence to safeguard our national systems, critical infrastructure, and our country’s intellectual property,” he said. “Without a collaborative approach that’s both flexible and highly responsive, we will remain at risk.”

It’ll be interesting to see what role trucking is expected to play in this new effort to thwart cybercriminals.