have been the victim of cybercrime. It was found that 431 million adults, more
than a million a day, fall victim to cybercrime each year’.
Cyberspace
provides
the
environment
that
facilitates
organized
virtual
attacks on information assets, as well as physical infrastructure. These attacks
can be carried out even by using readily available consumer technology.
Sophisticated cybercriminals can conceal their identities, locations, and paths
of entry. They can leverage cyberspace to disrupt communications, hinder or
delay defensive, offensive or emergency response. The virus Stuxnet?, for
example,
which
was
discovered
in 2010,
was
designed
to target industrial
control systems used to monitor and run large-scale industrial facilities such
as power plants, oil refineries, and gas pipelines.’
In Trinidad and Tobago, the following areas are among those susceptible to
compromise by criminal or terrorist elements:
e
online banking and financial networks;
e
online government services such as TTBizLink;
e
real-time
information
systems,
such
as the Supervisory
Control
and
Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems that manage the pumping stations
at the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) and the Trinidad and
Tobago Electricity Commission (T&TEC);
e revenue-dependent oil, gas and petrochemical infrastructure;
e
air transport and public ground transportation.
Experiences in Trinidad and Tobago, like those globally, have underscored
the truism that increasing reliance on cyberspace brings both opportunities
and threats. The rapid integration of the Internet into almost all aspects of
social and economic activity and the ubiquity of ICT has increased the
7 Symantec, “Norton Cybercrime Report 2011’
http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/home_homeoffice/html/cybercrimereport/
8 The ultimate goal of Stuxnet was to manipulate the physical equipment attached to specific
industrial control systems so the equipment acted in a manner programmed by the attacker,
contrary to its intended purpose.
° Symantec, “‘Duqu: The Precursor to the Next Stuxnet’
http://www.symantec.com/outbreak/?id=stuxnet