Why Should Governments Spend Money on Cyber Security?

As everybody knows, internet security is very important from an individual and organizational prospective. Therefore, a lot if individual user spend money to insure that their devices or networks are secure by buying and installing antivirus software or soft firewall and some times hard firewall just to try and prevent any unwanted hackers from stealing or viewing their personal data. But of course that is nothing comparing to what organizations spend eon their cyber security systems. The Canadian government announced recently that it has spent  around 155 million over the past 5 years to improve the government cyber security , which i am sure some people believe is more than enough or over spending. well , let me tell you that its not even enough .on Oct 2011 the British  government announced that they have interrupted cyber criminal operation that was trading 1 million stolen identity  preventing around 300 million credit and debt fraud, they also reported a significant but unsuccessful cyber attack attempt on the Foreign Office and other government departments , which could have led to a lot of sensitive information being leaks .so guess how much the British government  planing to spend on their cyber security for the next 4 years?  , £650 Million all this is just to try and enhance their cyber security and prevent any information leakage though their network.another cyber attack example is what happened to the Swedish government and Armed Forces website recently by being attack by a DDoS bringing down these websites for couples of  hours. These were just some example of many cyber attacks on governments' departments and websites that can happen  or even happening right now. plus cyber attacks can be used by governments to attack other governments important companies and institutions to effect their economy or delay some operations . A good example is the attack on the Nuclear program system in Iran which is suspected to be a government or collaboration between governments to delay that project at the time. so as you see spending a lot of money on cyber security is very important maybe as important as spending money of physical defenses because cyber security protect the government's information which can easily effect the economy of the country and the safety of its citizens .

Diaa  



sources :

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/31/cyber-attacks-uk-disturbing-gchq
http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/media/nr/2012/nr20121017-eng.aspx
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2012/09/201293182411421975.html