India and Cyberspace: Balance Between Offence and Defence

Recently, there is an increasing assertion that cyber war will never happen and should not be fought. This claim is borne out since cyberattacks cannot be stopped completely; exclusively defensive measures must be pursued and, therefore, retaliation against such attacks must cease because they are ineffectual. As Ciaran Martin, formerly the United Kingdom’s (UK) Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the National Security Cyber Centre (NSCS), stated that cyber deterrence was impossible because offensive cyberattacks in retaliation were ineffective. Offensive cyber weapons, Martin maintained, which are basically viruses, are of limited utility because they could rebound to the disadvantage of the side that developed and used them. Viruses that are developed for offensive uses against adversaries can escape and infect one’s own system. Thus, attacking an adversary’s networks have never completely restrained the opponent. Authoritarian states with low levels of digitisation have greater threshold for accepting damage and pain in the digital domain than open societies “…in the event of escalation.” Read More…