The Sydney Morning Herald reports: Cyber espionage between nations has reached such damaging levels it risks not only the trust between friendly countries, but the future of the internet itself.

That is the view of Eugene Kaspersky, the ebullient chief executive of Russian security firm Kaspersky Labs, who is in Canberra this week to deliver the message to politicians and business leaders.

Speaking ahead of his speech to the National Press Club on Thursday, Mr Kaspersky told Fairfax Media he was “very surprised” and concerned about the extent of espionage currently undertaken by Western countries. He also warned Australia to invest in educating a new generation of security engineers to future-proof its critical systems.

“Cyber espionage is not new,” he said. “We knew that from years ago, but I did not expect it in such a huge scale and coming from so many different nations.”
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Mr Kaspersky said he feared governments would withdraw to their own parallel networks away from the prying eyes of others, and would cease investing in the development of the public internet, products and services.

“If governments and enterprises exit the public internet, there will be a lot less investment. If they emigrate to a separate zone, I’m afraid the internet will have a crisis”. [Continue reading…]