A COMPUTER security expert has warned that hacking is the new arms race and existing security solutions are not keeping pace with the level of cyber attacks.

Sam Hutton, chief technical officer of London-based Glasswall Solutions, was speaking after Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon said Russia was carrying out a sustained campaign of cyberattacks targeting the West’s critical infrastructure.

Fallon told an audience at St Andrews University that Russian President Vladimir Putin had become a “strategic competitor” of the West, and Moscow was “weaponising misinformation” in a bid to destabilise western governments and weaken Nato. He added that it was vital Nato members strengthened their cyber defences.

Nato needed to do more to tackle the Kremlin’s “false reality”, he said, and added: “Nato must defend itself as effectively in the cyber sphere as it does in the air, on land, and at sea, so adversaries know there is a price to pay if they use cyber weapons.”

However, Hutton said other “actors” such as China and some eastern European countries had also increased their hacking activity, and the nature of the attacks had changed in recent years.

“I think those nation states as part of their foreign policy would have a cyber aspect to it,” he said.

“It is an arms race to an extent and the bad guys will increase their advantage for a while and the good guys will play catch-up and that’s always been the case, whether it’s cyber or other aspects of nation-sponsored attacks.

“Where the challenges are right now are around a lack of skillset, certainly within cyber space, and we’re seeing a number of initiatives come together to try to address that. But I think ultimately what it comes down to is meeting this new generation of cyber attacks with new, innovative ways of dealing with the problem.

“If you go back even three or four years, most cyber crime was committed by kids in their room or young hackers just doing it because they could.

“What we’re seeing over the last few years is the whole landscape changing, where we are seeing state-sponsored attacks – obviously Russia gets picked out, but there are other state actors who also use cyber as a new battlefield.”

Hutton said there were major concerns over being aware of security breaches and how to combat them. While major companies and government departments were largely successful in handling security, there were still weaknesses in their supply chain.

“We’ve seen UK defences and other nation states’ defences rise to the challenge at governmental and large organisational level like PLCs,” he said.

“I think where there’s probably still a weakness, certainly in the supply chain to those organisations, the SMEs who aren’t as sophisticated as the larger PLCs but still offer a way into those larger organisations through the supply chain route – a back door through the front door.”

He added that what was required was for all the parties involved to get together and address the problem in an innovative fashion.

“Now we have one centralised National Cyber Security Centre and I think the government have realised that and they’ve reorganised GCHQ to address that, so we should start to see more of a co-ordinated effort, a sort of holistic view of pulling resources and capabilities together.

“And, as a small company, we would look to the UK Government to drive some of that innovation as well, because existing security solutions are quite frankly not keeping pace, and it really requires new capabilities to address this threat head on.”