Dr. Samantha Hoffman
Contributor
Dr. Samantha Hoffman is a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s International Cyber Policy Centre and an independent consultant.
The TechCrunch Global Affairs Project examines the increasingly intertwined relationship between the tech sector and global politics.
Recent prominent data breach incidents, such as hacks of the Office of Personnel Management, airline passenger lists and hotel guest data have made clear how vulnerable both public and private systems remain to espionage and cybercrime. What is less obvious is the way that a foreign adversary or competitor might target data that is less clearly relevant from a national security or espionage perspective. Today, data about public sentiment, such as the kinds of data used by advertisers to analyze consumer preferences, has become as strategically valuable as data about traditional military targets. As the definition of what is strategically valuable becomes increasingly blurred, the ability to identify and protect strategic data will be an increasingly complex and vital national security task.
This is particularly true with regards to nation-state actors like China, which seeks access to strategic data and seeks to use it to develop a toolkit against its adversaries. Last month, MI6 chief Richard Moore described the threat of China’s “data trap”: “If you allow another country to gain access to really critical data about your society,” Moore argued, “over time that will erode …
