“There have been zero successful cyber-attacks on critical national infrastructures in the past year”

This is what Yigal Unna, the head of the National Cyber Directorate of Israel, declared at the CyberTech conference, held last week in Israel. Stunning declaration in my opinion.

I thought there is no 100% in information security (which is true for physical security as well). How can he know this for sure? Information security, and certainly as part of risk management, involves recognizing that there is never any certainty. You can always be attacked successfully and you will know about it as it happens and you may never know. You always have to assume that at any given moment, at any part of your systems – you lose, because you know you don’t cover everything and can’t cover everything.

This is a statements in the style that existed before the Yom Kippur War. Smugness and arrogance that have no place in our profession and I believe that sooner or later they will run into the wall of reality and shatter.