The battle for supremacy was never likely to stay airborne for long, so in the 21st Century controlling cyberspace may be where nations focus their efforts, as governments, not to mention criminal organisations, around the globe realise the capacity for disruption and damage cyberspace affords.





In the past 18 months we’ve seen alleged state-sponsored cyber attacks perpetrated or attempted against the US presidential elections, the French presidential elections and the UK parliament, but as the president of cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike and the former executive assistant director of the FBI, Shawn Henry, who spent 24 years running the bureau’s criminal and cyber investigations globally, points out, the recent high-profile cyber attacks are just the latest examples of hacking belonging to a much longer timeline.





“I knew back in the mid 90s that it was a big issue and it was going to grow,” says Henry. “We'd seen certain types of criminal activity migrate to the network – child exploitation was one – but I really saw, and colleagues that I worked with [saw], this existential threat because of the ability of adversaries to target information.”





“The targeting of the network as a specific attack vector was something that I really thought was going to be increasing as the years went on and certainly that's been the case,” he adds.