It has been reported that French shipbuilding firm, DCNS, has suffered a huge data breach. The information exposed was 22,000 pages of detailed information revealing the combat capabilities of the Scorpene class vessels – six of which are used in a £2.6 billion contract with the Indian navy.
Commenting on this, Stephen Gates, chief research intelligence analyst at NSFOCUS, said "Military contractors who possess highly sensitive intellectual property must insure that property is not accessible from computers that also have connectivity to the Internet. In most cases, hackers do not steal sensitive data directly from the computers that store the data. Instead, hackers gain access to another computer within the organisation that has Internet access. Once hackers compromise that computer from the outside-in, they next use the computer they have compromised to steal data stored on another computer. This is all being done from behind perimeter firewalls. Recommendation – Organisations must build an airgap around computers that store highly sensitive data. Meaning that any other computer that needs access to that data should be “physically separated” from the Internet."