A Sub-generator in a Power plant melts down!!

Dr Akhtar Kalam - a prominent ICT researcher from Melbourne, Australia spoke this morning at ICIT 2009. Dr. Kalam started by congratulating the organizers on holding the conference. Dr. Kalam, who spoke on IT security, emphasized that information security affects all sectors of the economy, thereby affecting us all. He stated that most viruses are carried through the email network. MyDoom the fastest growing worm was propogated through email network. Corporate Wide Area Networks are the biggest targets, with financial services sector being the most prone of them all. An interesting observation made by Dr. Kalam was that the actual number of all kinds of worm and virus attacks has actually consistently decreased since year 2001, as opposed to claims made by organizations making anti-virus programs. There has also been an accompany decrease in average financial loss faced by organizations. Dr. Kalam also showed off some interesting videos to drive his point home, especially a video showing a power plant melting down as a result of a 15-year old hacker attack generated a lot of interest among the students. Finally, he stressed the need to have a National Information Infrastructure in order to deal with the security threats.