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Project 2020 – Proactively Securing our Cyber Future
Fri, 18th Oct 2013
FYI, this story is more than a year old

Today sees the launch of episode two in Trend Micro’s innovative Project 2020 series of web videos.

Project 2020 is our take on what society might look like at the end of the decade, how technology will shape that society and what could happen when the bad guys try to subvert it.

We’re not saying everything in these videos is going to come true but we need to get people talking and thinking about the online threats we as businesses, consumers and employees may face.

Specifically, the world imagined by our series propels us into a time when the “internet of everything” is no longer something largely talked about in theoretical terms but an integral part of daily life.

In the nation of South Sylvania, all citizens consume personalized digital content through glasses or contacts, switching between their many online profiles via a centralised hub called The Switch. The nation is even preparing for its first ever all-digital election made possible by this interconnectedness.

Trend Micro is asking the question “what would happen if this internet of everything and the augmented reality we rely on, made possible by the hundreds of billions of wirelessly connected devices around us, is taken down by hackers…?”

Episode 2 – Stay Calm

The second part of our series takes up where we left off in the opening installment, with South Sylvania’s national infrastructure crippled by a massive denial of service attack, which has already claimed its first casualties.

In what is being dubbed The Great Switch Off, financial systems grind to a halt, employees can’t access corporate systems and even hospitals are left unable to access pharmacy dispensaries.

With the city in chaos and casualties mounting, it begins to seem that the denial of service attacks may simply have been a distraction, covering up a much deeper intrusion.

Desperate to find out who caused the meltdown and how to stop it, the employees at the Switch are in a race against time to track the source of the failure.

To watch Episode 1 click here

By Rik Ferguson - VP Security Research - Trend Micro