The more a country's government depends on the Internet, the more susceptible they become to the same attacks that private companies and individuals have been suffering with for some time. Recently, officials came to a very interesting conclusion, as NATO decided today that "fast action" is needed to stop Internet attacks. After a series of attacks on servers in Estonia, they came to the conclusion that there was both an impact on national security and on the economy. Now they plan on increasing their efforts to stop these attacks:
NATO officials said the 26-member alliance, which sent a technology expert to Estonia at the height of the onslaught, would study how it could step up existing work within NATO and national capitals on tackling the cyber threat.
NATO obviously has an interest in keeping the world economy strong, and with the global reach of the Internet come many more ways for an economy to be damaged. The Internet has yet to see an attack of worldwide implications, though we have seen many outages and attacks that leaves many questioning just how resilient it is.
One thing is for sure, the power of attacks is increasing as time goes on, and their effects are more devastating.