| It was a typical week for cyber attacks around the globe. A small western Pennsylvania municipal water utility was just one of multiple organizations breached in the United States by an Iranian-backed hacktivist collective. The group, known as Cyber Av3ngers, targeted a specific industrial device - a programmable logic controller -because it is Israeli-made. Other industries that use the same equipment — Vision Series programmable logic controllers made by Israel’s Unitronics — including energy, food and beverage manufacturing and healthcare, have been warned that they are also potentially vulnerable. In Israel, cyber attacks that use distributed denial of service (DDoS) operations; wiper malware; and the exploitation of other vulnerabilities that facilitate the spread of disinformation were used by Hamas and its supporters as weapons of war. So were deep fake videos that risk unleashing more violence and confusion. Meanwhile, European cyber police arrested the ringleader of a ransomware gang operating in Ukraine accused of successfully extorting “several hundred million euros” in ransom from victims in 71 countries; the boss of Australia’s largest ports operator confirmed data from current and former DP World employees was stolen during a November cyber attack that shut down its operations around the country in November, temporarily disrupting global trade; and the UK foreign minister Leo Docherty told the House of Commons that Russia’s Federal Security Service had used a "range of cyber espionage activities" to target MPs, peers, civil servants, journalists and NGOs, through a sustained campaign to “meddle in British politics.” These incidents are a snapshot of how the cybersecurity agenda has changed over the past five years: cyber is now an inextricable part of warfare, critical infrastructure - and democracy - are increasingly coming under attack, ransomware is on the rise, and the commercialization of new cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence, are introducing new threats such as deep fakes. The next five years will bring another set of unprecedented cybersecurity challenges, says a new report from The World Economic Forum, prepared with Accenture, entitled Cybersecurity Futures 2030. Read on to get the key takeaways from the report. | 
