The impact of US cyber policies on cyber-attacks trend

Abstract

There is a general belief that cyber attacks on the United States are increasing, as indicated by the 30% increase in cyber-attack related news from 2014 to 2015. During the same time frame, however, the USA government enacted several policy measures meant to reduce or mitigate cyber-attacks. These recent developments have lead us to ask two questions, a) Have cyber-attacks on the United States actually increased, as perceived in the news media? b) What is the impact of changes in US cyber-policy on this trend in cyber-attacks? Our initial investigation reveals that in contrast to the perception, there has been a drop in the number of DDoS cyber-attacks on the USA. In this research, we compare the perceptions and the reality of cyber attacks by considering recent trends in cyber-related news and cyber-attacks (specifically DDoS type attacks). The analysis makes three important contributions: a) Using GDelt data, we show that from 2014 to 2015 the amount of news referring to cyber events have increased, but the sentiment expressed in such news has become more negative. b) Using DDoS-attacks data shared by Arbor Network, we show that from 2014 to 2016, there has been a marked decrease in the number of cyber-attacks on the USA. c) Using a time series intervention analysis, we show that the decline in cyber-attacks appears to be related to the changes in US cyber policy. In particular, the US President's authorization to prosecute malicious cyber actors significantly decreased the DDoS-attacks on the US.