It's the Government's Job to Respond to Cyber Attacks: Bloomberg Poll
After the cyber-attack on Sony, President Barack Obama threatened on Dec. 19 to mount unspecified “proportional” retaliatory measures against North Korea for the assault. North Korea suffered Internet outages a few days later.
Photographer: Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty ImagesAt a time when most people aren’t confident their workplace is safe from a hacking attack, respondents to the Bloomberg Global Poll are more certain about one thing: Vengeance is not mine.
Companies shouldn’t get a pass from the government to respond to cyber-attacks with counterstrikes against the bad guys, according to the latest results in the quarterly poll of 481 investors, analysts and traders who are Bloomberg subscribers. Some 71 percent of respondents said corporations need to defer to law-enforcement agencies to take such actions. Sixteen percent said businesses should be allowed to retaliate, and 13 percent said they weren’t sure.