A massive hack brought down much of the internet on Friday, including Twitter, Spotify and Reddit. According to a commissioner on President Obama’s cybersecurity panel, future attacks could be prevented if Internet Service Providers got involved in defense efforts.
Steven Chabinsky, who also serves as general counsel of internet security company CrowdStrike and is the former deputy of the FBI’s Cyber Division, says ISPs could identify hacked computers known as “bots” and cordon them off before they are used to direct large-scale distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attacks. That’s part of what he calls a “three-pronged approach,” a strategy he advocates that also involves new standards for device manufacturers to better secure computer hardware and more cyberdefense coordination between countries, he says.