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Five minutes to Midnight: Doomsday clock moved.

Friday, 19 January 2007

Doomsday clock has been moved. Magazines and Newspapers informed on Thursday about the shift of the famous clock that was created in 1947 to remind the humankind of the time left before its final destruction due to a nuclear war.

As reported by USA Today, the decision to move the clock was taken in answer to recent facts and controversies about the distribution of nuclear technology.

The clock represents the likelihood of a global catastrophe. Its ticks have given the clock's keepers a chance to speak out on the dangers threatening the Earth.

Since 1991 the clock hasn’t stop its run toward Midnight, the “X-hour” that originally symbolized a widespread nuclear conflict, but now generally refers to manmade threats to human civilization . Last shift dates back to 2002 when the clock got to 11:53.

Now 2 minutes were added to highlight the increasing level of risk, as the popular scientist Stephen Hawking said: "Terror only kills hundreds or thousands of people. Global warming could kill millions. We should have a war on global warming rather than the war on terror."

In addition to Global warming, the other main reason for clock moving is the increase of nuclear activities in Iran and North Korea. "The dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons," said Kennette Benedict, director of The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

The Bulletin was founded in 1945 as a newsletter distributed among nuclear physicists concerned about nuclear war, but now it deals with any problem that could represent a risk for Human kind survival.

We cannot say whether or not clock moving represents also threats regarding information technologies. Who knows? Scenarios may include global network outages, destroying sensitive IT devices with electromagnetic bombs, accessing military data from attackers... but in general, a catastrophe in IT security would be on a day, when we are unable to resist the threats.

We know very well that there's no secure system, but when we are unable to respond on attacks and defend our or customer's systems even using the best knowledge and technology, this can be THE sign for a coming catastrophe.

Is it high time to set a Doomsday clock for IT security?

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