News from the front - How the CyberWar has changed

We were engaged through the month of August and most of September with two large clients in the Middle East responding to critical incidents where most of their Windows computing infrastructure had been destroyed by malware that basically wiped the disks at a specific time. 
 
We have never seen single minded destruction on this scale before; the attackers' sole intent was to wipe out the target's computing capability.  The tools were blunt, but effective.  So the logical question is "How do we protect ourselves?".  The recent cases are examples of real cyber terrorism versus the "hacktivism" we saw last year.  It’s the "cudgel with extreme prejudice" versus agitated teenagers, and could easily point to nation states committing acts of war.   In general, this is WHY we do security in the first place. A breach is bad – scorched earth where all your computers used to be is a whole different game.