Theresa Payton, former Bush administration cyber-administrator, when referring to the recent Russian hacking of U.S. government institutions, explained how deep into American computer systems the hack went: “This vulnerability allowed these nefarious cyber-operatives to actually create what we refer to in the industry as ‘God access’ or a ‘God door,’ giving them basically any rights to do anything they want to in stealth mode.” Such penetration of top-secret systems was unprecedented. Over the past decade, escalation has been a common thread in cyber-attacks, steadily increasing criminal activity, government espionage, agitation-propaganda displays and cyber-warfare. For decades, kinetic conflict between world powers – Russia, China, Europe and the United States – has been through surrogate conflicts. For instance, whether in Vietnam, Syria, Libya or Ukraine, major powers fought each other. Now, however, cyber-conflicts between those powers go right to the heart of their critical operations. For years, the U.S. has enjoyed its physical isolation from foreign powers, seeing the oceans off each coast as providing security. But again, cyber-conflicts ignore the oceans and go directly into America’s critical infrastructure. And finally, espionage, whether physical or digital, has for years been an acceptable part of the geo-political contretemps between powers, but lately that polite surveillance has become open cyber-warfare, with each side penetrating the other’s infrastructure, not just to steal some secret, as in espionage, but rather to lay the groundwork for some undeclared future attack with devastating effects. In short, surrogate battles have become direct conflicts; safety through remote geography has created one global battlefield; and the mutually assured destruction (MAD) policy that kept the world safe from nuclear warfare has been replaced with digitally assured destruction (DAD), an awareness that one global power has the capability to disrupt and destroy critical infrastructure should an adversary do something threatening. Moreover, escalation of digital attacks continues between global powers worldwide and at the same time, the frequency, cost and severity of domestic attacks on corporations and individuals have increased. We are in a very different world than was the norm just a few short years ago.