Paul Hopkins: What if all our screens went black – for good?

While doing a WhatsApp video call with my two granddaughters here, aged four and two, to my other two granddaughters in America, aged seven and four, I was amused by the quizzical look on the youngest child's face, perplexed to a degree as to how she could see her cousins and interact with them right there on Granddad's iPhone in the palm of his hand.

Somehow, the four took it all in their stride for this is their Brave New World. Anyone aged 33 or under has never known a world without the wonderful world-wide web and its accompanying WhatsApp and WhatHaveYez.

We take it for granted, but what if there were no internet? If it all just went belly-up and all our screens went totally black – for good? It is not far from the realms of possibility.

According to a new report, one in four Irish SMEs would be at risk of shutting down after just one ransomware attack, while 94 per cent of those surveyed feel unprepared to defend themselves against advanced cyber threats.

The research, conducted by B2B International on behalf of Vodafone, says the financial impact of cybercrime on businesses is expected to grow, with other research indicating the cost will rise by nearly 50 per cent in the next three years as attacks fuelled by Artificial Intelligence (AI ) become more sophisticated. With SMEs now managing more data, and operating in the same complex digital environment – a cloud-like arena – as bigger firms, they can represent cheaper and easier targets for hackers.

"The scale of AI-powered attacks means no business is too small or too remote to go unnoticed. If you're online, you're on the radar,” said Sinead Perry, head of SMB at Vodafone Ireland. "For SMEs, the risk is real. They are big enough to be a target but often don't have the same security resources as larger firms.

"Attackers only need to succeed once, while your defences must work every time."

It was not long ago that our HSE fell victim to a rogue virus deliberately embedded into its computer system and whether or not a ransom was paid by the Department of Health is still a matter of contention. The big banks, too, have been hit in recent memory. And did not Putin and the Kremlin allegedly influence the outcome of the US presidential election, digitally, back in 2016? And so it goes.

Like my young granddaughters, we all take being online for granted – it's become part and parcel of what we are and, if the world was accidentally or deliberately switched off and we no longer had access to the world.wide.web – oh goodness me, what would we do? Would we be able to even think for ourselves? And, sure, no one would ever again know what meal we had in the restaurant of a given night.

The bottom line is the internet allows us more affordable and efficient access to basic amenities such as education, health care, and government services, not to mention Amazon Prime and Netflix. I mean, where would we be without our Amazon Prime and our Netflix? Doesn't bear thinking about.

AI is a worrying issue, granted, and what it is capable of. The AI generated images of members of Britain's royal family crying all over the place because of the stripping down of Andrew Mountbatten Windsor would be hilarious if it were not for the tragic crimes behind it all. In just one short year AI has managed to inveigle all social media websites and in some cases using fake videos of Irish personalities to lure people into so-called investing in crypto currencies. The word 'scam' has taken on a whole new meaning.

I have little doubt the internet is fighting back against this fake news and dangerous misinformation, and daily – take our banks – is upping its security. (Who remembers when we had to dial up the internet and that awful noise when there was no available connection?)

The other downside to the internet is its availability for cyber bullying and other threats, suicide ideation and a platform for racism and homophobia. And, sadly, the 24-hour 'breaking news' of death and disaster is desensitising many to the horror of man's inhumanity to man.

That said, I reckon were the internet gone tomorrow, we'd feel pretty naked and cut off, which some might say is a sad indictment of our evolutionary place in the scheme of things. Though without heads buried in smartphones, we might just find hope in each other – once more.