Hyper connectivity causes hyper risks and needs hyper resilience

Increasing risks of attacks

Indeed, there is a dark side when it comes to hyper connected industries and environments. Breakdowns and attacks are on the rise. On the 7th of July, 2026, a German hospital confirmed a data breach of 135,000 patients. Last year, hackers injected destructive system commands in Amazon’s AI coding agent. But smaller companies are an even larger target, as they might have less (or worse: no) security policies. After a phishing attack, 1.6 million personal data records were stolen from the holiday visit accommodation Center Parcs. These are only a few examples of the fact that data breaches and hacks happen every day.

The consequences of cyberattacks

The consequences of carelessness on one hand and criminal intent on the other are increasing along technical possibilities. As a result, cyber attacks are facing a $15 trillion threat by 2030. In addition to the threat to the survival of businesses, human lives are also at risk. Think about delivery drones that collide construction cranes and robots that crush people. Even though these incidents weren’t caused by hacks but rather failures in software, imagine what happens if hyper connected industrial devices are abused as murder weapon. Imagine the consequences of a cyber criminal turning an entire fleet of vehicles into remotely controlled terror weapons.

This isn’t just a science-fiction move like Leave the World Behind. According to Gartner, cyber attackers will have weaponized operational technology environments to successfully harm or kill humans. To prevent such nightmare scenarios, vulnerabilities in connected devices must be interpreted as design defects. If a EU-citizen is killed or injured due to a product defect, the manufacturer is liable, thanks to the new EU Cyber Resilience Act.

Resilience prevents trouble and builds trust

Anyone who wants to avoid fines, claims for damages and criminal penalties will need to do more than complying with the law. They will need to ensure resilience, which means ensuring that the system is able to withstand cyber attacks, is stable and that the system is reliable and secure. The latter can be achieved by making sure that the system is not suffering from existing vulnerabilities and to keep the system up-to-date to ensure this during the support time of the system. This will automatically earn the trust of customers and other involved parties. Given that we will have to deal with hyper connectivity and hyper risks, resilience deserves the prefix ‘hyper’ as well. Those who fail to invest in hyper resilience today will pay the price tomorrow with outages, fines and a loss of trust.

NovaCustom’s dedication to hyper resilience

Although there are still many misconceptions about open-source projects, we at NovaCustom believe that open source projects contribute to hyper resilience. This is why we are replacing our computer’s proprietary closed-source Taiwanese firmware with European and open-source Dasharo coreboot firmware, that is subject to the EU Cyber Resilience Act. In addition, we carry out the installation of this firmware, as well as the final assembly and installation of the software, in the Netherlands (EU). Soon, we will be working on ISO 27001 certification and we will evaluate the need of other industry standards for our products. Furthermore, we encourage the use of open standards and contribute financially to security-focused projects such as Qubes OS, BusKill and Heads firmware.

Because the world cannot afford to let the science fiction film Leave the World Behind become a reality.

Special thanks to Joachim Jakobs for pointing out this subject.