Wars are no longer fought only on the battlefield. The current confrontation with Iran illustrates how blurred the line has become between kinetic warfare and the digital domain. While military operations unfold in the air and on the ground, another layer of the conflict is taking place in cyberspace.
This is not simply a war that includes cyber activity. In many ways, it is a war that began in cyberspace and may ultimately be shaped there as well.
People tend to think about cyber as a separate arena from traditional military operations, but in modern conflicts, cyber capabilities are often the infrastructure that enables everything else.
Many of the capabilities that appear purely in the military on the surface rely heavily on digital systems behind the scenes. Precision intelligence-gathering, real-time situational awareness, and coordinated control of complex operations all depend on advanced cyber infrastructure.
When we talk about accurate intelligence, air superiority, or the ability to operate deep inside an adversary’s territory, there is usually a digital backbone behind those capabilities. In that sense, operational superiority often begins in cyberspace.
Yet cyber influence does not stop at the battlefield. In the digital age, the struggle over information, public perception, and political stability also increasingly takes place online.
Cyber shapes information flows, public narrative
Cyber is not only a tool for collecting intelligence or disrupting systems. It is also a tool that shapes information flows and public narratives. The ability to reach populations directly through digital channels has become part of modern conflict.
At the same time, the growing role of cyberspace raises another critical question: how resilient civilian systems are when they themselves become targets?
When we talk about national resilience, the civilian economy is a central part of the equation. Banks, energy infrastructure, healthcare systems, and major companies must continue operating even under pressure.
This reality has led to a shift in how organizations approach cybersecurity. For years, companies focused primarily on preventing intrusions. But experience has shown that no digital system can be made completely impenetrable.
It is impossible to build a system that cannot be breached. The real question is no longer only how to prevent a breach, but: How does an organization continue to function when one occurs?
At Code Blue, we’ve developed what we call a resilience first approach. Instead of focusing solely on prevention, the emphasis is on the ability of organizations to maintain critical services and recover quickly from disruption.
In cybersecurity, we often measure success by the number of attacks that were prevented. But in reality, the more meaningful measure is how quickly an organization can return to full operations and continue providing essential services.
In that sense, cyber resilience has become inseparable from national resilience.
The ability of the economy to keep functioning is a central element of national resilience. And as the world becomes more digital, cyber resilience becomes part of that foundation.
The lesson of the current confrontation with Iran is clear: In many ways, this war began in cyberspace, and there is a strong chance it will also be shaped, and perhaps even concluded, there.
The author is the former Deputy Head of the National Cyber Directorate and currently CEO and founder of Code Blue Global, Cyber Crisis Management Company and the creators of Blue Castle, the world's first AI cyber crisis management platform.