SPM5440-Cyber Security Essentials

Assignment I

Submitted by
Nikos Bizanis (4417631)
Surya Subrahmanyam Nagaraj (4412001)
Sulabh Deshmukh (4407466)







Introduction

Modern ICT infrastructures have become a substrate of almost every aspect of
modern economic, social and political life. Although the Internet is only a few
years old (and it is important to note that it is a network that was not designed, nor
intended to be what it is today), we can witness every day more and more of our
activities migrating from the physical to the cyber space. Based on our own
experience and knowledge we gathered some characteristic examples of those
activities, and we present them below, divided into some basic conceptual clusters.

Economic and commercial activities:
The GDP growth of countries with increasing internet penetration has been more
than 21% increase in last five years. The impact of cyber on GDP growth can be
more than that of various other sectors such as sectors. This shows internet is
changing the standard of living and its doing that in many ways.
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Internet Banking: By the advent of Internet banking most of the banking
activities are done securely online, which wouldnt be possible earlier. Since
the introduction of online banking in New York in 1981 the banking world
has made best use of cyber technology to lure more and more customers. In
the process the banks could expand their customer count and also could save
on infrastructure costs.
2

E-Commerce: is purchasing or selling goods online and also advertising.
Payments can be made online or as cash on delivery options (In few
countries such as India). In Netherlands more than 11 million active users
i.e., 92% internet users shop online using the biggest online stores in the

1
"The great transformer: The impact of the Internet on economic." 2013. 16 Sep. 2014
<http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/high_tech_telecoms_internet/the_great_transformer>
2
"Online banking - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." 2004. 16 Sep. 2014
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_banking>
Netherlands- Wehkamp.nl, Bol.com, Zalando, Coolblue, H&M, Hema and
Thuisbezorgd.nl.
3

Business: Companies depend on internet for making global presence and
profitability. Companies and job seekers use professional websites like
linkedin.com, mosnster.com, etc.
4
Online businesses include Holiday
Planning, E-touring, online Jobs, selling online, app selling etc.
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Public administration

Electronic voting: It is a process to collect votes of citizens using
electronic voting machines. These machines are connected to a main
server to store and calculate the votes.

E-Governance: is the method of providing the services by the
government to public and businesses. People can make use of many e
governance services like Online tax payment system, Collective decision/
idea making, Public Grievance, Issue of official government
documents,e-Tendering, social security services (eg: electronic drug
prescriptions) etc. Also e governance makes the government process
more transparent.




3
"Ecommerce in The Netherlands | Ecommerce News." 2013. 16 Sep. 2014
<http://ecommercenews.eu/ecommerce-per-country/ecommerce-the-netherlands/>
4
"The Top 100 Websites For Your Career - Forbes." 2013. 16 Sep. 2014
<http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2013/09/18/the-top-100-websites-for-your-career/>
5
"How to use the internet to make money - Economic Times." 2012. 16 Sep. 2014
<http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-10-01/news/34198096_1_royalty-payments-app-
online-store>
Corporate Activities

There are whole lot of professional tasks that indefinitely depend on internet. Just
to summarize:

Email Service: All the companys confidential information is always carried
on emails. Companies use their own VPN or intranets and dedicated server
for communicating through emails.
Webinars: The presentations, meetings and knowledge sharing is usually
done using a dedicated web application (e.g., cisco webex) designed for
collaborative information sharing tasks.
CRM(Customer Relation Management) and ERP (Enterprise Resource
Management) software are used to manage customer relations like sales,
marketing, support, feedback, billing etc., and inventory, cash flow, human
resources respectively.
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
6
: Users are connected through secure
internet connection to the remote server (Data Center) where the actual
processing and storage of data is done. This allows for more secure and
flexible computing.






6
"Desktop virtualization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." 2008.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_virtualization>
Healthcare and Safety activities

Healthcare practice and operation
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, as well as public safety procedures are
experiencing a revolution, with the introduction of modern networking. These
activities include:
Telemedicine, which is formally defined as the use of medical
information exchanged from one site to another via electronic
communications to improve a patients clinical health status
8
.
The application of the Internet of Things paradigm to medical devices
and procedures. That would enable, as a first step, health care
practitioners to observe and analyse vital indicators via remote
sensing
9
.
Exercising using networked fitness devices and activity trackers.
These wearable devices are used to collect, analyse online and share
data concerning physical activities.
Implementation of improved emergency service systems to reduce the
time needed for the first responders by using modern ICT
infrastructure, e.g. in
10

Emergency warning (e.g. in case of an impending natural disaster)
systems are being tested, that will exploit existing communications
network infrastructures, e.g.
11
.





7
Ball, Marion J, and Jennifer Lillis. "E-health: transforming the physician/patient relationship."
International journal of medical informatics 61.1 (2001): 1-10.
8
"What is Telemedicine - American Telemedicine Association." 2014.
<http://www.americantelemed.org/about-telemedicine/what-is-telemedicine>
9
"How the Internet of Things Is Revolutionizing Healthcare ..." 2013.
<http://cache.freescale.com/files/corporate/doc/white_paper/IOTREVHEALCARWP.pdf>
10
"City of Madrid - IBM." 2011. <http://www-
07.ibm.com/innovation/my/exhibit/documents/pdf/City_of_Madrid.pdf>
11
"BBC News - Tests in Glasgow of emergency text ... - BBC.com." 2014. <http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-
scotland-24116475>
Malicious cyber activities and counter-measures

Cyberspace faces serious security issues due to low entry barriers and the inherent
anonymity of the medium
12
. We could define several subcategories of malicious
cyber activities and forms of cyber-attacks:
Cyber-crime (e.g. hackers stealing credit card numbers and passwords for
own profit
13
)
Cyber warfare: Cyber-attacks crossing international borders and involving
at least one nation state. Also, modern communication systems are also
widely used to assist in conventional warfare methods, e.g. see
14

Cyber spying, which also includes cyber-espionage and cyber-sabotage.
Cyber-espionage is oftenly state-sponsored
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, and it usually comprises of a
theft of trade secrets and/or intellectual property in order to gain commercial
or geopolitical advantage. A characteristic case of cyber-espionage, which
one of the authors of the report, being Greek, is familiar with, is described
in
16
. It can also take the form of cyber-sabotage of a corporation
17
. Prominent
recent examples include the NSA PRISM, or collection of personal data,
either from hackers or from other parties, claiming to collect the data
legitimately
18

19
.

12
Nye, Joseph S. "The Regime Complex for Managing Global Cyber Activities." (2014).
13
"Press Release - Department of Justice." 2013.
<http://www.justice.gov/usao/nj/Press/files/Drinkman,%20Vladimir%20et%20al.%20Indictment%20News
%20Release.html>
14
"Precision-guided munition - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." 2003.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision-guided_munition>
15
"2011 Report - Office of the National Counterintelligence ..." 2011.
<http://www.ncix.gov/publications/reports/fecie_all/Foreign_Economic_Collection_2011.pdf>
16
"The Athens Affair - IEEE Spectrum." 2009. <http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/the-athens-
affair>
17
"Shamoon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." 2008. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamoon>
18
"Backgrounder: Results of the 2014 Global Privacy ..." 2014. <https://www.priv.gc.ca/media/nr-
c/2014/bg_140910_e.asp>
Cyber security (efforts made by nations and private firms to prevent cyber-
attacks and combat the above), which also includes law enforcement and
forensics in the cyberspace, which face novel challenges. Legal Enforcement
is challenging due to the anonymous and international nature of the
cyberspace
20
. Also, law procedures (e.g. evidence collection
21
) are
constantly trying to catch-up with the rapid changing Internet and
technology landscape


Communications and socializing


It is common knowledge of course today that a significant part of communications
as well as social activities have migrated on the cyberspace. Some examples are:
Social networking, which consists of the use of cyberspace in order to stay
connected to your friends and acquaintances, to meet new people, or to
publicly state your opinions, share your feelings or seek information
22

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.
This is achieved using a plethora of applications, such as Facebook, Twitter,
MySpace, Friendster, etc.
The usage of broadband cellular and mobile networks that have developed
over the last few years offer novel ways of mobile and personal
communications, beyond the simple voice calls of landline telephony. Today
people make heavy use of those offers, like SMS, MMS and mostly mobile

19
"From APP-laudable to dis-APP-ointing, global mobile app ..." 2014.
<http://blog.priv.gc.ca/index.php/2014/09/09/from-app-laudable-to-dis-app-ointing-global-mobile-app-
privacy-sweep-yields-mixed-results/>
20
"LAW ENFORCEMENT IN CYBERSPACE Greg Melick ..." 2002.
<http://www.isrcl.org/Papers/Melick.pdf>
21
SWAMINATHA, TARA M. "The Fourth Amendment Unplugged: Electronic Evidence Issues & Wireless
Defenses." Yale Journal of Law and Technology 7.1 (2005): 3.
22
Pempek, Tiffany A, Yevdokiya A Yermolayeva, and Sandra L Calvert. "College students' social
networking experiences on Facebook." Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 30.3 (2009): 227-
238.
23
Java, Akshay et al. "Why we twitter: understanding microblogging usage and communities."
Proceedings of the 9th WebKDD and 1st SNA-KDD 2007 workshop on Web mining and social network
analysis 12 Aug. 2007: 56-65.
Internet connectivity to be connected to the cyberspace everywhere and at
any time
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.
Another online activity that gains traction in the recent years is the use of
cyberspace to meet potential partners, either for the purpose of the so called
cyber-sex or to make the introduction for a meeting in the physical world.
Examples include the use of applications such as Tinder, OkCupid and
Badoo.
A prominent example of communication in the cyberspace is the use of the
Global Positioning System for navigation and search
25
. What started as a
military project has now replaced paper maps completely and it is widely
used in stand-alone car devices as well as embedded into smartphones.

Entertainment

Cyber activities can be commonly observed in the entertainment industry.
Following are some of the popular cyber activities for the entertainment
LAN Gaming: where you can play together with the other players around
the world.
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Satellite Content Distribution: Digitisation of the television resulted in the
dramatic improvement in the television experience. Satellite radio is a good
alternative to the conventional radios.
Music: new applications such as Spotify and iTunes are the popular choice
of people for listening music.

Infrastructure operation systems

Many of our infrastructures uses cyber activities in many forms. Some of the areas
where cyber activities are used are

24
Verkasalo, Hannu. "Contextual patterns in mobile service usage." Personal and Ubiquitous Computing
13.5 (2009): 331-342.
25
<http://www.gps.gov/>
26
"New DreamHack records and 2014 dates Dreamhack ..." 2013. 16 Sep. 2014
<http://www.dreamhack.se/dhw13/2013/12/10/new-dreamhack-records-and-2014-dates/>
Smart grids: uses the digital technology to automate various processes to
improve the efficiency, reliability, and sustainability.
27

Oil and gas industry uses ICT in production environment
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Water distribution and purification plants: water is the scarce resource
and ICT provide the effective solution in water management.
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Flood control system uses the cyber activity for flood prevention.
Netherlands have developed the robust flood control system such as dikes
and sea gates.
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Intelligent public transport system: Today transport system is equiped
with many cyber activates such as Wi-Fi systems, GPS connectivity, and bus
tracking systems.
Air traffic control uses computer monitoring and the radar systems to tack
the airplane in the vicinity of the airport.
weather forecasting : satellite images and sensing technology is used to
forecast the weather


Educational activities
The use of cyber activities in the education field has increased rapidly in the recent
few years. Following is the list of some of the cyber activities in education sector.
e-Learning: which means learning over the internet has gained popularity .
One can dive into the plethora of knowledge with just the help of one click
.Some of the famous online education platforms are edx
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,coursera
32
,open
learning initiative
33
,NPTEL
34


27
"Smart Grids European Technology Platform | SmartGrids." 2006. 16 Sep. 2014
<http://www.smartgrids.eu/>
28
"Huawei ICT Energy Industry Solutions." 2012. 16 Sep. 2014
<http://enterprise.huawei.com/en/solutions/trade/energy/index.htm>
29
"ICT for smart water management - Technology | ITU News." 2011. 16 Sep. 2014
<https://itunews.itu.int/en/570-ICT-for-smart-water-management.note.aspx>
30
"Water Management in the Netherlands.pdf - Rijkswaterstaat." 2011. 16 Sep. 2014
<http://www.rijkswaterstaat.nl/en/images/Water%20Management%20in%20the%20Netherlands_tcm224-
303503.pdf>
31
"edX - online courses and classes from the world's best." 2012. 16 Sep. 2014 <https://www.edx.org/>
32
"Coursera." 2012. 16 Sep. 2014 <https://www.coursera.org/>
33
"Open Learning Initiative - Carnegie Mellon University." 2012. 16 Sep. 2014 <http://oli.cmu.edu/>
e-exams : many exams are being conducted online such as GRE
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,GMAT
36

Digital Library : as we are moving towards the paperless world digital
libraries are in demand
Research Publications: It is convenient to know the latest research
happening in your field as researches are published online.
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Conclusion:
Doing this report made us wonder how complex and broad is the idea of internet.
Cyber space is infinitely vast, its like space travel. The possibilities are huge and
with ever advancing technology the internet is becoming a much stronger force.
Which can collect process and condense information the same way a network in
human brain does. In the report we have focused on 8 major regions of the cyber
activities viz., Economics, Public administration, Corporate Activities, Health &
Safety, Communication & Socialising, Entertainment, Infrastructure, Malicious
Cyber activities. After brainstorming together in a meeting about the above
mentioned areas and jotting down the cyber activities we made a framework of the
report and each of us chose a subset of the aforementioned regions to elaborate on
his own. All the individual work is combined to make this final report, which can
explain any slight lack of cohesion due to individual writing styles.

34
"nptel." 2007. 16 Sep. 2014 <http://nptel.ac.in/>
35
"GRE - ETS." 2005. 16 Sep. 2014 <http://www.ets.org/gre>
36
"The GMAT Exam." 2013. 16 Sep. 2014 <http://www.mba.com/global/the-gmat-exam.aspx>
37
"IEEE Xplore Digital Library." 2003. 16 Sep. 2014 <http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/>