Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Claudia Boggiano
Susan Browning
ENG112_65
6 May 2017
What is the biggest threat facing our nation? Is it terrorism or cyber security?
While people may fear terrorism because it is often violent and widely reported, the
greater danger is cyber security. It's a complicated issue that is hard to explain and
often ignored by average Americans. The cyber threat doesn't just affect our military,
but it affects every company, every level of government, and every individual - even our
children. This paper will summarize research and interviews into current trends relating
Thirty years ago most people could easily live without interacting with a
computer. Today that is no longer the case. The Internet in one way or another touches
almost every aspect of our lives. Personal computers went mainstream starting in the
1980s, and the Internet went mainstream in the 1990s. This technology has led to
massive changes for both ordinary people and companies. From personal services like
online banking or health records to business operations like nuclear power plants or air
traffic control, all these areas are managed in the cyber world. How can we protect our
personal life and institutions from being hacked? When attacked how can we defend
ourselves? Some people find this topic fascinating. Others find it disconcerting that
themselves.
Boggiano 2
Over the past 20 years more and more of the average citizen's life is managed,
transacted, and tracked via computers and the Internet. This migration to the Internet
has only accelerated as computers have gotten smaller and become devices in our
pocket - the mobile phone. Our locations are tracked by our phones, our driving records
are monitored by toll transponders, our spending habits are tracked by credit card
purchases, our health records are electronic, and even our most intimate secrets,
fetishes, and insecurities are tracked by Google Searches. "Danny Sullivan of Search
Engine Land recently remarked on This Week in Google that We're more honest with
Google than we are with our spouse.'" With all of this confidential information now in a
digital format, how does the average person know who has access to it and if it is
secure?
More and more business processes are being automated. This automation
applies to every business from a bank to the railway company to the nuclear power
plant. Where once a person would sit and pull levers or push buttons, now computers
control almost all functions of business' operations. Even in the grocery store, we are
cyber attack in our voting booths or the nuclear power plant? If I am a CEO of a
What if our private information or a company gets hacked? What does hacking
even mean? According to Google, hacking involves the "use of a computer to gain
that accesses information in a file, by a state actor, or a criminal. Some recent hacking
examples might help illustrate what hacking means from a practical standpoint.
Edward Snowden. In 2008, Private contract employees working for the U.S.
Department of State have repeatedly accessed U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's passport
records over the past three months. As citizens, we trust that information provided to
the government for services is safely handled. Unfortunately, it seems that trust is
misplaced because even the President himself was not safe from being hacked. Edward
Snowden was a contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA), which helps defend
the nation. In 2013, "Snowden downloaded up to 1.5 million top secret files," before
handing the data to journalists. His hacking and the subsequent disclosures have fueled
computer hacker sponsored by a foreign country. In 2014, the Chinese hacked the US
records and security clearance data for 22.1 million federal employees past and
present. "U.S. officials said the breaches rank among the most potentially damaging
cyber heists in U.S. government history because of the sufficient detail in the files.
Officials said hackers accessed not only personnel records of current and former
employees but also extensive information about friends, relatives, and others listed as
references in applications for security clearances for some of the most sensitive jobs in
government." These personnel and security clearance files contain more than just
Boggiano 4
are at risk of being blackmailed, these forms list every intimate detail of a person's life.
All of that information is now in the hands of a foreign government. Even if someone
hadn't worked for the US government in 20 years, their information was still disclosed.
The last type of hacking is criminal. Unfortunately, this is likely the most common
form of hacking though it often goes unreported. Therefore it is hard even to compile
reliable statistics quantifying hacking by type and damage. Criminal hackers usually
want financial gain. They might accomplish this by hacking credit cards and bank
market.
Why is hacking so prevalent? "One reason is simply that the Internet was
conceived without any form of security in mind." Even worse, the cyber risks only get
worse as the computer systems themselves get more complicated. This means that
fewer and fewer people have an end to end knowledge of the entire system. Imagine a
building so large that it is nearly impossible to catalog every window and door. If you
were the building manager and didn't even know how many doors there are, how could
What can a person do? First, an individual should recognize that "the computer-
security situation is out of control." Second, everyone should dedicate some time to
learning the basic best practices. Some quick examples include securing your data with
strong passwords and don't use the same password for different logins. For higher
secure passwords and stores them encrypted in your private account. All you need to
Boggiano 5
know is your Master password and the plugin on your computer, laptop or the
The goal of following best practices is not to be the weakest target. Often hackers will
imagine you are a member of a herd of gazelles in Africa, and when the sun comes up
you need to run faster than the slowest gazelle, or you will be killed. It is similar with
The last thing a person can do is to demand accountability from government and
corporations. A lot of innovations, frameworks, and rules will have to be created to deal
with this brave new world of cyber security. What should those new regulations
regarding cyber security and the Internet be? The honest answer is no one knows right
now. Here's a quick example to illustrate. If the governor of North Carolina has a cyber
security unit in the National Guard, could the governor order a strike against Russian
hackers to defend an ongoing cyber attack against critical infrastructure within the
state? Previously, the governor would never have sent National Guard soldiers to
physically attack Russia but in the cyber world that is absolutely a possibility. So whole
new approaches are needed to deal with the issue of cyber security.
governments can start to assess the risks and plan how to defend against such threats.
For the optimists, there is hope that businesses and government are finally taking cyber
threats seriously. For the pessimists, "today is a paradise for attackers," and it is not
clear how the state of cyber security will get any better.
Boggiano 6
Works Cited
Cerrudo, Cesar. Why Cybersecurity Should Be The Biggest Concern Of 2017. Forbes,
www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2017/01/17/why-cybersecurity-should-
be-the-biggest-concern-of-2017/#69e203164094.
Economist, The. Organized Crime Hackers Are The True Threat To American
www.businessinsider.com/organized-crime-hackers-are-the-true-threat-to-
american-infrastructure-2013-3.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden.
Gable, Detlev, et al. Cyber risk: Why cyber security is important. White & Case LLP
www.whitecase.com/publications/insight/cyber-risk-why-cyber-security-
important.
Gillin, Paul. Are we more honest with Google than with our spouse? The Spiceworks
more-honest-with-google-than-with-our-spouse.
Boggiano 7
Glick, Bryan. Finding Solutions. Together. Five concerns and five solutions for
symposium.org/knowledgebase/the-global-polity/cybercrime-cybersecurity-and-
the-future-of-the-internet/proposals/five-concerns-and-five-solutions-for-
cybersecurity.
Magid, Larry. Why Cyber Security Matters To Everyone. Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 1
matters-to-everyone/#34a56e8c1fd0.
investing/why-is-cyber-security-important.
Nakashima, Ellen. Hacks of OPM databases compromised 22.1 million people, federal
www.washingtonpost.com/news/federal-eye/wp/2015/07/09/hack-of-security-
clearance-system-affected-21-5-million-people-federal-authorities-
say/?utm_term=.8bc07bf00e9c.
Boggiano 8
2016, www.businessinsider.com/snowden-leaks-timeline-2016-9.
The Fable of the Lion and the Gazelle. Quote Investigator, Quote Investigator, 5 Aug.
2011, quoteinvestigator.com/2011/08/05/lion-gazelle/.
www.computerworld.com/article/2537876/security0/update--obama-passport-
records-breached--it-system-flagged-violation.html.