subject: Cyber Security- An Emerging Field of Study [print this page] Cyber Security- An Emerging Field of Study
Ever since the beginning of the web, cyber crime has been an issue. What's cyber crime? Perhaps you have gotten a virus, or even gotten hacked? These are very common cyber crimes. Cyber criminals hack into networks, create viruses, and can even steal your financial information. Though we are all aware that this is a possibility when housing our information on computers, we often think that it will never happen to us.
Though cyber crime could potentially be financially devastating to the typical person, it is possible to cause catastrophic repercussions by political extremists that could misuse the Internet for acts of cyber terrorism. What exactly is Cyber Terrorism? It's when an individual or persons use the anonymity and global reach of the internet for their own personal gain, like, terrorist attacks on U.S. information infrastructure in attempts to seal money, identities and classified data. They could also use the web as a tool to find like-minded extremists to aid them attempt to hack their way into corporate and/or government networks.
Michael Alcorn, Branch Chief within the State Department's Office of Anti-Terrorism Assistance had this to say about cyber terrorism, "The problem we're all facing is a global borderless problem, where attacks can occur anywhere in the world and originate from anywhere else in the world."
Though he said this in 2005, it still rings true today. Attacks could happen at any time, in any location, against any individual or institution. The only real solution to combat this is to have individuals that have cyber security education which are specialized in fighting against cyber terrorism and cyber criminals. These individuals are known as cyber security professionals.
What does a cyber security professional do? They coordinate a company's information security preparedness, educate users on computer security, respond to advanced cyber attacks, gather data and evidence to be used when prosecuting cybercrimes like credit card fraud, auction fraud, intellectual property theft, pedophilia, terrorism, hacking plus they monitor the network for any security breaches. Normally they're employed by local, state and federal law enforcement agencies. From time to time cyber security professionals could be called on to engage in computer crime investigations this is called Cyber Forensics. This is an emerging field, and because of technology advances, this filed will ways be changing along with technology. Cyber security professionals must keep up to date with changes and technology and be lifelong learners within their field.
