Troubling Issues of Cyber Security
As the internet becomes incorporated in more aspects of life, it becomes more profitable and rewarding for criminals and adversaries to exploit security flaws in these computer systems.
The following statement, from the Department of Homeland Security’s webpage, echoes that sentiment: “Cyberspace and its underlying infrastructure are vulnerable to a wide range of risk stemming from both physical and cyber threats and hazards. Sophisticated cyber actors and nation-states exploit vulnerabilities to steal information and money and are developing capabilities to disrupt, destroy, or threaten the delivery of essential services.”
These “sophisticated cyber actors” have recently become an emerging political issue in light of the presidential election.
Cybersecurity was at the center of the Wikileaks and the DNC scandal that prompted Debbie Wasserman Schultz to step down as the chairperson.
Echelon Insights, a company that deals with analytics and data, comprised a list of the most discussed election topics by analyzing 2.011 billion tweets from U.S. Twitter users and found that the top two categories, “Wikileaks/Hacking” and “Clinton emails,” were mentioned 54 million times collectively. While the third most mentioned topic, “Deplorables,” were mentioned just under 6 million times.
President Obama found the issue compelling enough to advise an additional $5 billion be allocated to cybersecurity this past February, according to a Reuters article entitled, “Concerned by cyber threat, Obama seeks big increase in funding.”
The issue of cybersecurity and cyber-aggressions will continue to play a role in the investigation into Russian influence in the 2016 election, and will continue to be discussed, while intelligence agencies try to determine Russia’s ambitions and motives may have been.
The expansion of uses of computers by both the government and people evokes the need to secure computer systems and the data contained within them.
