The Impacts Of Cyber Terrorism On The United States Economy

Impacts of Cyber Terrorism on United States Economy

Introduction

In order to understand the concept of cyber terrorism, it is important that we familiarize ourselves with terrorism. Terrorism is defined as the criminal application of both violence and force against individuals or property with an aim of intimidating a government or a given population. The above definition is easy to appreciate and identify with a majority of the American population understand what terrorism entails. However, when addressing the topic of cyber-terrorism, there seems to emerge a degree of confusion with respect to elements of cyberspace and terrorism. Integrating the definition of terrorism into the field of cyberspace presents us with an insight of what cyber

Mass media, national and international security, and the IT industry have focused their energy, time, and resources to deal with the threats posed by cyber terrorism. Journalists, novelists, films, and security experts have come up with different scenarios focusing on the possibility of cyber terrorists electronically breaking into computers that control the airline systems and nuclear power plants, causing major destructions, endangering millions of lives, and putting the national security at risks (Gordon & Ford, 2002). Most important infrastructures United States are networked through computers, causing the potential threat of cyber terrorism to be alarming. Computer hackers have demonstrated their expertise in gaining access to sensitive information and information that involve critical service. In theory, terrorists could follow hacker’s footstep, break into government computer systems, and cripple the military and financial sectors of United

The roles and responsibilities of cyber soldiers should be similar to that of cyber terrorists. The only difference is that cyber soldiers would be fighting against cyber terrorists with an objective of preventing the planned attacks from taking place. Thus, it is of paramount significance that the cyber soldiers have a profound knowledge of the operations of different computer systems and other networking functions. Cyber soldiers could find themselves handling responsibilities ranging from hacking into computer systems to data mining. In addition, cyber soldiers should be in a position to reverse engineer software and understand the basics of information security. Cyber soldiers should have extensive knowledge in order to help them understands and develop firewalls and various internet security measures (Porterfield, 2011). Understanding about computer forensics is an important aspect of cyber soldiers as it helps them explain the skills of handling computer hardware and storage devices that make it possible to track the source of cyber attacks. Lastly, cyber soldiers need to learn espionage techniques in order to enter a network and locate valuable information without either being traced or