Cybersecurity: Who's Watching the Store?

摘要

With information technology (IT) permeating every niche of the economy and society, the public has become familiar with the dark side of the information revolution―information warfare, cybercrime, and other potential ways nefarious parties might try to do harm by attacking computers, communications systems, or electronic databases. The threats people fear range from nuisance pranksters abusing the World Wide Web, to theft or fraud, to a cataclysmic meltdown of the information infrastructure and everything that depends on it. As IT becomes more tightly woven into all aspects of everyday life, the public is developing an understanding that disruption of this electronic infrastructure could have dire―conceivably even catastrophic―consequences. During the past decade, government officials, technology specialists, policy analysts, industry leaders, and the general public have all become more concerned about "cybersecurity"―the challenge of protecting information systems.