(A Safe Assign note : All work submitted will be checked for plagiarism using an automated tool developed by Blackboard. Work will be checked against a variety of sources including the internet as well as institutional document archives and the Global Reference Database containing papers that were volunteered by students from Blackboard client institutions to help prevent cross-institutional plagiarism.

Assignment 1

Cyber crime has become a central part of modern day organized crime. Security experts around the world cite cybercrime as a real, emerging threat in the international community. Organized crime no longer needs to use threat tactics and violence to obtain illegal money and achieve their goals; they have an entire cyber world at their fingertips. Cyber criminals have at their disposal a wide variety of tactics and the problem of how to combat cyber threats and protect computer networks has been a priority. There are, fortunately, different steps that can be taken as an organization and an individual to help prevent cyber crimes from occurring and defend against it

Assignment: What do you see as potential main threats posed by the widespread use of information technology and databases of personal information, in modern business? How can law be extended to protect against these threats without stifling technical innovation and business activity more than absolutely necessary? Please discuss.

Please find below two news reports that address some of the information security and cyber-crime topics covered in our course. China's cyber abilities worry U.S.: spy chief " WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China's growing capabilities in cyber-warfare and intelligence gathering are a "formidable concern" to the United States, the top intelligence official told a Senate panel on Thursday."The Chinese have made a substantial investment in this area, they have a very large organization devoted to it and they're pretty aggressive," Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"This is just another way in which they glean information about us and collect on us for technology purposes, so it's a very formidable concern," he said.

Clapper, addressing questions at an annual hearing on worldwide security threats, did not elaborate on Chinese cyber activities. But in his written testimony, the intelligence chief said 2010 saw a "dramatic increase in malicious cyber-activity targeting U.S. computers and networks." The passage did not specifically mention China.

Clapper also cited an April 8, 2010, incident in which state-owned China Telecom advertised erroneous network routes that instructed "massive volumes" of U.S. and other foreign Internet traffic to go through Chinese servers for 17 minutes.

"This incident affected traffic to and from U.S. government and military sites, including sites for the Senate, the Army, the Navy, the Marine corps, the air force, and the office of the Secretary of Defense, as well as a number of Fortune 500 firms," he said.

When that incident was revealed in late 2010, China Telecom denied that it hijacked U.S. Internet traffic. China's standard response to cyber-attack allegations has been to deny any connection to them and say it is also a victim of such attacks."[1]

"Cybercriminals are increasingly moving from stealing just personal data to capturing trade secrets and other corporate intellectual capital that they can easily sell through the underground market, according to a new report from McAfee and the SAIC.

In today's release of a new study, "Underground Economies: Intellectual Capital and Sensitive Corporate Data Now the Latest Cybercrime Currency" (PDF), McAfee and the Science Applications International Corporate find that the theft of trade secrets, marketing plans, R&D data, and even source code is on the rise, especially as such information is often unprotected.

Based on a global survey of IT professionals, the report uncovered a number of findings.

A quarter of the companies surveyed said a data breach or just the threat of one has put a halt on plans for a merger or new product launch. Among those that actually suffered a data breach, only half of them took the necessary steps to prevent it from happening again.

Among companies that have been hit by cyberattacks, only about 3 in 10 have reported all such breaches, while 6 in 10 picked and chose which ones they reported. Along those lines, many organizations specifically look to store their data in countries where the laws are more lax over reporting data breaches to customers

Assignment:

Identify and analyze information security and cybercrime law issues raised in these two cases. What are the possible solutions? Address the issues covered in the course that are relevant and applicable in these scenarios