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Information Security The emergence of information security concept coincided with the beginning of industrial era, when development of new technologies was only possible through possession of classified scientific data. It became apparent that protection of intellectual properties, on the part of commercial organization or governmental body, has a foremost importance. The invention of computers and the spread of Internet, gave the concept of information security a new meaning, because it becomes increasingly harder to protect information and very often, it is considered as the single factor that guarantees organizational effectiveness. The notion of information security has evolved over the course of years. However, its essence remains the same even today. We can define it as organizations ability to protect a classified data from the attempts to gain access to it, on the part of third party.
Nowadays, the principle of information security is closely related to such concepts as cyber-terrorism, informational vulnerability and informational risk tolerance. There many different definitions of what cyber-terrorism stand for. Some people even suggest that this is an artificially invented concept and that it does not exist in reality. However, the majority of citizens refer to it as the use of information technology by terrorist groups and individuals to further their agenda.
In recent years, it appears that the governments of many foreign countries also deploy cyber-terrorism, as the mean of reaching their political objectives. For example, in spring of 2007, many Estonian web sites became a subject of massive cyber-attack, which was coordinated by Russian authorities, even though they deny it. This was being done to revenge Estonians for their unwillingness to think of Russians as liberators, during the WWII. Even though governments and organizations do their utmost to protect information, in many cases they still prove to be vulnerable to cyber-attacks. This is because the designing of security measures, on their part, simply cannot keep up with the pace of technological progress. We can define informational vulnerability as the degree of informational disposure, associated with every particular organization or governmental agency.
As practice shows, there can be no absolute security provided, when it comes to protection of information that is stored in computers memory. There were many cases of private individuals gaining access to classified data, even though that this information used to be thought of as being absolutely protected. It needs to be understood that every informational database is hooked to the Internet, in one way or another, and it automatically makes it vulnerable to hacking. In his article Cyberterrorism: The Real Risk, Robert Lemons points out to the universal nature of informational vulnerability: Some Internet vulnerabilities have been exposed without any attacks. At least one serious weakness was discovered in 1997 when a technician changed two lines of code and nearly brought down the global network for three hours (Lemons). It goes without saying that if considerations of security alone defined informational activity, it would cease to exist in the first place.
This brings us closer to understanding the concept of risk tolerance. We can define it as the ratio between the objectives of informational activity and risks that need to be undertaken, in order to accomplish them. For example, it is impossible to design a good car, without interchange of information with competing manufactures. However, it is always associated with a certain risks. If importance of designing such car outweighs security considerations, then we can say that the factor of risk tolerance, in this case, is high. Every human activity is associated with some uncertainty and it is very important to find a right balance between the desired goals and consequential risks.
Information security, as the concept of post-modern era, can only be referred to as valid, if it takes into consideration different aspects of peoples existential mode. Ability to undertake risks may both benefit and detriment individual. It is also the case when we talk about the essence of informational dynamics. Bibliography: Cyber-Terrorism. 2007.
Wikipedia. 30 Sep. 2007. web Lemons, Robert Cyber-terrorism: The Real Risk. 2005. Computer Crime Research Center. 30 Sep. 2007. web
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Research essay sample on Cyber Terrorism Information Security
