Answer

Week 4 Cybersecurity

The Classic CIA Triad

The classic CIA triad describes the three anchor elements, principles, or goals that constitute information security. These three goals are Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability. Attacks on availability are those attacks that try to implement a denial of service on a network, overwhelm it with visits, or even take it offline in order to prevent access to it or shut down virtual or physical processes that depend on it (Cybersecurity, p. 70). By comparison, confidentiality attacks are attempts to access computer networks with an aim to monitor users’ activities on the systems or extract their data and information whereas integrity attacks focus on manipulating, changing, or compromising information on computer systems rather than extracting (stealing) it. A substantive law to prevent both the confidentiality, integrity, and availability attacks is one that will require organizations, institutions, and other website owners to come with information security policies that encourage the setting of stronger passwords, data encryption, biometric verification, and two-factor authentication. Further, the law should require all network and information systems to have security controls such as version control, user access control, error detection application, off-site backups, failover, server clustering, and backup and recovery procedures among other controls.

The Problem of Attribution

The author’s claim that attribution is perhaps the most difficult problem in attempts to secure cyberspace is not far from true. First, holding an individual or another nation’s government responsible for a large-scale cyberattack so that legal or retaliatory actions can be taken can be a difficult, if not impossible, task given the intricate nature of cybercrime operations. For instance, it is not uncommon for cybercrime perpetrators to disguise themselves as citizens of a given country by compromising several computers in the country and launching their attacks remotely from a different country. The aim here is to divert the attention from the actual perpetrator and make another country be seen as the culprit, which again is difficult to ascertain considering that malware and other forms of cyberattacks do not point to a particular perpetrator and his/her motif or sponsor once uncovered. The other issue that makes attribution a major impediment in securing cyberspace revolves around the collection of evidence to prove the attribution. Indeed, as mentioned in Cybersecurity and Cyberwar, tracking down cybercrime culprits and obtaining sufficient evidence to convict them in a court of law or impose retaliatory measures is sometimes difficult as the operation requires lengthy legal procedures to ensure the protection of privacy of the suspected culprits and other network users when collecting the evidence.

Differences in Trying to Convict in a Court Of Law vs. in a Court Of Public Opinion.

Both the court of law and the court of public opinion seek to hold a suspected culprit accountable or responsible for a cyberattack activity so that appropriate actions can be taken. However, the two court systems differ in the sense that convicting in a court of law involves using evidence beyond a reasonable doubt to judge the culprit whereas the court of public opinion involves using the media influence and the beliefs, desires, thinking, and majority of the people to prosecute the culprit. Cases of cyberattacks, especially those perpetrated on a large scale and with larger impacts, are best resolved when handled in a court of public opinion because finding evidence “beyond a reasonable doubt”, which is a key requirement in the court of law, might be impossible in cybersecurity given its complexity and the attribution dilemma (Cybersecurity and Cyberwar, p. 76).

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