There is some focus on the relationship between white-collar crime and cybercrime. Both can be linked but not always. It is referenced that white-collar crime was introduced as a concept in 1939 by Edwin Sutherland, citing that this type of crime can happen in the sectors of healthcare, politics, securities, and the banking system. He specifically defines this behavior as “crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation.” It would later be stated that decades later technology was creating new types of crime.

Obviously in 1939, there was no robust network of connected computers, but the foundations of technological improvement were well on the way to develop the cyber environment. The article in the Harvard Business Review “Better Cybersecurity Starts with Fixing Your Employees’ Bad Habits” spotlights how human behavior can harbor cybercrime and/or white-collar crime through the usage of cyber technology. It points out that bad habits of the people using the technology made it easier for attackers to and leak user information for Equifax, and create a cyber environment for the ransome-ware attacks like “WannaCry”. It relays that IBM reported that 95% of all security incidents have human error as a factor in the crime. Examples of negligent behavior of the employees are falling for phishing attacks, clicking on bad links, using weak passwords, or not updating necessary security software updates. This created a situation where the employee may not necessarily be malicious, but the actions make it easier for an attacker to commit these cyber crimes.

There is also a focus on the fact that despite all of the technological advancements, human error will still cause security issues. One example is implementing a robust email spam filtering system on company computers. While it may prevent most, all it takes is a few emails to get through and one employee to fall for the attempt. The goal in finding a solution to these issues is constant updating and training of the employees.

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Cybercrime has a reach that can span the whole planet if there is an internet connection. With this criminal activity able to effect globally, all nations must have systems in place to protect against attackers. The United States is presented with a specific challenge in comparison to other countries. For one point, the U.S. has a high population of people that not only have easily valuable currency, but also access to valuable information as well. The U.S. is the target of 60% of worldwide phishing attacks, showing how much of a target the population of the country is. In the article Cyber Crime Nation Typologies: K-Means Clustering of Countries Based on Cyber Crime Rates, it goes over various cyber crime targeting trends, relaying what makes a country more susceptible to the attacks, and the sources of the attacks.

One data metric is tracking one technique of cyber attacks which is hosting malware, botnets, phishing server hosting, and the number of botnet command and control servers are in the nations. The company Symantec found that the top countries that have these sources are the U.S., China, Brazil, Germany and India. These countries have the traits of high amounts of internet connection, along with access to valuable information to governments and companies. An interesting result of this data research is that Russia is 7 on that list. It does have to be pointed out that this research was published in 2010, it can be assumed that this data may have changed in 12 years, especially in regards to changing and developing information technologies, and economic stances.

In the Electric Grid Security publication, it refers to a specific incident of a cyber attack on the Ukrainian in 2015. This attack took advantage of the vulnerabilities of the energy grid that was exposed to phishing, lack of security of remote access, logic integrity of control systems, and lack of proper implementation of technical tools. Ukraine was in the position of weakness next to another nation to attack for political reasons, and that can be seen today obviously in the current conflict. The U.S. has significantly more resources to establish cyber security to help prevent such an attack.

One key aspect of Cybersecurity is ethics, and in this case, the subject of ethics in relation to gathering electronic information about individuals needs to be addressed. Privacy and confidentiality is one of the aspect of the information security triad. When there is a storage of electronic information about individuals, it is important to make sure that the information is confidential. When the large amounts of data is gathered, it inherently violates the confidentiality and privacy of the indicated information. Such a large amount of data storage can be a target for attackers of information. This can lead to the other ethical issue of security breaches. It’s important to maintain a security system to prevent security breaches so that the information on the electronic data is secure. This robust security system would assist in maintaining the sides of the information security triad. Another ethical issue is System implementation. This is related to the information security triad of Availability. The large amount of information needs to be accessible within a reasonable time frame, and accessed accurately. In the example of this ethical concept being used in the context of electronic health records, the large amount of information needs to be appropriately accessed to administer accurate healthcare. Data inaccuracy is another major ethical issue in storing individual data. In the information security triad, integrity is directly linked to this. Making sure that the information presented is truly representing the intended meaning is essential. An example of this situation is Electronic health records. There is a massive storage of patient information that needs to maintain absolute integrity. In electronic health information on a patient’s chart, it can be a life threatening issue if the information doesn’t have proper integrity. This is also laced into the ethic issue of privacy, where a patient is protected by federal law to have the confidential information stay private under penalty of law.

Criminal Justice relates to Cybersecurity through multiple avenues. This major is generally described as a study of principles and theories of criminal science, and study of how to implement these ideas in a Justice field. This is an interdisciplinary degree, much like Cybersecurity. The relation to Cybersecurity is establishing the idea to think about how the criminal element does the actions in cyberspace. It brings up to relation of how law enforcement should respond to these crimes, what the punishment should be, and the study of how to prevent this in the future.

Information Systems & Technology has a very close relation to Cybersecurity, possibly one of the backbone studies of the degree. With Information Systems & Technologies, it delves into how the systems operate with direction from the professionals who maintain them. Cybersecurity is completely laced into these system. In some business models, the information security is an essential sector in the whole system. The professional will determine how the information be protected, and what policies of the company are needed to protect it.

Sociology is a Bachelor of the Arts or Science that is offered by ODU. The pinpointed studies include both social welfare and criminal justice. These studies are also intertwined with Cybersecurity. Sociology comes from the angle of human behavior, how these social behaviors come about about and what is done. This study can shine light on how societal influences and changes can create cyber crime. With these societal groups, it can go over how they interact with each other, and how current technology impacts this behavior.

Communications Systems Technology is a program offered by ODU that is also integrated with Electrical Engineering Technologies. These studies work with modern communication systems, how to design, develop, and support the computer networks that connects everyone around the world. The critical Cybersecurity integration is how Cybersecurity relies on competent communications design to ensure information integrity. It also is the system that connects critical systems such as energy and transportation systems. Cybersecurity is implements to make sure these systems are properly protected.

There are a variety of reasons why I am interested in cybersecurity technology. Navigating any aspect of information technology, or just tech in general, from online shopping, browsing news articles, or lurking social media boards, you can see where a criminal element can take advantage of this new space. One social media board that I skim through just be aware of these new techniques points out scams that take place online. People post screenshots of communication logs from Facebook Marketplace, Ebay, and emails. One of the most common scams online are encountered on Ebay, Offer-up, and the Facebook Marketplace. This particular grift attempts to take advantage of the seller, by reaching out and offering more money than the seller is posting on the website, then stating that they live outside of town, or that they are currently enlisted in the military overseas, and want to buy the product for a family member. They state that they will FedEx a certified check to the seller for a greater amount, and have a courier pick up the product. Of course the scammed seller will find out that even though the deposited check clears initially, weeks later that was a bad check, and now they are out of the product, have no money, and suddenly the buyer is unreachable.

In one of the introduction videos of the CYSE 200T class, it is explained that, generally, face to face crime is down, and now there is a new space for this crime to happen. It turns out that much of this is now moved to the online space. Cybersecurity technology is interesting because it will break down how some of these safeguards we sometimes take for granted function. I am eager to learn some of the passive ways this technology protects against some of the petty scams online, but also some of the more sophisticated attempts on bigger industries like power companies, health systems, and governments.