Week 5 – Journal Entry 5

Ranking motives in the order of the most to least sensical. First of all, I believe they all make sense. I don’t agree with most, but they make sense.

1. Money – The mother of all motivations. Money is why I’m in this class, both because I paid for it, and because I aim to make more money at the conclusion of my degree. Money is one of my biggest motivating factors.
2. Boredom – In middle school boredom is what led me to explore hacking and playing with my school’s telnet via dos.
3. Entertainment – If I need something to do, hopefully it’s something I find entertaining. Kind of goes hand-in-hand with boredom. Bordem can lead one to find entertainment in cybercrime.
4. Revenge – What better way to motivate yourself than getting even with someone or some entity that wronged you!
5. Recognition – The first one that doesnt make much sense to me. Well, it makes sense in that if you’re a person that enjoys being the center of attention, and you can commit some type of crime to get massive amounts of attention, I guess I get it. It just goes against my more introverted perspective.
6. Political – Again, not something that motivates me, but if you’re someone that seeks political gain, to each their own.
7. Multiple reasons – I would assume that is the category that fits most people who commit crime. Usually there’s more than one reason that got them there.

Week 4 – Journal Entry 4

Technology is intertwined with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs at every level. Our Physiological needs; food, water, warmth, and rest, are all controlled with digital technology. Crops are harvested with self driving machines, water is controlled by industrial technology, my thermostat is digital, and my bed and house materials were all manufactured in factories with digital controls. Our safety and security from a societal standpoint are all controlled digitally. Police, fire, and medical use radios, vehicles, and equipment with microprocessors. As for belongingness and love needs, our primary means of communication with our loved ones is through a smart phone. Many people are able to achieve their esteem needs by posting their accomplishments or their day to day lives on social media and gain praise from friends, followers, and loved ones. Sometimes they can receive the opposite as well; a double edged sword. For self-actualization, I don’t know if technology is a requirement, but undoubtedly, technology helps in every aspect of life.

Week 3 – Journal Entry 3

Privacyrights.org is a website containing a detailed list of data breaches, providing a great resource for researchers. The information contained in privacyrights.org can use used to study trends in data breaches. It can also be utilized to see which vulnerabilities are being exploited, understand what is being targeted and from there assess the effectiveness of organization’s cybersecurity policy. If a place is never attacked, perhaps they’re doing something right.

Week 2 – Journal Entry 2

The principles of science such as relativism, determinism, parsimony, skepticism, and objectivity have a significant role in cybersecurity. Relativism implies that cybersecurity risk assessments can be subjective based on the perspectives and the priorities of the stakeholders. Risk that seems minor to a technical person may be major from a business or legal perspective. Determinism in cybersecurity implies that cyber attacks are determined by indentifiable factors. If one had complete knowledge, one would see a cyber attack coming basically. However, deterministic principles can be applied in cybersecurity; one example would be logging and databasing analysis of cybersecurity breaches, collecting big data and using machine learning to identify commonalities to help identify patterns to predict cyberattacks in the future. Parsimony, or Occam’s Razor, suggests that we should keep things as simple as possible. This applies in cybersecurity. We should keep systems and simple as possible for efficiency. A simple system is an easier system to secure. Cybersecurity professionals should be skeptical about the security of their networks and systems, testing for vulnerabilities. In cybersecurity objectivity is critical for assessing risks and incident response.

Week 1 – Journal Entry 1

Reviewing the NICE framework, the most appealing area that I’d like to focus my career on is the collect and operate category which is difficult because they all seem interesting. The specialty areas of Collection Operations, Cyber Operational Planning, and Cyber Operations all seem like careers that would suit me. On the other hand, the area that looks like it would appeal to me the least (at least based on the overview on cisa.gov) is the Securely Provision area. I have zero interest in Software Development, Systems Architecture, or Systems Development; these all seem more like Software Engineering or Programming jobs.