Cybersecurity, Technology, and Society
Jayden Maddox
Professor Kirkpatrick
December 7, 2021
Analytical Paper
Introduction:
Cybersecurity is always evolving and advancing. As it gets more advanced and more complicated the more complex and harder it gets for individuals to get caught in their bad acts. These bad acts range from hacking, ransomware attacks, threats, Phishing and DOS (Denial of Service). Cybersecurity has gained my interest because of the way it brings technology, society, and crime together in one field. Technology has become an everyday essential in almost everybody’s day-day life.
Cybersecurity and technology in general are a competitive field. Businesses are trying to have the best, top notch, and most efficient software so they can operate the best from a business standpoint. I will talk about how competitive the cybersecurity field is, how software can be improved and how technology has impacted society and how dependent humans have become on technology.
Verbeek’s’ Writing:
Markets, businesses, groups, and individuals should be regulated equally in the face of diminishing state power and networking of the material world. No matter how big or small the business is that business should be regulated like any other. Bigger business and groups are quicker to adapt to the new daily changes in technology and the cyberworld, but smaller businesses need to also be able to adapt to these changes if they want their business to become more successful. Technology should be in people’s lives to make them easier not to make it so that people are super reliant on technology. Technology can be part of our lives but not to the point that it is all humans know. In the article, using technology to help children learn different things and monitor people’s behavior is discussed. For children I think a balance of technology in their early lives is good but not too much that it takes away that learning bond that those early children have with their parents. Overall, I believe there should be a balance with technology in our lives with enough that it can make our lives and tasks easier but not to the point that all society knows to rely on is technology.
Human Factor in Cybersecurity
There are many different assets that go into cybersecurity. Two of those assets are the various advancements of technology in the cybersecurity field and the people trained to operate behind that technology. Companies also must be very smart with their budgeting between both assets. There can be a few different ways a company can manage a budget and balance the tradeoff between training and new technology. Even though it might be more expensive I would personally put more effort towards the technology-based assets and not as much on training human employees but not remove them from the picture entirely. I would put most of my budget toward a more automated or technology-based asset because an automated system can process and hold more information faster than a human can. Humans can often make mistakes and in the cybersecurity world mistakes can be crucial to the security of important documents and an entire company all together. On the other hand, automated technology systems can be programed to have the slightest chance of ever making a mistake. Now there are a few reasons I would not put all my budget toward the technological side and put some aside to train human employees. Some threats are dependent on the cooperation of humans. Humans play a big role in any technology field because the systems and AI used are programed by humans and machine intelligence simply cannot match up to human intelligence. Cybercriminals often find ways to adapt machine learning and find ways to bypass networks without being detected, which is another reason humans are important in the cybersecurity field. The security monitoring systems also require human attention and human interaction. This is how I would spread my budget between training human employees and enhancing technology.
SCADA Systems
SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) is an industrial control system. It can be used to control infrastructure processes such as water treatment, wastewater treatment, gas pipelines and wind farms. SCADA can also be used to control facility-based processes such as airports, space stations and ships. For last SCADA can be used to control industrial processes such as manufacturing, production, refining and power generation.
There are a couple of vulnerabilities with critical infrastructure systems. One being unauthorized access to software whether it be human, intentionally induced changes, a virus infection or any other problems that can affect the control host machine. The second vulnerability associated with critical infrastructure systems is packet access to network segments that host any SCADA device. In most scenarios, there is little to no security on packet control protocol. This means any person sending packets to a SCADA device is in position to take full control of it.
There are a variety of different roles SCADA applications play to mitigate these threats. The SCADA protocols have been designed to send information to the master station but only when the RTU is polled by the master station. For better communication between different hardware and software a widely accepted solution that allows communication between the devices is the PLE for process control.
Different generations of the SCADA systems were also implemented. The first generation being monolithic. Communication was needed so RTU vendors designed wide area networks that help in communication with RTU so if the mainframe system failed there would be a back-up mainframe. The second generation being about distribution. In comparison to the first generation the cost and size of station were reduced and the protocols for the networks caused security issues for the SCADA systems. Very few people knew how secure the SCADA installation was due to the nature of the protocols. The third generation revolves around network. Since the communication between the SCADA systema and the master station is done through the internet, the vulnerability is increased, but the usage of security techniques and protocols means that SCADA systems can have more security improvements applied to them.
Conclusion
To summarize, the technological advancements in the cybersecurity field are becoming more and more complex. As these different forms of cyber attacks evolve there needs to be new software implemented into computer systems. Businesses and markets that vary in size and popularity should be treated as if they’re the same big businesses as Apple, Amazon and other big corporate should be treated the same as smaller businesses and upcoming corporations that don’t stand a chance is growing due to the bigger corporations thriving. It’s also harder for smaller businesses because they do not have the most up to date or advancements in their software to adapt to the everyday change of technology while big corporations always have the most up to date software.
Technology also shouldn’t be an everyday necessity for the everyday life of human beings. Society has become more and more reliant on technology and are starting to not know to survive without it. People should only use technology for assistance and not rely fully on it to solve everything because in the future it will take a toll on how we live and show who is really in control in this world.
Citations:
https://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/96009-the-human-factor-in-cybersecurity