End of Course Reflection:

This course has forced me to think at a deeper extent than before, especially regarding ethics and morality, the internet and the many dangers it has presented, and finally about cybersecurity and just how critical of a need it is in the world today and the future. Many of us on the globe today utterly disregard others’ feelings and situations simply to accomplish our own ambitions that many of which are morally wrong or can easily be interpreted as such. One action that can be stated as an instance of this is the current war in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin started the war in hopes of taking over Ukraine to “restore their former glory they had acquired as the Soviet Union”, many view this being the sole reason to go to war as an awful one that is completely unjust, unethical, and immoral, but he has chosen to ignore all protest to his view point. I had already known prior to this course that the world just is not a very fair place and it is sad to say that injustice occurs everyday and at least for right now there is no cure. The reason I selected this as my first reason is because the presence of disregard of ethics and morality seems to be taking another form that I was no previously informed enough about prior to this course and that is in the form of cyber warfare and information warfare as proposed in this course with Facebook and the 2016 election, and the cyber war in the Israel/Iraq conflict. Moving forward into my second reason, this course has forced me to decide among myself whether the global intangible phenomenon we all have come to know as the internet is really making the world safer or not. This has already been a question that I have pondered in my head throughout my life with a smartphone, and having seen throughout the case analysis’s this semester simply being a user on the internet has endangered many and most of the of them simply can’t fathom the endless wrongs that can be enacted against them from complete strangers just because they let the world know their name and area of residence unconsciously. Thinking about this logic alone this would clearly mean that the internet is making the world a more dangerous place right? Well that’s just the thing. I have not been able to clearly determine the answer because the internet has allowed many safety features to be created as well, like the ring doorbell for example. In addition to this counter argument I believe that the real reason that the internet is dangerous is because people are dangerous. Instead of using social media as a source of entertainment people rather use it as a weapon to attack others for their own selfish reasons and that is the main reason why the internet presents itself as a potential hazard, People can’t trust people. My final statement about how this course has altered my thinking, and this is probably the most important to me independently due to me being a cybersecurity major. One major thing that this course has informed me about, though I had already known prior to this course about it being a dangerous threat to people, is cyber warfare and how completely different it is from traditional warfare. Cyber warfare has seemingly endless boundaries in regards to how it is used and the consequences it can cause to its victims which are not limited to those that are dressed in military uniforms by the way. Of course that context only expresses concern regarding foreign affairs which is not necessarily the only means that would call for increased cybersecurity because hazards just within the United States of America is a dire situation in addition to overseas: cyber bullying, scamming, stalking, harassment, and more are all instances occurring in our nation as we speak that are leaving many feeling completely hopeless and as we continue to propel rapidly into this new era of technological advancements it is going to become even more increasingly imperative that we put a higher priority on upgrading our cybersecurity as a nation which has re-inspired me to strive to graduate as a cybersecurity to position myself to protect people from predators lurking on the internet, some would likely believe this ideology of mine to be foolish but I like to think of it has heroic nonetheless.