Q: Read this https://dojmt.gov/wp-content/uploads/Glasswasherparts.com_.pdf  sample breach letter “SAMPLE DATA BREACH NOTIFICATION” and describe how two different economics theories and two different social sciences theories relate to the letter.  

The following notification document, submitted by the company “Glass Washer Parts”, goes into depth about a security breach within their system where a group of attackers had placed malware onto the platform’s servers and further utilized it to steal private information from dozens of their customers. From this example, it’s pretty clear that there are several theories both from cybersecurity-economics and cybersecurity-social science theories that can explain the motivation behind this attack. In terms of economics, the rational choice theory explains that the attacker group exploited people out of their information simply out of their own self interest, since they’d make money off of their payment card information and since this reward outweighed the potential repercussions. One social science theory that leans into this idea is the neutralization theory proposed by Sykes and Matza, in which every individual already knows what’s morally right or wrong, but commits the crime due to the risk and reward factors attributed to the action, which we can clearly see with this situation. Another theory that could be used to explain this situation is the Marxian economic theory, which states that “those with power exploit those without power”; in this instance, the attackers had the power to exploit the weak cybersecurity with the company and the customers that trusted their data with that company, to which the company was none the wiser about the incident for months. Moreover, the conflict theory states that offenders commit due to differences in power, and because the attackers had the ability to exploit customers out of their information, they took advantage of that power.