Risk Assessment, 2nd Edition

Chapter 17 Security Assessment

17.1 Introduction

The current century has brought a rapid and all‐embracing development in mobile phone and computer networking technology. This development has improved the productivity and efficiency in many parts of our daily life, but it is also threatening our privacy, our services and systems, and our whole society. The term cyber has become a standard prefix for issues related to computers and computer and mobile phone networks. A cyber system is a system of interconnected computers, servers, routers, switches, and cables in which online communications takes place using Internet technologies. The term cyberspace is used to mean the online world of computer networks and especially the Internet. The following quotation from a speech by President Barack Obama on 29 May 2009 clearly sets the scene:

The revolution in communications and information technologies have given birth to a virtual world …. Cyberspace is real and so are the risks that come with it. It's the great irony of our information age – the very technologies that empower us to create and build also empower those who would disrupt and destroy.

Newspapers and other media are filled with reports about cybersecurity, cyberattacks, cybercrime, and so on. Some recent headlines from the British newspapers The Guardian and the Financial Times include:

• Australian security services investigate attempted cyberattack on parliament
• Cyber‐attack disrupts printing of major US newspapers ...