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Example Information Systems Essay
Under what conditions would a corporate victim of computer crime pursue their attackers to the fill extent of their abilities and what is the downside to such action.
In today's modern organisations, computer security is a process that demands constant vigilance. Organisations are heavily invested in security technologies. Unfortunately, too many organisations sit back and relax once they have added the latest software and hardware for access controls, encryption, anti-virus, and firewalls (Flynn & Kahn, p. 153). Security is important for any system but becomes increasingly important as the web spreads in scope geographically and across areas of our life (Aron & Sampler p. 69).
One of the most common computer crimes made against corporations and organizations is the theft of trade secrets (BBCNews). According to the by report by BBCNews, virtually all organizations have been attacked in one way or the other. These attacks are in the form of computer viruses, website defacements, denial of service attack, and theft of propriety information. It is often called cyber vandalism (Sneider and Perry, p. 161).
In recent years, there have been a large number of attacks on websites by hackers who are angry with the owner of the website. Though it is not considered to be serious enough to merit serious attention, these forms of attacks are nevertheless damaging to the credibility of corporate ICT infrastructures to handle security breaches and maintain the confidentiality of their clients' information. Damages have largely been counted economical terms rather than on social or emotional aspects.
Conditions:
Corporate victims of corporate computer attacks can resort to all legal remedies available especially pertaining to provisions and guidelines of their country's e-commerce law. A student in Northeastern University in Boston was charged with using a hijacked corporate Internet account to attack NASA and Department of Defense computers and damage servers of an ISP. The defendant was able to gain illegal access to several computers either causing substantial business loss. After a careful investigation and meticulous examination of the hacker's trail, the attacker, who was eventually caught, was identified as Ikenna Iffih. If convicted, he could face a maximum of 10 years in jail and a fine of $250,000 (O'Brien, p. 483).
Telia is an example of a company which pursued their attackers to the full extent of their abilities but in a more radical way. According to the electronic magazine Z Central, Telia made some sort of surveillance through a net surveillance unit to spy on hackers and would-be-hackers (Arnrup, n.d). The mission of the unit was to gather information about subscribers suspected to be hackers and eventually prosecute those responsible.
It is often easy to rely on these laws for our protection. However, as technology evolves, so does the sophistication and complexities of computer attacks. Our laws are not able to adjust quickly enough to meet these kinds of situations. Corporate victims may eventually end up on the losing side because of they have to use more and more of their resources and expertise in order to get justice.
In such instances, corporate victims can pursue their attackers to the full extent of their abilities if there are major damages to their economic and political survival. Ideally, they shouldn't let these kinds of attacks go unpunished because it would only embolden their attackers in the future. However, if organisations are constantly under threat from these people, then it is time to do some action and make them pay. Other victims may not be interested in further pursuing their attackers because they think that doing so would only eat up their resources, time, and efforts. Some just try to charge it to experience and move on.
Downside
It is often difficult to enforce e-commerce laws and other laws related to cybercrime because of the nature of the Internet. It is easy to use computer networks and the Internet to commit fraud and crime because the Internet is borderless and most of its users hide under a cloak of anonymity. Sometimes, pursuing your attackers entails crossing into different geo-political and judicial systems of different countries which have different e-commerce laws.
According to Daniel Arnrup, the procedure done by Telia is illegal under certain conditions. These acts actually encourage totalitarian social control of the enterprise. It also infringes on the freedom and privacy of subscribers.
Efforts to punish those held responsible for these crimes have largely been held in abeyance to the age, nature, behavior, and origin of the attacker. Most of them are between the ages 12 and 25 years of age and have little assets that can satisfy a judgment (Standler, 2002). Sometimes, the law cannot distinguish which are truly considered as cyber crimes and which are not. This makes it more difficult for corporate victims to seek redress and ask for damages.
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