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Running head: LITERATURE REVIEW

LITERATURE REVIEW

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Background information 3

Research questions 3

Methodological approach 3

Data analysis and findings 4

Challenges in confronting threats 6

Conclusion and discussion 9

Literature review: Emerging threats and challenges protecting critical national infrastructure

In recent times, the province of security architecture has been profoundly transposed by the escalation of threats targeting critical national infrastructure. The rise in such threats is directly related to the rapid integration of the infrastructures with emergent information technologies (IT). That being said, it is easy to conclude that the fiercest threats to the infrastructures are from cybercrime. Cybercrime manifests in several dimensions from destructive worms, viruses to malwares. It would easy if such threats would be confronted easily. However, the state of affairs is that it is not an easy endeavor at all, and hence protecting national infrastructure is even more challenging than it has ever been.

This essay answers the questions of the literature related to the emergent threats in the protection of critical national infrastructure. More also, it answers to the question on the challenges involved in securing the infrastructures.

The study was conducted using a qualitative approach to data collection. Qualitative research is the scientific study of observations that seeks to describe, explore, explain and diagnose phenomena by gathering non-numerical data.

Cybersecurity threats

It has not been easy protecting national infrastructure in the last two decades thanks to an increase in cybercrime. Public information systems are lucrative targets for hackers and other ill-motivated criminals. The state of affairs have led to the conclusion that the in a time in the current generation, the world is increasingly veering toward cyber warfare. The cost of cybersecurity threats is estimated to be over billions of dollars and till learning. Yet, even with emergent measures, it appears the rate at which cybercriminals are expanding their technological dominion in the deep web is exceedingly strange.

Cybersecurity attacks take different dimensions. Perhaps one of the most devastating has been related to user inefficiency when handling systems. However, most cybercriminal activities have shown an impeccable ability to surpass both the human and system shields that protect systems. In the dawn of the early 2000s for example, the world was in a panic following an attack unleashed by two Philippine students. The attack, known as love bug exposed the value system behind human based security system. It is one of weakness and which is solely flexible to easy manipulation. Following the love bug attack, the national intelligence system had to be switched off for several hours.

There have been several attacks of late targeting information systems across the world. These attacks included denial of service attacks, which takes over a system. The second type of cybersecurity attack is known as man in the middle attack. The third one, and which is a worrying concern is known as phishing. Phishing exploits the human bridge between systems and security. No matter how secure a system is believed, it is always non-immune to attack. The third cyber based challenge is known as eavesdropping attack. Finally, critical national infrastructure systems are vulnerable to smulf attacks. The common form of attacks involves the hacker saturating a system with traffic to the extent that such systems fail to perform basic functions. The attack medium ranges from viruses to worms, and malware. Worms are a potential source of concern as they can easily permeate through a network system. The leading type of malware is computer viruses, spyware, adware, rootkit, Trojan horse, ransom ware, worm, key logger and botnet (Hansen, et al, 2016). Computer viruses are infectious software that quickly self-replicates with an intention of destroying confidential and valuable data or causing irreparable damage (Holt et al, 2015). The scholar utilized a qualitative method in analyzing the risks.

Threats are however also physical in nature. Presently, the world faces a political and violent conflict situation in their endeavor to protect critical infrastructure. There has been an escalation in terrorism activity, especially emanating from the developing nations in the Middle East and some parts of Africa such as Somalia, Northern Nigeria and some areas in North Africa such as Libya. Terrorism activities are as much related to religious radicalization as they exhibit an element of resources and resource conflict. They have a resources element because they are motivated by unabated flow of dark money, which is used to control and pacify an already disappointed bulging youth population in the countries (Olmstead, & Smith, 2017). Furthermore, the conflicts are related to resource conflict because most of the time it is the authoritative allocation of resources that is to blame for radicalization. Terrorism activities are diversified and in recent times the world is increasingly conscious of bio threats among others.

Confronting cybersecurity threats have proven to be one of the most difficult dispensations in recent times (Sood, Rohit, & Richard, 2012). First, there has been a revolution in hacking technologies. Hidden in the dark and deep web, and operated by malicious experts in advanced data centers, hacking technologies have progressed even quickly than the preventive capacities. Sood, Rohit, & Richard, (2012) also argues that it is also very easy to acquire the technologies in the dark web. They are all sorts of sites in such places who deal with startup packages for anybody wishing to live their lives as a hacker. Individuals seeking crime display a remarkable ability to adapt to changing technologies, environments, and lifestyles. The ability of hackers to infiltrate new protection systems and hack has shown impeccable revolution lately. Singh, & Singh (2016) argue that the main reason behind revolution in cyber-attacks because cybercrime has become more lucrative with the introduction of digital currencies. These currencies are the mainstream medium of exchange between hackers and victims of breaches. The currency can also not be tracked down by law enforcement agencies and they leave very little forensic evidence behind (Singh, & Singh, 2016).

The advancement in the technologies is directly related to increased monetization of cybercrime. The last decade has seen the emergence of digital currencies. The currencies are indeed a catalyst for concealing cybercrime as financial payments easily flows from victims to criminals without a trace. Digital currency lacks in identification details which obviously complicates the ability of law enforcement agencies to track and respond to crime. They were designed to mirror traditional currencies, in hard notes, where it would never been easy to monitor where a dollar note goes after it leaves the federal bank.

Forensic experts have also been a little bit incapacitated in the fight against cybercrime. One of the main reasons is the complication of the cybercrime (O'Dowd, 2017). The technologies involved are beyond the reach of naturally incapacitated law enforcement agency. The agencies are incapable of confronting cybercrime as quickly as possible and arresting the culprits. The fundamental deterrence to any form of crime is the probability of arrest. Even with arrest, the agency has inadequate forensic capacity to gather and handle evidence.

More also, cybercrime is not the province of local politics and control but supersedes boundaries, to the reach of often rogue states that also sponsor such activities (Thornton-Trump 2012). The scholar also argue that where however there exists the will to prosecute criminals in different states, the problem of jurisdiction and sovereignty works hand in hand to frustrate the quest of law enforcement agencies. The problem is also common because it is not all nations in the globe that have an elaborate legal system that defines hacking as a crime (White, 2016). The weakness of such a state of affair is evident in the love bug case where the two Philippines would not be prosecuted because Philippines lacked in statutes that addressed cybercrime directly. The ultimate hurdle facing law enforcement agencies is its inability to keep up with the innovation speed. This emanates from the fact that there lack specially dedicated labs in several states for dealing, detecting and ultimately handling threat modeling. Threat modeling deals with speculations aspects and relies on the premise of preventing and identifying threats before it occurs.

One of the greatest hindrances to overcoming cybercrime threats is the human elements. User based links to threats is undoubtedly a point of concern because, as it is evident, most of threats are related to phishing attempts. Threat agent’s permeates through weakness in systems, and in most occasions, the weakness is mainly caused by human beings who operate the systems. (Von & Upton, 2016). User based threats results from inadequate education. Users who operate and run critical infrastructure systems need thorough training on system security. The training is currently insufficient or probably inadequate, though it is not surprising because phishing attempts and attacks focuses on human emotional weaknesses.

On physical security architecture, the fundamental challenge lies in a burgeoning youth population in the developing countries. The youth burge worsen an already difficult situation in the countries stemming from unemployment, resource conflict and religious fundamentalism. The youth burge results in violent conflict which in turn has a spiraling effect. Violent conflict have a stronger domino effect than communism during the cold war, because when a region falls into violence, the destabilizing effect, the psychological distress is so much to bear that most of the individuals turn to crime and violence for survival.

Critical national infrastructure currently faces a myriad of threats, whether physical or cyber based. The most devastating of the crime is cyber, which manifests in several dimensions. The world surely is increasingly and inflexibly veering toward cyber warfare. Critical infrastructure has also been a victim of domestic and international sabotage and terrorism. For the two, terrorism activity is the greatest threat to the systems because it is unpredictable, and also have geopolitical connotation like cybercrime. The challenge in protecting against crimes with a global magnitude is multifaceted. Cybercrime for example faces a challenge as a result of overlapping jurisdiction. For terrorism activities, there are challenges emanating from resources and resource conflict, burgeoning youth population and religious radicalization.

References

Hansen, S. S., Larsen, T. M. T., Stevanovic, M., & Pedersen, J. M. (2016, February). An approach for detection and family classification of malware based on behavioral analysis. In 2016 International Conference on Computing, Networking and Communications (ICNC) (pp. 1-5). IEEE.

J. Holt, Thomas & Bossler, Adam & Seigfried-Spellar, Kathryn. (2015). Cybercrime and DigitalForensics: An Introduction.

O'Dowd, A. (2017). Major global cyber-attack hits NHS and delays treatment. BMJ: British Medical Journal (Online), 357.

Olmstead, K., & Smith, A. (2017). Americans and cybersecurity. Pew Research Center, 26.

Singh, S., & Singh, N. (2016, December). Blockchain: Future of financial and cyber security. In 2016 2nd International Conference on Contemporary Computing and Informatics (IC3I) (pp. 463-467). IEEE.

Sood, Aditya K., Rohit Bansal, and Richard J. Enbody. (2012). "Cybercrime: Dissecting the state of underground enterprise." IEEE internet computing 17.1 (2012): 60-68.

Thornton-Trump, Ian. (2018). "Malicious attacks and actors: an examination of the modern cybercriminal." EDPACS 57.1 17-23.

Von Solms, B., & Upton, D. (2016). Cyber security capacity governance. The Business & Management Review, 7(4), 34.

White, J. (2016). Cyber Threats and Cyber Security: National Security Issues, Policy and Strategies. Global Security Studies, 7(4).