Internet Security – Can it become a Disaster?

In view that it is a topic that we did not discussed largely in class I thought that we could better expand and discuss this topic of internet security and how it can become a disaster through the blog.

            When we talk about disasters the first thing that one think is the physical, usually, natural disaster that have clear and physical consequences on society as a whole. As we discussed in class there are various factors that can cause or aggravate a disaster. We also discussed that there are other types of disaster then the natural disaster such as the man-made disasters. But there is one thing that is very close to us and that indeed have the potential to damage society in such a scale that trespass the damage caused by various natural and man-made disasters.

            Bank accounts, huge amounts of money, company and governmental secrets and various others information's that could damage society are present on the internet and therefore automatically in risk of being used against their purpose. Although there are various security mechanisms protecting these information's there is also people able to break those systems and get these information's.

            In the past years hacking attacks have happened constantly and the targets varied from governments, to companies and individuals. Examples of theses hacking attempts can be seen everywhere, Sarah Palin got her personal account during the elections and many governments around the world have suffered hacker attacks to government websites. In Brazil for example there are various threatens of hacker attacks in relation to the World Cup of 2014. These threats are being done in protest against the large expenditures that the government has made for the World Cup. The internet disaster is something that can happen at any time and it is almost impossible to predict when, where and how it will happen.

            

So I present the following question to all of you. How secure is the internet, and how much of a threat can it pose to us? Is this threat measurable?  How does the internet disaster compare to the other types of disasters that we have discussed before?

Sources:

http://www.cybernewsalerts.com/2014/02/several-italian-government-websites-are.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/26/us-worldcup-brazil-hackers-idUSBREA1P1DE20140226

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26969629

By Pedro Vargas