Student Projects:Cyber Insecurity

Homeland Cyber-(In)Security

Group Members:

 Becky Chen
 Jonathan Weinberg
 Jeremy Chiu
 Tim Pevzner

Possible Topics:

 Survey of cyber threats
 Real threat or just hype?
 Response & containment after a successful attack
 Survey of methods for countering cyber terrorism
 Web use by terrorist networks
 Cyber terrorism, the responibility of government or private sector
 Cyber terrorism and outsourcing

Outsourcing (Jon): In order to compete in today’s high-tech markets, private sector as well as government institutions are increasingly turning to outsourcing as a means by which to reduce operating cost and sharpen focus on core competencies. Inherent in this practice is a vulnerability to cyber terrorist threats in the form of deliberate software or hardware sabotage, backdoor exploits, ill-controlled intellectual property leaks, and the inadvertent introduction of security vulnerabilities stemming from deteriorated quality assurance practices. In this brief we will survey and categorize the threats to national cyber-infrastructure introduced by IT outsourcing (particularly offshore), current practices and contracting policies employed by government agencies dealing with sensitive security information, the benefits, shortcomings, omissions, and effectiveness of those policies, and the degree to which such practices can or should be extended to private sector organizations dealing in critical national infrastructure.