In Chapter 5, the interesting and controversial topic of cyber security is presented. As stated in the course textbook by Turban, Volonino, & Wood (2015), battling cyber threats is one of the costs of doing business in today’s globally-connected corporate environment. Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks (DDoS), malware infections, and other black-hat hacker generated security breaches have increased in frequency and pose even greater threats to government agencies, military organizations, and corporate enterprises. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Sony, Target, JP Morgan and eBay are just some of the entities that experienced major data breaches in 2015. The greatest theft of medical records ever occurred in 2015 at the health insurers Anthem and Primera. As Bloomberg Technology reported, "U.S. companies and government agencies suffered a record 1,093 data breaches" in 2016, "a 40 percent increase from 2015, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site." (Kharif, 2017). In 2016, Wendy's fast food chain and the Democratic National Committee among others were victims of "headline-grabbing hacks" (Kharif, 2017). The 2017 "massive breach of one of the largest repositories of Americans' most sensitive financial data" occurred in the attack on "dozens of sensitive databases" at Equifax (Riley, Robertson, & Sharpe, 2017). Of the great concern and receiving much media attention, is that regarding the potential for power-grid cyber attacks, something that would clearly undermine the safety and security of the world’s nations.

References

Riley, M., Robertson, J., & Sharpe, A. (2017, September 29). The Equifax hack has the hallmarks of state-sponsored pros. Bloomberg Businessweek.Retrieved from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-09-29/the-equifax-hack-has-all-the-hallmarks-of-state-sponsored-pros (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Sharif, O. (2017, January 19). 2016 was a record year for data breaches. Bloomberg Technology. Retrieved from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-19/data-breaches-hit-record-in-2016-as-dnc-wendy-s-co-hacked (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Turban, E., Volonino, L., & Wood, G. (2015). Information technology for management: Digital strategies for insight, action, and sustainable performance.(10th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Written Assignment:

 Conduct research on a recent threat or attack on a government agency, military organization, or corporate enterprise. Present data that describes the type of threat, the degree of harm caused by the threat, and describe who or what entity the perpetrator(s) might have been that could benefit from such an action. Give details on solutions that might have prevented the exploit and could be utilized to assist in mitigating or eliminating cyber threats in the future.