Articles Analisys Essay on Cyberspace

The Biggest Fear in Cyberspace

The greatest fear in cyberspace is cyber-attacks from hackers from enemy nations or terrorist groups (Singer par1). These cyber-attacks cause panic among the American population. Moreover, it causes a massive loss of critical data, a situation that spews fear among residents. It is also essential to highlight that credit card information is at great risk of being hacked when users give their details on online vending sites. There is also the risk of loss of email information when unscrupulous people hack email passwords. Cyber-attackers can unleash malware on various sites of government offices, hospitals, schools, military, and so on. The ramification for unleashing malware is the loss of volumes of data as well as the halting services delivery to millions of people such as health services, education services, and company services among others.

Cyber-attacks also have a detrimental effect on the economy since hackers can transfer money from servers of various banks and corporations, leading to massive financial losses. It is worthy to elucidate that there are many categories of cyber-attacks. There are indiscriminate cyber-attacks that have global and wide-ranging consequences, and they do not discriminate against companies or governments. Another category of cyber-attacks is destructive attacks that target specific organizations and inflict massive damages to them. There is also cyber-warfare, a politically instigated cyber-attack tailored towards espionage and sabotage. Also, cyber-attack can be aimed at stealing crucial pieces of information from government organizations. It is essential to pinpoint that cyber-attacks also involves theft of login credentials leading to attack of millions of customers.

How Cyber Threats Rate Compares with All Threats to US National Security

The US government faces many threats from external and internal sources. These threats are detrimental to the economic, social, and physical well-being of American citizens. They include threats such as nuclear attacks from countries such as Iran, a terrorist attack from Al Qaeda, and cyber-threats from hackers among other threats. It is prudent to understand that cyber threats are the leading threats to the national security of the US. It is vital to note that cyber threats affect economic security as well as the physical security of the American people (Boot par 2). The frequency of cyber threats is higher than other threats since they occur every second in the cyberspace. Other than that, the scale of cyber threats is very wide since it can affect every state agency and corporation in the US.

In addition, the severity and sophistication of cyber-attack are greater than other forms of threats since they can affect the entire country. It is also paramount to mention that cyber threats have many actors who either deal with espionage, sabotage, login theft, and so on. There are also many methods of carrying out cyber-attacks. These methods include but are not limited to password attacks, eavesdropping attacks, drive-by attacks, phishing attacks among others. Moreover, cyber threats have more victims than any other form of security threat to the US (Boot par 2). For instance, cyber-attacks can target random agencies, health institutions, and schools at a go, which may affect service provision to millions of citizens. This is contrary to other security threats which do not affect the US citizens with the same magnitude as cyber threats. In this regard, it is imperative to assert that cyber threats are by far the largest form of security in the US.

Works Cited

Boot, Max. "What Is the Greatest Threat to U.S. National Security?" Commentary Magazine, July 12, 2015. Available at: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/american-society/military/greatest-threat-to-national-security/(Accessed on October 23, 2018).

Singer, Peter. "What Americans should fear in cyberspace." Los Angeles Times, January 12, 2014. Available at: www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-singer-cyber-security-20140122-story.html#ixzz2rB3lXtNM (Accessed on October 23, 2018).