IA#1 Cybercrime Law, Regulation, Effects on Innovation
Individual Assignment #1—Instructions
IA#1 Cybercrime Law, Regulation, Effects on Innovation
Course Objective: Research cybersecurity laws, regulations and legal concepts, and relate them to managerial decisions needed to protect national security.
Each student explores cybersecurity as a public good.
Answer these questions:
1. How should government justify telling private industry how to set up or improve their cybersecurity?
• Keeping the focus on national security concerns, clearly discuss the compelling sociopolitical reasons, motivations, or arguments for or against government intervention into private sector cybersecurity.
• Clearly discuss the methods of government intervention. That is, what authorities (such as laws, regulations and rules) give the executive or legislative representatives the right to regulate private industry?
• Describe real-world examples that help support your discussion.
2. Clearly discuss the impacts/effects, if any, on national security due to government regulation required to be implemented by private industry.
• Clearly discuss effects on national security that might result from (a) failure to comply with related cyber regulations or requirements, (b) meeting only the minimum requirements, and (c) exceeding the minimum requirements.
• Clearly discuss whether private industry now has a responsibility to protect national security through implementing good cybersecurity controls imposed by government regulation.
• Describe real-world examples that help support your discussion.
Hint: First prepare an outline based on the questions asked in this assignment. The outline is not submitted as part of the final report, but it should be used to help structure your TOC. Also, the introduction should provide a brief preview for the reader, indicating what areas your research explored. Do this for all your research papers, both the individual and the team projects.
Length 5-7 pages, due at the end of Week 2.
Prepare your paper in Word format. It should be double-spaced with one-inch margins all around. The citations and the reference list in the paper should be formatted in accordance with APA 6th edition guidelines.
The paper must include: cover page, table of contents, introduction, section headings and subheadings, conclusions, APA compliant in-text citations and list of references, and page numbers. The page count starts with the introduction and ends with the conclusions. The questions asked in the assignment should first be outlined (the outline is not included in the document), then the outline should be used to create the Table of Contents and the document sub-headings. The Introduction should briefly preview each sub-heading in the document.
INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT 1
Student's Name:
Professor's Name:
Course Title:
Institution:
Date:
Table of Contents
Introduction………………………………………………………………………………. 3
Regulating Cyber Security in the Private Sector………………………………………. 4
Reasons for Government's Intervention in the Private Sector…………………….. 4
Methods of Intervention…………………………………………………………… 5
Impacts of Government Regulations on the Private Sector…………………………… 6
Effects of Various Levels of Compliance on National Security…………………... 6
Private Sector Responsibility in Protecting National Security……………………. 7
Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………... 8
References…………………………………………………………………………………. 10
Introduction
The United States government has been at the forefront in safeguarding its national security interests. This has seen critical improvements in its capacity as the major regulator in cyber security, especially in the private sector. Major regulations and laws have been effected to address constant challenges regarding cyber security in the private sector industry. Although some of the private sector stakeholders have lauded the federal government in its actions, a lot of them still feel that the active regulation of the private sector's cyber security by the government is too much. They feel that the government should allow the private sector stakeholders to manage and regulate their own cyber security without much external interventions. However, the government feels that this should not be a question of whether it should regulate the cyber space security in the private industry or not (Bidgoli, 2003). It presents its current case of regulation as mandatory for the sake of all its citizens and their national security. This is the major reason why the government has been involved in effecting a number of important regulation laws that focus on unifying cyber security efforts throughout the country.
The regulation efforts by the federal government have been seen in its providence of guidance procedures, policies and laws to the entire private sector industry. Depending on their opinions, different stakeholders in the private sector have in turn effected the laws and policies at different levels. Such levels of implementation include: (i) exceeding minimum requirements, (ii) meeting the minimum requirements only, and (iii) failure to comply with the requirements. The private sector is left to balance between protecting their customers and investing in effective cyber security strategies in compliance with the government's standards. As much as there is a conflict between the government and the private sector, the latter should always consider the advantages of implementing such cyber security strategies vis-Ã -vis the disadvantages (Pfleeger, 2007).
Regulating Cyber Security in the Private Sector
Reasons for Government's Intervention
The United States government has heavily invested in cyber security in order to protect its critical infrastructure from numerous cyber-attack threats which consistently pose great danger to the economic stability and national security of Americans. In his address to the nation on cyber security, President Obama has consistently underscored the need for the government as well as the private sector to have effective strategies to improve their cyber security for the sake of all citizens (Flaherty, 2013). A particular case was back in 2012 when the President made an appeal to the Congress to comprehensively pass effective cyber security legislations. The President highlighted critical concerns that the United States faced if stringent cyber security laws were not passed. Although the bill went before the Congress and failed, the President's focus on cyber security presents a case that cannot be sidelined. The private sector's current security level is wanting as seen in a number of instances. This may be one of the reasons why the government keeps a strong stance on its private sector. A case in point is South Carolina's security breach that happened in 2012 when a stolen password from a state employee was used to hack the state's tax system. As a result of the hack, confidential personal and business tax files were accessed. This made the public to realize some of the weaknesses that exist in the cyber security of United States. The event also made the government sterner in its stance considering that ...