Cybersecurity In United States Government Research Paper Samples

Introduction

The cyber systems are a security irony. The systems award the users exceptional capabilities but, also they make them less secure. Despite their giving us abilities to communicate, collaborate and socialize better, they also unlock doors to intrusion. Their application of information and scheming control greatly develops the competence and extent of procedures. In turn, the concentration increases the number of information that can be stolen or threatened by attacks .
Capabilities are being democratized by the empowerment of user to manipulate and retrieve through the system, but the benefits provided by the system removes the protection that need sladders of human supports. In short, the cyber system nurtures us but also weaken us.
Cyber attacks possibly will have distressing impact on the networks and computer systems of the nation. It will disturb the government and businesses operations as well as the lives of the people. There is an increase in the sophistication of cyber threats that emphasizes the requirement to control and strengthen the cybersecurity of major government systems and the important infrastructure of the nation .
The objective of this paper is to give an argument about the usage of cybersecurity. The aim of this paper is to expose the irony of cybersecurity since it both gives us the advantage of easier communication while it unlocks doors for intrusion. The paper also aims to discuss the prevention measures and to state the challenges faced by the United States federal Agencies in cybercrime. The implementation of cyber security is an important work in process that needs to be maintained to counter cyber-attacks.
Moreover, the cyber systems’ hardware and software have immense potentials but they also generate weaknesses and reduced the view of probable invasions. The openness of cyber systems allows them to be flexible but it also allows minute modification in an element’s designer course to degrade or undermine the system performance.
Furthermore, the threat to the cyber infrastructure is growing and the importance of investing sensibly to guard against recovering, mitigating and detecting from cyber actions is very urgent. To attend to the threat, the administration and the congress have acted since 1980s .

Challenges on Cybersecurity

There is an evolution on threats to systems that holds dangerous infrastructure and national operations. Federal agencies gave reports regarding the rising numbers of cybersecurity occurrences that have positioned susceptible information in danger which possesses plausibly grave impacts on critical infrastructure; military and federal operations; and the accessibility, secrecy and reliability of sensitive personal information, private division and government.
The remarkable rise in reports of security episodes displayed the increasing danger and proves the simplicity of attaining and employing hacking tools. It also showed the solid progress in the cleverness and efficiency of hacking technology . There is an increase of around 782 percent between 2006 and 2012 in the number of incidents stated by agencies of the federal government to the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team.
The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports have recognized several major challenge portions in the approach of the federal government to cybersecurity. The challenge areas incorporate those associated to defending the critical infrastructure of the nation.
There are several problems that are still present in the challenge portions though some actions have been done to tackle the issues. These problems include dealing with worldwide cybersecurity challenges, endorsing research and development (R&D); approving workforce planning, awareness and education; perceiving, reacting to, and extenuating cyber episodes; and scheming and applying risk-based national and critical infrastructure plans.
The challenge in addressing the worldwide cybersecurity challenges is that the administration has not yet defined and implemented the approach to addressing international aspects of cybersecurity entirely. In 2010, GAO suggested the development of a worldwide strategy that specified result-oriented activity timeframes and metrics for carrying out actions. Though there is a cyberspace strategy that is made, there is no specification of the metrics of activities.
The challenge in endorsing the research and development is the obstructions amongst national agencies. There have been hindrances in the research and development activities caused by restricted distribution of meticulous information about current research, counting the need of a storehouse to trail R&D funding and projects as required. The recommendation of GAO includes the establishment of plan for following current and finished federal cybersecurity R&D developments and related funding. GAO also suggested that this system should be used to expand a current process to create national R&D and made information accessible to national organizations and the confidential division .
The challenge in approving workforce planning, awareness and education was that the organization that leads the strategic planning for awareness and education such as the Office of Personnel Management, Department of Homeland Security DHS, Commerce, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) had not created particulars on the method of achieving the plans as well as the tasks and responsibilities to be done were uncertain as reported by GAO in 2011. As a result, GAO suggested that responsibilities must be cleared by the national agencies concerned in the planning and monitoring tasks. GAO also documented that 2 out of the 8 agencies it evaluated created cyber labor force strategy, and 3 out of the 8 agencies had a education course for their cybersecurity personnel. GAO recommends several actions in improving cybersecurity personnel efforts.
Perceiving, reacting to, and extenuating cyber episodes are also challenges. The DHS progressed in organizing the national retort to cyber occasions, but confrontations linger in the distribution of information amongst private sector units and federal organizations, as well as critical infrastructure proprietors in making an appropriate investigation and caution means. Complexity in the allocation and admission of confidential information still restricts the development. The insufficiency in centralized information-sharing system also delays progress. DHS reported that a protected setting for giving out cybersecurity information, at the entire categorization points is not anticipated to be completely prepared until 2018. GAO reported that the division had to create prognostic investigation ability and suggested that DHS spread out potentials to examine incidents. Apparatus for projecting investigation are to be tested in 2013.
Scheming and applying risk-based national and critical infrastructure plans are also recognized as a challenge are by GAO. Inadequacies remain in checking results in both the critical infrastructure and the national administration, applying and developing controls and evaluating risks.
There are only 8 agencies out of 22 major agencies that were reported to comply with risk supervision necessities as stated in the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA). DHS and other sectors did not recognize cybersecurity supervision appropriate to or extensively employed in all of the critical divisions. GAO has sustained to formulate several commendations to tackle limitations in hazard supervision procedures at each national agency and to enhance hard work by agencies to improve significant infrastructure safety .
GAO also developed several desirable characteristics to enhance the effectiveness of government strategies regarding cybersecurity. The characteristics of cybersecurity strategy must have: connection with other major strategy documents; roles and tasks; resources and costs; performance measures and milestones. These characteristics are expected to improve the cybersecurity strategy for defining policies, distributing resources and helping in guaranteeing accountability.

Cybersecurity Framework and Risk Management

Risk management is acurrent procedure of recognizing, evaluating, and taking action to risk. Management of risk requires an understanding of agencies to the probability of the occurrence of an event as well as the consequences. Using the knowledge of risks, the group can decide the tolerable intensity of risk for liberation of services. This can be expresses as risk tolerance.
Organizations can make cybersecurity activities as their main concern with the knowledge of risk tolerance. These actions enable groups to construct knowledgeable choices and conclusions concerning cybersecurity spending. Execution of risk administration plans presents associations the capability to compute and to correspondto the adjustments of their cybersecurity programs. Groups may select handling the risk in diverse conducts, counting the mitigation of the risk, relocating the risk, evading the risk, or tolerating the risk, conditional on the possible consequence of the release of significant services .
The Framework employs procedures in risk management to allow organizations to notify and make cybersecurity as a priority. The frame work sustains frequent risk evaluation and confirmation of industrial factors that helps organizations to choose intended area for activities on cybersecurity that reveals preferred results.
Therefore, the Framework provides agencies the capacity to vigorously choose and control the development in cybersecurity danger supervision for the ICS and IT setting. The Framework is versatile so that it can give abendable and risk-based performance useful to a wide assortment of cybersecurity risk management procedures such as risk administration courses in Special Publication (SP), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and International Organization for Standardization (ISO) .

Conclusion

The cyberspace redefined national security. Cyberspace provides us opportunities; however, it also offered considerable cyberspace challenges. The government departments including the business operations and military are all dependent to the cyberspace for the accomplishment of their operation.
The government faces cyber threats with ruthless impacts that will entail security procedures that go beyond conformities. The present strategy and governmental construction for defending the nation’s cyber communications requires update, revisions and amendments. The government, and the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, OMB, have sufficient lawful influence to implement transformations and improvements that would significantly diminish danger and improve reaction for systems functioned by federal government.
The United States will solve the problem of the new technology by accepting and finding methods to restrict their impedingly harmful and devastating effects. This paper has tried to give a deeper understanding of the cyber technology. The paper has pointed out some priorities for the security of US. Moreover, recommendations are made for the improvement of cybersecurity strategies.
A vital proposal entails unremitting supervision of network processes. Supervision must be important to whichever strategy update to guarantee that national cybersecurity plans tackles the uppermost risk regions and stop uneconomical repetition of endeavors. Government security professionals stated that the existing administration of episodic information and certifications oblige them to use millions of dollars on documentation and procedures that perform slightly to improve protection.

References

Danzig, R. J. (2014). Surviving on a Diet of Poisoned Fruit: Reducing the National Security Risks of America’s Cyber Dependencies. Washington DC: Center for American Security.
GAO. (2013). Cybersecurity National Strategy, Roles, and Responsibilities Need to Be Better Defined and More Effectively Implemented. Washington, DC: United States Government Accountability Office .
National Institute of Standards and Technology. (2014). Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity. National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Reeder, F. S., Chenok, D., Evans, K. S., Lewis, J. A., & Paller, A. (2012). Updating U.S. Federal Cybersecurity Policy and Guidance: spending scarce taxpayer dollars on security programs that work. Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, CSIS.