Cyber Terrorism

Essay from the year 2003 in the subject Business economics - Miscellaneous, grade: 2,0 (B), Stellenbosch Universitiy (Business School), language: English, abstract: The dependency on Information Systems and Technology is a given fact of today's world either in public or in business. But this dependency also creates vulnerabilities in form of new targets for particular groups instead of the supposed improvements of overall life quality. Cyber attacks therefore pose complex problems to national security and public policy as well as to the economy. Cyber terrorism occurs in the virtual world of bits and is being seen as a convergence of terrorism and cyberspace. It can take place in simple structured styles up to complex coordinated ways of attacking and should be differentiated in conventional or unique manners of execution. To provide a deeper understanding of the field of cyber terrorism it is investigated with the method of 'semiotics'. This is be done through the Morphological, Empirical, Syntactical, Semantic and Pragmatic layer to be able to classify and categorize cyber terrorism on risk and the rate of impact. The concluding part deals with the economic costs of cyber terrorism on the hand and provides a prevention model for terrorism on the other. Economic costs do not only cover the direct costs involved for security there are as well opportunity cost involved which have to be taken into account. The loss of intellectual property, the lower productivity caused by cyber attacks and the hurt of third party liability are non monetary measures for the ladder. The prevention model is based on the cybernetic approach to build up a system where the complex structure of 'cause and affect' of the anti terrorism variables is incorporated. The sensitivity of this tough system is shown on some particular elements. The model provides a network for the development of sustainable solutions to limit the overall economical costs of the fight against terrorism.