Cyber Terrorism

Cyber-terrorism and Finance

When the Information Age dawned upon mankind , there were only a few who truly understood what it meant . For many the soon to be dramatic change in how communication and businesses will be run was never really expected . The Information Age is a period in human history that came about after the merging of two major technologies the Internet and Computers . It can be argued that the computers came first and that without these supercomputing machines there would be no Internet . But on the other hand without the Internet

computers are still in the hands of government and would not have become as popular a tool as it is today But with its growing importance and rapidly evolving technology , the whole world is feeling its negative impact as well . And as quickly as it became popular among the general population it also became a favorite tool for criminals and terrorists . Cyber terrorism from a financial point of view is just as disturbing and frightening as exploding incendiary devices in public places

This will take a closer look at the relationship between cyber-terrorism and the Internet , with an eye towards the financial aspect of terrorism and how terrorists can potentially use modern technology to steal and divert money for their operations . This will also provide an overview of Information Technology and the steps that can be done to prevent cyber-crime from being launched in homes and offices . If more and more people become more security conscious it would be harder for terrorists to improve on their high-tech and illegal fund raising activities

Information Technology

There is no need to elaborate on the mind-boggling capabilities of computers to do a ton of work in just a fraction of a second . In a snap of a finger computers can complete a task that would have required many hours of manual labor for humans . The familiar Microsoft Excel allows the user to simply input long lists of numbers and then when all the information is encoded the user will only have to click one button from the digital interface and the computer ca do all the mathematical operations for him . The Internet on the other hand allowed for the networking of computers and multiplied its power several times by allowing computer systems to share information . The Internet also allows a very popular feature of IT and this is the ability given to users for remote access and various remote applications

Part of the success of IT components is due to the collaboration of programmers , vendors , and users to work on bugs and other glitches that would have rendered computer systems useless as it became more complicated . But on the contrary designers and vendors have been adding features on a regular basis and instead of having a huge machine that is slowing down due to the many additions to its supposed functionality the 21st century computer is smaller in dimensions and yet able to provide one hundred times more power...