CYBER ATTACKS ON ENERGY AND FINANCIAL SECTOR Thesis Proposal

CYBER ATTACKS ON ENERGY AND FINANCIAL SECTOR - Thesis Proposal Example US Financial sector is largest in the world and billions of dollars are transacted through this system not only within US but also across the border. The relative penetration of the financial system into the very fabric of American society therefore gives financial sector a more critical place within the modern American society. With the advances in technology, most of the transactions in the financial sector take place online with the help of the internet and other information technology tools. Such high dependence on the information technology therefore makes the system highly vulnerable to the external threats including the cyber attacks. Similarly, the energy sector is critical for the survival of the country because most of the manufacturing and our daily activity is supported by this sector. A complete collapse of this system therefore will put the country as stand still and probably no economic activity can be conceived without the support of the energy sector. Another important dimension of the cyber spying on the energy sector is basically to extract important information regarding the potential energy deposits which US companies explore all over the world and a systematic attack on this information therefore can cost Billions to US economy if it goes into wrong hands. It is believed that Chinese hackers are trying to intrude into the systems of the energy companies with specific target of extracting the important data on the oil and gas exploration. (Yemma, 2010) These arguments therefore indicate that any type of cyber attacks on these two sectors can be significant from the point of view of the homeland security. Easy access to technology and significant improvement in the knowledge base of the cyber criminals and terrorists, it is really easy to conceive a cyber attack of any magnitude on both these sectors. It is therefore, really critical a pro-active approach to be adapted by the security agencies of US including homeland