Week 2 Ongoing Research Studies

How has increased adoption of the Internet opened common users to cyberattacks

What I found

United States. National Telecommunications and Information Administration. (2011). Digital nation: Expanding internet usage. [Washington, D.C.]: U.S. Dept. of Commerce, National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Website

Review of What I Found

In last weeks research I found stats from Verizon’s yearly Data Breach Investigations Report that I could pull statistics from on cyberattacks.  Since I want to correlate the type and quantity of attacks with the increased use of the Internet I needed information covering those metrics.  I was able to find this book which comes from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration has worked Economics and Statistics Administration to produce the reports.  The report is based on surveys of over 50,000 households commissioned by NTIA and conducted by the U. S. Census Bureau.   

This report covers the Internet usage and Internet connectivity for the United States.  The report looks in detail at aspects such as what device is used to connect to the Internet and over what connection type the device connected.  Internet usage is broken down across several different social and economical boundaries including: Race and Ethnicity, Age, Education Level and others.  The last half of the report also looks quite closely at reasons for the Internet not getting adopted.  Similar to the first half information in this section is further analyzed and displayed based on social and economical boundaries.  The report concludes with a few statements on where the trends are going as well as making statements on how this is impacting various social and economical divides such as the rural-urban disparity.

Question 1 - What knowledge did you gain about your topic as a result of the books you looked at this week?

Answer 1 - Most of the books about the Internet do not focus on the aspects I was looking for.  I had to look at research reports that were printed as e-books rather than more traditional books.  A number of reports focused on individual increase in Internet use by smaller countries.  In looking at the books expansion of Internet was very similar from country to country.

Question 2 - What new search strategies were particularly helpful for you in locating books?  Be specific and refer to the notes you took on your search path.

Answer 2 - I did not have to uncover any new search strategies.  I did have to deploy one I have used 

multiple times.  I take results from one search engine and use them as search terms on other search engines.  This allowed me to find a digital version of this book instead of just a reference to the book.

Question 3 - What difficulties or frustrations did you experience when searching for books?

Answer 3 - Not being able to find books that covered a broad enough section of Internet users to draw stats from.  I was also able to find some content referenced but was not able to find the book itself. 

Question 4 - What are you hoping to find out as you continue researching your topic?

Answer 4 - I have basic stats on overall Internet connectivity.  I would like to find information on the growth of Internet services such as Facebook as well.

Researching Strategies for the topic - How has increased adoption of the Internet opened common users to cyberattacks

I selected a report from Verizon

Verizon. (2015).  2015 Data Breach Investigations Report retrieved from http://www.verizonenterprise.com/DBIR/2015/

  Verizon’s yearly Data Breach Investigations Report uses metrics from a variety of security companies to help others manage and prepare for cyber attacks.  The article is primarily written for the internal security teams at companies all over the world to allow them to understand the threat landscape and adequately prepare.  The report is also used by Security Companies as source of product features and the Media for coverage of this space.
    This report is one of a number of topics I could use to collect statistics on cyberattacks including sections on Victim Demographics and various attack types.  The statistics and trends shown in the report give a very good understanding of how the threat landscape has changed over the years
    While searching I used terms like Internet Data Breach.  With the number of news stories in the media covering this topic the search can generate quite a bit of background noise.  So I added .PDF which removed the various news stories.  I will need to repeat this, to locate additional reports on Internet adoption.  I will need these new stats to correlate with the Verizon stats to illustrate how increased Internet adoption has lead to increased cyberattacks.

I left college in 1992 to work full time in the computer security field.  Last year I decided to go back to school to finish my degree.  This created quite a gap in time since I learned in a structured environment, however my professional career in computer security has required quite a bit of research.  The bulk of my earlier career was spent in the technology revolution of the 90’s which brought new security issues requiring new ways of thinking, new ways of establishing computer networks and new technologies to protect new services being brought to market.

In the early 90’s when I connected a new company to the Internet the connection would be direct with no security.  Only a few short years later the security industry had fully blossomed.  Working in the Security field required me to not only learn new technologies to setup and break into networks, but also learn the methods and motives of the attackers.  Without this I would not be able to protect networks from attack.  Then I had to figure out how to patch vendor problems and overlay additional layers of security to cover any of the holes I found. Every new customer network required me to learn something new.  Even when companies used the same technologies they would have different configurations, version numbers, and applications with completely different network architectures sitting between me and the servers I had to test.

This background gives me quite a bit of experience to draw on when writing, giving a talk or approaching the next problem.  Even with this experience to draw on I often need to do research.  I am mainly taking this class to finish my degree.  I am hoping that the class will help me optimize my research, most of which revolves around specific content to use in my job.  Below are links to a blog series I wrote that illustrates this well.  I needed to gather various pieces of information on the growth of the Internet.  I had some strong assumptions but needed the facts to fill in the gaps.  This was especially true for the final part where I also created an infographic.

• Part 1 - Great Cyber Comparison
• Part 2 - Great Cyber Comparison
• Part 3 - Great Cyber Comparison