Homeland Security and International Relations Essay

Homeland Security and International Relations - Essay Example With the internet, you can obtain data and information in the easiest way, but others may use it to harm others in different ways. The growing numbers of incidences and attacks online have revealed that the cyberspace is no longer secure anymore. Hence, securing information has become a critical factor of every organisation and federal agencies whether public or private. Attackers can gain unauthorised information from the organisational information systems and use it to harm the organisation. Hackers can change, steal or even harm the information systems through the internet. To prevent this will call for protection of the internet space by implementing proper cyber security. This will involve protecting information by preventing, detecting and responding to attacks from unauthorised personnel via the internet space. Government agencies are most prone when it comes to cyberspace attacks as they are undertaking an electronic government initiative. More and more agencies are making a move to be connected into the global internet as more cyber-terrorism activities grow very fast becoming a more serious and complicated issue. Discussion areas Questions are being raised as to whether homeland information security is improving over the years. For this to take place, there need to be massive investment in terms of budgetary resources dealing with internal and/or external threat incentives for it to have an effect on the performance of security agencies. The federal government agencies of the United States have a role in improving the situation using security agencies such as homeland security. A background check on the US homeland security status shows that the numbers of cyber-terrorism to government information systems are growing fact. A number of efforts have been made to improve on this and it still remains an issue whether such efforts have been paying off in the improvement of cyberspace security. Government officials and big players in various US industries a gree that cyber-crime and cyber-terrorism are threatening national security as well as the economy of the US. Data loss, computer intrusions and privacy breaches have been common security threats as this puts sensitive information at risk. Identifying information about Americans has been stolen, lost or improperly disclosed and hence posing threats to those individuals in terms of privacy loss, identity theft and financial crimes. It is therefore important that agencies as well as industry players protect their information systems in a consistent and sufficient way, otherwise cyber-terrorists will always be able to find a weak spot and take advantage. Commentary According to Koong, Merhi and Sun (2013), the US government needs to increase the incentives that are in place to positively influence the improvement of security. In the 2010 budget, president Obama proposed that the 2010 budget should include $42.7 for the department of homeland security as an effort to reduce the vulnerab ility of federal agencies. This shows the importance of the budget, to both private and public organisations, as an incentive to improve homeland information security in an attempt to increase defence against internet threat attacks. An