I need help creating a thesis and an outline on How Prepared the United States in Responding to a Cyber Emergency. Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide. An abstract is required. This makes it necessary for organizations and governments to be prepared to deal with such emergencies. This paper attempts to evaluate how prepared the United States is in responding to a cyber emergency.
Cases of cyber-attacks against important infrastructure in the United States have been on the increase. These attacks do just affect a single department or machine but instead affect the entire economy, national security, and social lives. Computer networks have become a critical component of the national infrastructure. According to a statement given to the Committee on Homeland Security in 2012 by Gregory Wilshusen, the director of Information Security Issues, the country faces several cyber threats from different sources. These threats can either be intentional or unintentional. The unintentional sources include software upgrades and defective equipment that may affect systems. However, most of these threats are intentional, and these come from criminal groups, terrorists, hackers, foreign nations, and insiders (Wilshusen, 2012). These threats have increased the vulnerabilities of critical federal systems and infrastructure. These threats have significant effects on the operations of the government and related departments. These include loss of resources, inappropriate and unauthorized access to critical information, disruption of government operations, and undermining of the government (Wilshusen, 2012).
The government’s ability to deal with such attacks depends on the overall preparedness in three key areas. The first is risk management, which mainly involves understanding the different security risks and how they affect the government and the population. This involves identifying the key assets, analyzing and classifying the threats, and understanding a security threat’s impact.
