The Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS)
The Center for Education and Research inInformation Assurance and Security (CERIAS)
Eugene H. Spafford, a computer security professor at Purdue University, was not convinced that the arrests last week would serve as a deterrent. Rather, he said, it could prompt others to be more careful in the future and even prompt retaliatory strikes. “A whole bunch of people were angry, they didn’t really think about whether it was legal or not. It never entered their minds,” Professor Spafford said. “This was kind of the equivalent of a spontaneous street protest, where they may have been throwing rocks through windows but never thought that was against the law or hurting anybody.”
“The climate the press has created is that hackers are somehow supernatural and can’t be stopped; everybody falls victim,” says Gene Spafford, a Purdue University computer professor and executive director of its Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security. “So long as the head of IT can say ‘It happens to everybody, even the government and security vendors,’ it will be difficult to blame them for not taking appropriate measures.”
According to a survey conducted by Purdue University and the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS) in association with McAfee, as much as $1 trillion of intellectual property is stolen by cybercriminals each year.
