Problem of Cyber Security - Essay Example

Cyber security refers to the body of technologies, processes, and practices designed to protect networks, computers, programs, and data from attack, damage, or unauthorized access. In a computing context, the word security is used to denote cyber security. Effective cyber security employs coordinated efforts throughout the information system. Some of the major elements of cyber security include end-user education, application security, disaster recovery/ business continuity planning, network security, and information security (Marshall, 85).

World governments devote huge sums of their annual budgets towards enhancing cyber security with the United States, in particular, in 2010 allocating over 13 million USD annually for the next 5 years to cyber security. The traditional way of ensuring cyber security has been to dedicate most of the effort and resources to the most crucial system components in attempts to keep in check the biggest known threats while partly neglecting some less important system components. However, this method has proved greatly insufficient, especially in the age of the rapidly and constantly changing nature of security risks. Most cyber security measures are now embracing guidelines in their risk assessment framework that recommends a shift towards continuous monitoring and real-time assessments (Singer and Allan, 112).