1. GLOBAL RESILIENCY……….
CYBER-LAW AND ITS IMPACT ON CYBER-CRIME
RUSSELL K. DUTCHER, III
CDPS, CBRM, CORM
Business Resilience Consultant
DeDuytser - Advanced Business Continuity Solutions LLC
abcsllc@live.com
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/russ-dutcher/20/5a5/521/
ABSTRACT -
Issues with respect to the proper ownership and
jurisdiction of information contained on the internet
have set the stage for an ongoing legal debate over
Cyber-Law and its impact on Cyber-Crime.
Enhanced Global Cyber-Security and proposed
governing regulations are not a luxury, but a
necessity, for today’s business and government
entities which operate in real time environments. An
amazing amount of information flows through
cyberspace at speeds never before imagined, with
hundreds of millions of various types of transactions
executed and communications received immediately
after they are initiated by senders across the world.
Cyber-Law is a new concept which encompasses a
variety of legal issues related to use of
communicative, transactional, and distributive
aspects of networked information devices and
technologies the Internet. Actually, this field is so
new, that it is more a form of regulation and
compliance than that of an actual set of laws. Many
of the leading discussion topics include intellectual
property, freedom of expression, jurisdiction, E-
commerce, business ethics and individual privacy.
This paper will address the implementation of Cyber-
Law and the impact it has on Cyber-Crime across an
international community.
One of the major obstacles inherent in Cyber-Law is
whether to perceive the Internet as a physical location
with defined boundaries (such as in the case of any
public or private sector entity) or to treat it as if it
were an island unto itself and therefore free of
regulatory jurisdiction. Many in the field of
information and cyber technology feel that it is better
to treat the internet as a separate self regulated
community. Their contention is that increased
governmental regulations from the outside will
distort and paralyze the true example of “Cyber-
expression.” Their assumption is that an individual
should have the right to freely create and disseminate
information throughout the internet without fear of
reprisal or intrusion.
Proponents of a more coordinated approach, stress
that there should be a compromise between the free
expression of individual ideas and the importance of
specific information. Data contained in a single
transaction could be covered by various wide ranging
sets of regulations and thereby set the stage for
excessive legal debates. Within the realm of self
expression and regulatory compliance, lies the
constant threat of cyber crime, for which there is little
or no global governance, standardization and
compliance regarding the cyber-abyss which we call
the internet.
INTRODUCTION -
Cyber crimes are those harmful acts committed from
or against a computer or network and differ from
most standard criminal acts. Cyber crimes are
relatively easy to commit since they generally require
few resources, but have the potential to cause
grievous damage to a system or network.
Additionally, they can be committed in an otherwise
“non-jurisdictional” fashion, whereby the
perpetrators do not need to be physically present to
initiate the illegal act.

2. Examples of this would be the legality of
informational websites from one country to another,
as well as multiple telecommunications providers.
Many of these so called “informational sites” are
nothing more than filters whereby business or
personal information is collected and then utilized by
the host entity without the subscriber’s knowledge.
Due to the lack of a uniform and structured
jurisdictional code, individuals within the legal
community are left to continue to grapple with the
issue of ownership, compliance and accountability.
The anonymity equated with cyberspace has allowed
this new generation of “cyber-criminal” to realign
and re-direct information from one location to
another while utilizing fabricated VPN addresses.
These supposed secure addresses are utilized by an
individual or group to extract both personal and
financial information from unsuspecting clients.
Any unscrupulous person with an internet connection
has the potential to become an “internet predator”
with the capability to reach an audience of millions
with little-to-no effort.
According to a 2009 study conducted by McAfee, It
is estimated that this form of data theft costs global
businesses as much as $1trillion dollars annually due
to security breaches in their IT infrastructure. The
backbone must be continually be repaired and
upgraded to combat the constant attacks upon each
individual network.
The information contained in the report, entitled
“Unsecured Economies: Protecting Vital
Information”, is based on a survey of more than 800
chief information officers based in the United States,
UK, Germany, Japan, China, India, Brazil and Dubai.
Those responding to the survey estimated that
globally they sustained $4.6 billion in losses due to
the pilfering of data from their network and spent
another $600 million in strengthening their IT
infrastructure. The report contained an alarming
contrast and noted that newly emerging countries are
spending substantial amounts of money on upgrading
and protecting their financial and intellectual
resources than their Western business counterparts.
Countries such as China, Australia, Singapore, Iran,
Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia, have drawn a line in the
sand by incorporating a filtering system which strains
unwanted information from the internet. This in one
regard restricts access to certain forms of
information, yet provides an additional layer of
protection from predatory attacks.
This tightening of access to certain types of
information brings to light new questions of state
sponsored censorship, but, provides enhanced
security against continued cyber attacks. But, without
a set of standardized rules and regulations regarding
cyber based data transfers, the continued potential for
cyber-security threats continues to grow which can
further impact the ability of individual security
managers and IT professionals to effectively battle
against cyber-criminals whose sole purpose is to
destroy the global economy.
On March 23, 2010, U.S. Senators Kirsten Gillibrand
(D-NY) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) introduced the
International Cyber crime Reporting and Cooperation
Act -- a new bill designed to discourage global cyber
crime and foster a new global effort of cooperation
among international cyber crime law enforcement
agencies.
This new legislation that would require the U.S.
government to monitor the current cyber crime
indices of other countries and deliver assistance
and/or sanctions to those countries based on the
findings. Also, it will require the president to provide
a global assessment, identify threats from abroad,
work with other countries to crack down on their own
cyber criminals, and urge the President to cut off U.S.
assistance and resources for countries that refuse to
take responsibility for cyber-security.
Incidentally, it may be noted that Malaysia has seen
an increase in cyber related crime from 2007 through
2009 and has documented over 4,000 complaints
which are mostly tied to hacking, fraud, viruses and
denial of service.
Alarmingly, most cases of cyber crime go unreported
and few in number are ever fully investigated or
prosecuted. Though currently, 45 countries have
some type of cyber laws or regulations in place, the
threat of full prosecution in less than substantial.
With limited resources and staffing, most
international enforcement agencies have partnered
with local law enforcement to combat the constant
attack from cyber-criminals which ties directly to the
more alarming threat of cyber-terrorism which
currently (2013) is at epidemic proportions.

3. SUMMARY -
With these continued threats, the laws governing
such acts have not kept up with the growth of the
internet and it still remains a huge challenge to garner
a coordinated effort among the major industrial
nations to effectively produce a set of comprehensive
regulations and laws which will address the
coordinated attacks by cyber enemies who are intent
on destroying current global information
infrastructures and financial networks.
SOURCES -
1) Legislators Propose International Cyber-crime
Cooperation Laws -- With Teeth Mar 23, 2010 | 09:29
PM By Tim Wilson Dark Reading
2) Cyber-crime cost firms $1 trillion globally, McAfee
study says was originally published on CNET
News.com.
3) FBI and Homeland reports 2010 – 2012
regarding cyber-crime and global security.