6. ■ Cyberterrorism is the premeditated, politically motivated attack against information, computer
systems, computer programs, and data which result in violence against noncombatant targets by
sub-national groups or clandestine agents. - by TechTarget
■ Cyberterrorism is the convergence of cyberspace and terrorism. It refers to unlawful attacks and
threats of attacks against computers, networks and the information stored therein when done to
intimidate or coerce a government or its people in furtherance of political or social objectives. - by
Gabriel Weiman in United Institute of Peace report.
■ The premeditated use of disruptive activities, or the threat thereof, against computers and/or
networks, with the intention to cause harm or further social, ideological, religious, political or similar
objectives. Or to intimidate any person in furtherance of such objectives. - Wikipedia
Cyber Terrorism definitions
7. There are various reasons why cyber attacks are an attractive choice for terrorists.
Few of them are:
■ No need to cross physical barrier.
■ Identity is kept a secret.
■ Easy to attack.
■ Fast flow of information.
■ Little or no regulation.
■ Huge audience.
Motivations of Cyber-Terrorists
8. This paper has two primary goals.
They are :
1. Develop a conceptual framework for cyber terrorism.
2. Verification of this conceptual framework.
Goal of the paper
9. Mixed method research is a combination of two types of research methodologies.
Methodologies :
1. Qualitative research methodology and
2. Quantitative research methodology
Mixed-Method Research
10. Qualitative Research methodology
■ It is primarily interpretive research technique.
■ It is used to gain an understanding of underlying reasons, opinions, and
motivations.
■ It provides insights into the problem or helps to develop ideas or hypotheses for
potential quantitative research.
Advantages:
It allows for the discovery of new ideas.
Used to build a theory around a particular phenomena or process.
Here the phenomena is “Cyber-
Terrorism”.
11. ■ It is primarily a validating technique.
■ It is used for testing or verification of conceptual framework that describes the
phenomena via statistical, mathematical or computational techniques.
Advantages
For achieving precise measurement of participants behaviour or knowledge.
Quantitative Research methodology
12. Suitability of Mixed Method Research
Mixed method approach helps to answer questions that cannot be answered by
qualitative or quantitative approaches alone.
■ Qualitative research approaches seek to explore phenomena
■ Quantitative research approaches seek to confirm hypotheses about
phenomena.
By unifying both the methodologies, strengths are amplified and weaknesses are
lessened.
It is also able to answer broader and more complete range of research problems
in a study.
13. Knowledge Management Architecture
The development of conceptual framework describing cyber terrorism is done by
using the grounded theory method.
Grounded theory method :
It is a step-by-step process that involves generating a conceptual model (or
theory) that is grounded in the data.
14. Egan’s grounded theory framework.
There are multiple architectures for grounded theory approach. The authors
choose to adopt the Egan’s recommendation.
15. Step 1 - Initiation of Research
■ Involves the selection of an area of inquiry.
■ The research begins with an awareness of the context of the research by
reviewing literatures relevant to the area of inquiry.
16. ■ Involves the identification of potential data sources associated with the
research questions.
■ The respondents are chosen from various expert positions to reflect variety of
expertise.
Step 2 - Data Selection
17. Step 3 - Data Collection
■ Initiation of data collection from targeted respondents.
■ It is an ongoing process, whereby the researcher can return to the
interviewees for clarification and elaboration.
■ Also compares related documents or records with data collected in the initial
stage of the research.
18. Step 4 - Data Analysis
■ Involves a constant comparison method for generating and analyzing data.
■ It is a process of systematically searching and arranging the interview
transcripts, field notes and other materials with the objectives to increase the
understanding.
19. Step 5 - Concluding the research
■ Involves documenting the grounded theory based on researcher observation
of the data saturation and sufficient theory which has emerged from the data.
Data saturation: It is the evident when data collection no longer contributes to
elaboration of the phenomenon.
Once the theory discovery and conceptual framework have been developed, the
next stage is to test or verify the conceptual framework.
20. The framework of research methodology
To achieve theory discovery and verification within a single research project, the
Quantitative and Qualitative methodologies are used together.
By combining both the research methods, validated conceptual framework for
Cyber terrorism was developed.
23. Conclusion
■ The study of understanding similarities and differences in perception of what
constitutes cyber terrorism can provide insight on the concept of cyber
terrorism.
■ The outcome of this study serves the basis for various strategic decisions for
policy and decision makers as well as useful foundation for academic
research.
■ The paper describes the framework of research methodology, where the
combination of Qualitative and Quantitative techniques are combined to
discover the theory around a phenomenon and to verify it.
24. Relevance to our project - Project proposal
Our project focuses on the methods to improve the efficiency of existing
techniques to identify potentially harmful websites.
To increase the performance of existing techniques we propose to use image
analysis techniques like pixel comparison in addition to text analysis.
25. Relevance to our project
■ To collect the text and image sources, we can use mixed-research method
to construct a framework and verify it.
■ Once the websites are identified, it is easy to identify people connected with
them and after further analysis we should be able to collect more quality data
about the terrorist recruitments, financial aid that helps in understanding
perception management.
■ Once we are able to discover the potential victims (i.e,) the people who are
being influenced, we can use the grounded-theory method to develop a
framework for perception management .
26. Greedy-mixed method
1. Define the challenge.
2. Collect appropriate data from any relevant source to develop and test
hypotheses.
3. Rigorously examine those data for obvious and hidden patterns.
4. Analyze the findings.
5. Present the results for peer review and audience education.
