Cybersecurity: Policy/Tech/Ops

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Cybersecurity has become an issue of national and international security significance. The growth of a nearly ubiquitous global information infrastructure and the availability of affordable, sophisticated information technologies has created an environment with potentially profound effects on the economic, financial, political, diplomatic, military, and technological affairs that shape our world, as well as on social networks that shape and the electoral systems that record our political preferences. Information has become, perhaps, our most valuable resource. Stealing it, altering it, and protecting it have become a high-stakes endeavor. Information technology governs many of our infrastructures, even as its use may become the arbiter of military power. The global information infrastructure also represents a common information environment for citizens, diplomats, businesses, academia, social movements, and intelligence. This course will explore the varying concepts of the use and evolution of cybersecurity, examining the policy implications of its use, its relationship to state sovereignty, its implications for the global private sector, its effects on a nation's critical infrastructure, and its potential effects on the balance of power among nation-states.