Shawn Henry: Threat Analysis Reflection, Essay Example

It’s interesting that Henry states that early cyber attacks were perceived to be done by teenagers and then later, assessments were made and it was discovered that it wasn’t an action done merely by teenagers but also by people paid to do it by other governments. Now Henry states that there are thousands of cyber attacks on a daily basis from all age groups and all walks of life, for all different types of reasons. Something that is interesting to note here is that cyber attacks are also done by the mafia. This would not readily occur to a layperson: that the mob or organized crime would be involved with anything cyber related but it makes sense since those types of organizations rely on money laundering and there’s no better place or way to do that than the internet.

Something else that Henry said was the foreign governments are also attacking websites in order to get at state secrets. Now that all of America’s data is digitally stored it makes it perfect fodder for stealing secrets, especially defense secrets. Henry mentioned 9/11 as a worst-case scenario of state secrets being compromised. If a country’s secrets of defense are kept on a digital platform that’s been compromised then it becomes a weak state. The FBI is handling this possible threat by recruiting tech savvy individuals with degrees in order to curtail such infiltration into state secrets, instead of having FBI agents try to learn code. It seems a good way to go about planning a defense. Henry said secret agents are all of the time working on undercover surveillance in order to assess potential threats. This forward thinking FBI is progressive in nature and this makes it is an established government agency that has proven itself successful in curtailing threats and keeping the country’s best kept state secrets just what they are, secrets.