Front cover - IBM Redbooks

purposes, either to gain financially from it or to willfully corrupt or destroy what
they find (they are usually referred to as black hat hackers, or sometimes as
crackers).
No matter what their inclination, these hackers are an IT systems nightmare for
organizations of all sizes. Even well-intentioned hackers can create conditions
that expose the information contained in an organization’s IT systems and create
the potential for this information to be destroyed, corrupted, or accessed by less
scrupulous people.
Worse, it is not only white and black hat hackers that IT managers need to worry
about, but also the very users that use the services of the IT infrastructure. Most
of the time, the users are not malevolent; they simply make mistakes. But even
innocent errors can affect an organization’s knowledge capital, and well-meaning
users can be fooled into disclosing important information that exposes
knowledge capital to sinister forces.
1.1.2 The CSI/FBI Computer Crime and Security Survey
To look at how bad things are presently, here is an interesting quote:
“The United States' increasing dependency on information technology to
manage and operate our nation's critical infrastructures provides a prime
target to would be cyber-terrorists. Now, more than ever, the government and
private sector need to work together to share information and be more
cognitive of information security so that our nation's critical infrastructures are
protected from cyber-terrorists.”
This quote is from the CSI/FBI Computer Crime and Security Survey, which is
available in electronic format directly from the Computer Security Institute (CSI)
at the following URL:
http://www.gocsi.com/forms/fbi/pdf.html
The CSI and FBI
CSI, which was established in 1974, is a San Francisco-based association of
information security professionals. It has thousands of members worldwide and
provides a wide variety of information and education programs to assist
practitioners in protecting the information assets of corporations and
governmental organizations.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in response to an expanding number
of instances in which criminals have targeted major components of information
and economic infrastructure systems, has established the National Infrastructure
Chapter 1. Fundamentals of IT security 5