We are living in the age of technology and at the same time, we are facing a variety of threats within the IT or cyberspace environment. For example, many of us are carrying credit cards or debit cards now instead of carrying cash to make payment for the purchases. According to The Nest, “The Census Bureau estimates 183 million Americans have credit cards. Of those Americans, 104 million have Visa cards, 83 million have MasterCard, 99 million have a store card, 56 million have an oil company card, and 36 million have an American Express card. There are 1.27 billion cards in use” (Skeen, 2018). For debit cards, according to the MarketWatch, “Americans use debit cards twice as much as credit cards” (Lamagna, 2016). Why are more and more people using credit cards or debit cards nowadays? I think it is because it is more convenient and more secure. For example, when traveling and booking for a hotel, it is much easier to use cards to book a hotel room or restaurant reservations. Now in most of the cases, the hotel requires their customers to provide the credit card or debit card information, and the person's name, addresses, phone number for the reservation. This request has become a norm or common procedure for the hotel to book a room for the guests. If the hotels have good methods to collect and keep the customers’ information safely, this would help their guests to protect their sensitive information. If the hotels don’t have good methods to collect and keep the customers’ information safely, both the hotels and their customers would run into a serious security problem.
Two weeks ago, there was shocking news about the data breach. The news broke that Marriott’s Starwood guest reservation database encountered a data security incident. The data breach impacted hundreds of millions of guests who made reservations at a Starwood property that runs a number of hotels, including the St. Regis and Westin chains. The information at risk includes name, phone number, mailing address, email addresses, passport numbers, birth dates, arrival/departure dates and information, and potentially credit card numbers of the customers. This data breach was considered “the second largest data security breach in history” (2018, U.S. Gov Connect). It was just after two record-setting Yahoo hacks.
Since the data breach was focusing on the information of the large percentage of the world’s travelers “that Marriott may have been the target of nation-state hackers seeking to track the movements of diplomats, spies, military officials and business executives” (Timberg, Telford, 2018). In recent years, when there are many conflicts among the US, China, Soviet Union, North Korea, and Iran and when something like this happens, it always makes me think the hackers must come from those. For this particular data breach, it was assumed that “Chinese intelligence could have been involved in the data breach that affected 500 million guests who have made reservations with hotels under Marriott's Starwood division” (Chong, 2018).
Private investigators believe China was the culprit of the Marriott data breach because the similar tools, techniques, and procedures have been used in earlier cyberattacks that have been linked to Chinese hackers. In the coming years, I would say these countries, especially China, would cause more data breaches, more cyberattacks and the targets are mainly companies, government offices, and households in the US. It’s because President Trump has imposed “tariffs on $200 billion worth of goods and was prepared to tax all imports” (Bradsher, Tankersley, 2018) from China. The acts that President Trump has done really make China angry and they wants different ways to retaliate againts President Trump and the US.
China often tried to steal intellectual information from the US. As you can see, within the last four decades, they can build their own their aircraft carrier. They can build the J-10 fighter that has many same features and functions as the F-22 or F-35 steal fighters of the US. The US has invested millions of dollars and efforts to build those fighters and it took years to build those aircraft. How is it possible China can build the aircraft carrier and the most advanced J-10 fighters in a short time? Do you think they built them by their own knowledge? I would not think so. The tension between the US and China will continue to increase based on the economy and military since China wants to dominate the world and the US does not want that to happen. Therefore, more data breaches and cyberattacks will happen.
Reference:
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/americans-use-debit-cards-twice-as-much-as-credit-cards-2016-12-28
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