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Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are an emerging technology consisting of small, low-power devices that integrate limited computation, sensing and radio communication capabilities. The technology has the potential to provide flexible infrastructures for numerous applications, including healthcare, industry automation, surveillance and defense. Wireless sensor networks promise an unprecedented fine-grained interface between the virtual and physical worlds. They are one of the most rapidly developing new information technologies, with applications in a wide range of fields including industrial process control, security and surveillance, environmental sensing, and structural health monitoring.
A wireless sensor network is a wireless network consisting of spatially distributed autonomous devices using sensors to cooperatively monitor physical or environmental conditions, such as temperature, sound, vibration, pressure, motion or pollutants, at different locations. The development of wireless sensor networks was originally motivated by military applications such as battlefield surveillance. However, wireless sensor networks are now used in many civilian application areas, including environment and habitat monitoring, healthcare applications, home automation, and traffic control.
In addition to one or more sensors, each node in a sensor network is typically equipped with a radio transceiver or other wireless communications device, a small micro controller, and an energy source, usually a battery. The envisaged size of a single sensor node can vary from shoebox-sized nodes down to devices the size of grain of dust, although functioning 'motes' of genuine microscopic dimensions have yet to be created. The cost of sensor nodes is similarly variable, ranging from hundreds of dollars to a few cents, depending on the size of the sensor network and the complexity required of individual sensor nodes. Size and cost constraints on sensor nodes result in corresponding constraints on resources such as energy, memory, computational speed and bandwidth. A sensor network normally constitutes a wireless ad-hoc network, meaning that each sensor supports a multi-hop routing algorithm (several nodes may forward data packets to the base station). In computer science and telecommunications, wireless sensor networks are an active research area with numerous workshops and conferences arranged each year.
The applications for WSNs are many and varied. They are used in commercial and industrial applications to monitor data that would be difficult or expensive to monitor using wired sensors. They could be deployed in wilderness areas, where they would remain for many years (monitoring some environmental variables) without the need to recharge/replace their power supplies. They could form a perimeter about a property and monitor the progression of intruders (passing information from one node to the next). There are many uses for WSNs. Typical applications of WSNs include monitoring, tracking, and controlling. Some of the specific applications are habitat monitoring, object tracking, nuclear reactor controlling, fire detection, traffic monitoring, etc. In a typical application, a WSN is scattered in a region where it is meant to collect data through its sensor nodes. Another class of application is the so-called smart space.
Ever since the beginning of the internet, cyber crime has been an issue. What is cyber crime? Have you ever gotten a virus, or even gotten hacked? These are very common cyber crimes. Cyber criminals hack into networks, create virus, and can even steal your financial information. Though we are all aware that this is a possibility when housing our information on computers, we often think that it will never happen to us.
Though cyber crime could potentially be financially devastating to the average person, it is possible to cause catastrophic repercussions by political extremists that could misuse the Internet for acts of cyber terrorism. What exactly is Cyber Terrorism? It is when a person or persons use the anonymity and global reach of the internet for their own personal gain, such as, terrorist attacks on U.S. information infrastructure in attempts to seal money, identities and classified data. They can also use the internet as a tool to find like-minded extremists to help them attempt to hack their way into corporate and/or government networks.
Michael Alcorn, Branch Chief in the State Department's Office of Anti-Terrorism Assistance had this to say about cyber terrorism, "The problem we're all facing is a global borderless problem, where attacks can occur anywhere in the world and originate from anywhere else in the world."
Though he said this in 2005, it still rings true today. Attacks could happen at any time, in any location, against any person or institution. The only way to combat this is to have individuals that have cyber security education which are specialized in fighting against cyber terrorism and cyber criminals. These people are known as cyber security professionals.
What does a cyber security professional do? They coordinate an organization's information security preparedness, educate users on computer security, respond to sophisticated cyber attacks, gather data and evidence to be used when prosecuting cybercrimes such as credit card fraud, auction fraud, intellectual property theft, pedophilia, terrorism, hacking and they monitor the network for any security breaches. Normally they are employed by local, state and federal law enforcement agencies. At times cyber security professionals may be called on to engage in computer crime investigations this is known as Cyber Forensics. This is an emerging field, and because of technology advances, this filed will ways be changing along with technology. Cyber security professionals must keep up to date with changes and technology and be lifelong learners within their field.
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