Security Requirements as an Engineering Challenge
By Milica D. Djekic
Independent researcher, Subotica, The Republic of Serbia
Abstract
Engineering challenges have appeared throughout time as their primary goal was to resolve some problems of their epoch. In an era of the ongoing crises, security is something which has become an imperative to many. Today the world is literally dependable on technological solutions, but those products and services are not necessarily safe and secure for usage. In other words, safety and security are topics which should be studied deeply as technical systems of nowadays could overcome those concerns. The main aim of progressive economies is a sustainable development as such a course only can bring benefits to the global population. On the other hand, the mission of security is to serve for betterment in a national, regional and international context in order to offer higher quality of life to people, as well as less fear from the crime to everyone. It seems the targets of continuing development and security are in a certain sense very similar, so any engineering project is in true need for security demands. The role of this effort is to provide a quite studious review into overall issues needed to be tackled at this stage.
Keywords
Technology, Intelligence, Defense, Innovation, Engineering Challenges, etc.
- Introduction
The road the humankind walks is overwhelmed with so many ups and downs. At some moment, people can believe they will see the light, but so suddenly the entire darkness can cover the globe making the lives of many being so cloudy. The current situation makes people to participate within a pretty asymmetric landscape as physical, information, financial and health threats are appealingly arising. The point of the asymmetric warfare is its actors can create a condition which is capable to concentrate the power of action on behalf of the minority. Maybe the 9/11 terrorist attacks sacrificed just a couple of jihadists on one side and killed tens thousands innocent civilians on the other side, but the picture being made from those puzzles suggests those several terrorists had the entire organization behind them. That terrorist organization carefully prepared the attacks making conditions to get the power in their hands. It was seriously tough lesson from the history, but those militants did not stop there as their greed for dominance is blood thirsty. Also, the modern threats are able to lead cyber warfare putting the innocent humans under risk from being afraid for their critical infrastructure. It seems the power of terrorist organizations is in their capacity to target strategically significant infrastructure such as physical, information and financial facilities, as well as the health of the total global population applying some of the harshest bio-weapons. The bio-terrorism is a crime area and if there is an illness which can kill or impact many it’s obvious the entire countries will lose their residents who are, indeed, critical infrastructure as without people there are no nations which is a crucially catastrophic effect to the entire international community. The living and healthy people can re-build their economies no matter how severe the consequences of the Great Recession are. Apparently, they can handle high-tech challenges if they are well and above all, they can repair all the physical damage being left after some terrorist operations. The way of recruiting new members to some terrorist groups is done through brainwashing psychological campaigns hitting people’s ratio and causing mental health disorders. In such a case, the jihadists used multimedia contents for their propaganda and as many of common persons became mentally sick it was not enough, but they selected to ruin the overall health condition of the organism leaving the millions of victims behind their bloody venture. It looks like they were spying on the global population all this time carefully collecting intelligence about how the world works. They caught many on nap and made the real planetary disaster. Indeed, it can take decades before the civilization recovers from such concerning events as many generations were captured with someone’s unmerciful strategies. The life is hard; that’s the lesson many can understand.
The western societies keen to be open and welcome anyone nice no matter of their origin. That approach is the deepest assumption of the modern democracy. In developed world, colorfulness is advantage giving an opportunity to mix, grow and get mature with other nationalities, cultures and religions. For instance, blood relation with someone who is from another speaking area can mean a blessing, but in the part of the world where nationalism is strong such connections might be a reason for conflicts. In other words, if it is compared why some countries will see the same situation in some way, while the others will see that identical in a totally opposite manner the point can be so obvious. The government of the open society will advocate for positive selection, skill and working habits, while the political cream of the concerning country will allow negative choice, crime and the lack of order on their territory.
Through great global migrations starting in the 20th century the world’s population will mix and from the ongoing point of view, the global environment will scale on the side of those who make a proclamation of the unhealthy habits. There is an entire set of concerning regions worldwide and the main reason why the situation is like so there is a lot of corruption amongst the people in position with power. The crime is a global challenge since the ancient ages and if the country loses its strength and becomes vulnerable to corruption coming from the criminal underworld there are the big chances the entire community will turn into wrong. Hence, the western societies carefully choose who will gain an access to their communities as there always can be intruders who can try to spread their influence among the members of public. It takes skill to covert someone from good citizen into the threat to everyone. In such a case, the targeted groups are children, adolescents and young adults as they yet did not reach a maturity and they still deal with the child-like curiosity being directed to explore, learn and experience as they have never been warned about the consequences of those actions. If they like what someone with recruiting skill proposed they can find as enjoyable to follow that path believing they can experiment with their life style as they can do anything else. Some of them might be attracted to something new and different as in their opinion; that will enrich their life. Once they recognize the real situation they will already be in trouble with a minimum chance to escape. The main problem with corruption is the entire governments can receive a bribe from the criminal and terroristic organizations in order to morgue anyone with patriotic feelings to be blindly protective about the national interests which can be threatened from this or that reason from anyone inside or outside, but never from those crime groups which must pawn that from their perspective; transit route for illegal activities. The true patriots are ready to give their lives for their people and as corrupted politicians and their bosses cope with a skill to ever be demystified the members of the legal system will need to gather the evidence in order to obtain the real situational awareness. Practically, there are still some obstacles to prove a corruption in some case, but with unstoppable technological progress and networking via information-communication systems some lights of motion forward in such a sense are getting visible.
The modern legal systems mainly use e-governance to keep records and track what the members of society do. Also, the banking sector can keep track about all their clients as those users can open a bank account using true or counterfeited ID documents which is from nowadays perspective possible to smash. Indeed, the similar situation is with telecommunication assets that need some kind of identification and saved data about someone’s identity. In other word, it’s up to an identity management to allow or restrict someone’s access to that critical infrastructure. The corruption can be proved monitoring the bribe receiver actions and activities, as well as putting under tracking all accounts someone copes with. Apparently, there is an entire well-developed methodology how to confirm someone’s identity and such a practice can mostly help authorities to lawfully resolve investigation with a quite high percentage of success. All these are about cyber defense and anyone dealing with such a field of technology and security has a powerful weapon being capable to provide a response to many criminology challenges. Across the globe, there are a plenty of undeveloped and developing countries which are too weak to combat crime and terrorism or their political establishment even collects a bribe in order to let bad actors pawn their societies and the entire regions. That’s why there are so many concerning areas worldwide and the gravest fear to the rest of the globe is those bad guys could try to physically, technologically, financially and mentally enter progressive economies reflecting the situation from their motherland to a total international community.
The terrorism is an expensive business and there must be some supporters who would pay for such actions. Therefore, this is not a conspiracy theory, but mainly a scenario being exploited per decades back in order to make the world being an unsafe place to live and operate in. In other words, every such situation has its background and what is crucially needed is a balance between the forces of offence and defense. If there are no serious steps being taken the stuffs as Great Recessions, pandemics and unrests are more than expected in the coming times. Regarding such an opinion there are yet some contours of light suggesting this world can keep a step with sustainable development and progress which the majority of civilized world targets to reach.
The malicious actors do networking with each one relying on emerging technologies which leaves a trace within information-communication grids. In other words, if all fishes are in net, that means a good catch for fishing man. In a modern time, anything happening in cyberspace copes with some footage that can be tracked. Even if there is no communication device signal at the incident spot there are the entire techniques, methods and tactics how to get someone’s whereby at any time. Everything being mentioned in this effort is correlated with high-tech security which is a very powerful weapon in hands of the good guys as it covers a wide spectrum of cutting-edge technologies being capable to respond to any challenge. The current degree of the industrial development is quite high, but technologies being available today will be improved and innovated as time goes on. The 2nd and 3rd industrial revolutions were age of inventions and discoveries as there have been a lot of patents, ingenious solutions and the other endeavors in the fields of electrical and electronics engineering. The ongoing industrial landscape is deeply in correlation with digital transformation which gave a chance to use the outcomes of the previous epochs in a brand-new way. It seems the modern engineers are literally playing with glasses as they are curious and amazing as the majority of bright and good children are. In an overview above, there have been some words about the significance of the well-controlled and safe progress as a reply on ongoing trends and tendencies in a security environment. The given lesson from history is difficult and emerging threats were so close to take control over a global situation as the humankind was pressed more than ever, but with cyber security and careful work in that area the legal systems have turned the situation on their behalf.
The point is a good synergy of the analytics in both – cyber defense and investigation – can contribute to a very high percentage of the successfully and lawfully resolved cases. Indeed, the ongoing occurrences at the global scale seek a completely novel approach to security as the current engineering solutions could demonstrate an adequate response to anything happening within nowadays communities. The ultimate indicator to progress is how well the global population lives and works over the planet and from such a perspective; it’s obvious today’s international condition is deeply concerning, but not irresolvable as a time of golden opportunities still needs to arrive. The mankind’s learning curve is pretty promising as the human beings can make many of so, but also they can destroy all they created in a piece of moment. For such a reason, the human race needs to work on their mental health hygiene trying to clean their sub-awareness from conflicting thoughts, emotions and memories. The best way of learning is from the own mistakes and only if the people adopt such habits the wheel of the history will go forward, not backward. It appears the ugly past experiences are the main trigger to further irrationality as they can run a plenty of conflicting replies such as inappropriate behavior, sick ideas and unpredictable actions. The human being is not a machine as the humans are a biological system which can react to something – not only calculate how to tackle some problem-solving task. The tough experiences leave a track to the people’s inner world and it’s needed to handle any such a case skillfully in order to support someone returning a ratio after so many drama and trauma.
From a today’s point of view, some of them are responsible to extremely hard experiences the generations of humans have to pass through a modern history. By this, it’s meant that the threats of nowadays are making such a scenario in order to affect and seriously shake the global order as they believe they can become the new rulers of the world. That situation will leave non-returnable consequences to the global communities as time of crises takes too many times. Some experts believe that every difficult condition is capable to make a selection and as the theory of evolution suggests those most adaptive will survive. On the other hand, there is something in a claim that any competitive force adapts and never gives up from its mission. The hard times have produced resilient people who can operate under the heaviest conditions. Differently saying, the point is to convert a weakness into strength which is feasible only through developing useful countermeasures which can recognize and cover all known defense challenges for being suspended to even attempt to occur. In other words, if there are the findings about some risk being capable to turn into an exploiter of some vulnerabilities, those information can be applied to at best prevent or at least manage such a concern at an acceptable level.
The security is about the risk management and the widely used best practice of today can cope with a positive epilogue to some investigation following its procedures. Apparently, the weakness is something that can be used to hurt someone or something, but if the appropriate response is prepared it is possible to remove such a threat. It might take time to obtain so, while some operations are time-consuming – but the risk will sooner or later be mitigated providing a freedom to those being exploited. The ultimate goal of criminology is a prevention of the crime and for such an aim it’s necessary to analyze all possible criminal scenarios in order to predict an upcoming incident trying to even avoid its committing. The future of criminology could belong to predictive analytics as if all holes in society are closed, the chance from getting access via them can be importantly decreased. Indeed, if the incident can be forecasted using a rational and analytical methodology, there could be more options to build up smarter, safer and more secure communities within some country, region or internationally, so far.
The modern technologies are engineering solutions and the world must be guided to conduct a well-controlled and secure progress as some dark experiences from the past could be avoided. For instance, if there is produced a speed enforcement system for traffic security some countermeasures to its misusing and exploitation should be developed. In other words, those technical products must be secured in both – physical and high-tech manner – as the risk from communication collapse and hacking attack would be put at a reasonable level. In other words, any new industrial tendency needs to in parallel develop and deploy countermeasures to any technical advancement. By that, it is considered that any solution would have a counter-solution which could provide an opportunity to safely manage any risk appearing on surface and apparently; deeply below that area. Indeed, the iceberg is not only that being seen on the top as there are yet a lot of hiding segments which go below the frontiers of the water. As there is no a perfect crime there cannot be an absolute security and no matter how some suggestions can look like as superior at one moment they can also demonstrate a heap of weaknesses for a reason the criminals will not easily give up from their business – they will rather change their community or simply make a transition from one crime area to another. The fact is the criminal and terrorist organizations became forcing nowadays and as any physical type with belt they have selected to offend the entire international landscape. Someone should stop them in their venture which lasts several decades and which was prepared probably many times before. Such a threat must be taken seriously as the consequences of those actions totally distracted the lives of many. There are a plenty of losses and victims on the legal side and the majority of innocent civilians still suffer all brutality and bizarreness coming from the operations and campaigns of the bad actors.
The civilization will survive such a challenge only if people get thinking and turn on their brains in order to overcome concerns being present at this stage. The war an enemy has chosen is asymmetric and can lead to catastrophic events. On the other hand, everything will end on behalf of the honest people, but the good question there could be what then. The analytical centers of many defense agencies worldwide are capable to produce intelligence for a triumph of the good guys, as well as process those findings in order to define new goals and formulate better strategies and prevention programs which will help everyone facing up more qualitative living conditions and communities at best with a minimum of the crime. From a technological point of view, the security should be a demand for the engineering projects of tomorrow as this several decades long crisis has come as an impact of the lack of situational awareness. Perhaps everyone is aware what can happen if a technology is not under control of the legal institutions. In other words, in order to prevent or at least reduce some crime it is significant to cope with a technical system which is not only smart and safe, but mostly secure.
By that, it is meant that emerging products and services should be initialized with security requirements which come from the real Police cases and which can avoid an exploitation of some technical solutions. Moreover, in this case an R&D phase of the production cycle is referred to cope with security intelligence at its 0-phase of the project. No doubt of that, an engineering community is ingenious, but in order to develop such a secure system it’s needed to resolve many technical problems. It is estimated that such projects might last per years and maybe per decades to get such a sophisticated cloth as they can deserve at their most.
On the other hand, the engineering challenges are something any new social wave brings with itself. Throughout history, there have been four industrial revolutions which outcomes and knowledge are yet widely used and there are some indications the entire overview of those technologies can find their applications even today. It’s a truly difficult task to make something that can prevent all known criminal activities in regards with usages of the technical systems. By this, it’s not only meant to prevent critical assets or some security advancements from being threatened, but more likely it’s about how to combat the crime which can appear as a consequence of the misusing of so everyday products and services such as bank machines, fraud prevention devices, cash registers, biometrics technologies, web communications and much more. Further in this effort it will be discussed how some of those projects could be coordinated from their initial phase until the final solution.
The main idea of this manuscript is to try to explain using professional arguments how significant it is to cope with trends and tendencies in security in order to transfer those results into a certain engineering project intending to prevent products and services which are already in mass usage to become a fruitful terrain for some criminal justice offence. In other words, if the crime could be prevented or even reduced relying on solved engineering challenges which is not simple the communities could offer a much better quality of life and less fear from crime.
- Related Work
The area of the information security is a comprehensive and detailed horizon which can be such a helpful key in the hands of civilian and defense agencies as it can offer a capacity to protect lives, businesses and assets across the world. That fraction of defense is in demand nowadays as it can help in managing a risk regarding physical, cyber, financial and health assurance. The main power of cyber defense is it can provide an adequate response to asymmetric threats which literally occupied the lives and works of the people at present. The asymmetric warfare is from a strategic point of view; the challenge which can be handled applying only cutting-edge approaches.
It is well-known that anyone dealing with accurate and timing information can take advantage with both – economy and security. It seems the previous times have put an economic requirements at a leading place as through industrialization and development of new technologies the humans have become to compete for productivity, effectiveness and competitiveness doing their best to make as many products and services as they can in order to earn a huge profit for their organizations. Time, indeed, means the money and even in the industrial production everyone has rushed for something new and improved as they have dealt mainly with profit-making requirements.
In parallel with the beginning of the 4th industrial revolution, there has begun a wide range of crises at the international degree. That situation is current even today as the entire global ecosystem has developed some kind of the greed for finances. In other words, the people will make something profitable and attractive to consumers not even caring how deep the consequences of such actions could be. The motto of everyone in a business is customer is always right and many commercial organizations will simply hurry to meet even the craziest needs of their clients. The modern profit-makers also live in the time of crisis, but they are not interested to change anything with their approach in order to offer better safety and security of their offerings. They are just the professionals who work for payment, so anyone with the money can cope with them.
To remind, the money can be made in legal and illegal manner, so it’s obvious who can pawn the planet at this stage. Any usage of those solutions means the international safety and security can suffer a tremendous shaking of the global peace and wellbeing. Apparently, the business will rush for profitable offerings putting on a lead something that can be obtained through paying, but such a method will not give an advantage to anything being trusted. The planetary landscape is undoubtedly overwhelmed with fascinating advancements which are maybe convenient and easy to use, but they are not trusted at all causing a real chaos to currently tough conditions to many.
Indeed, if the defense agencies could attempt to put the security requirements at the start of any engineering project the world would cope with many of so being trusted and offering more safety and security to all, as well as combating for more predictable and certain conditions to the global population. It is considered that something must change and after getting the point of so challenging today the security findings being collected during this historical epoch could serve as a zero phase of any R&D effort as an imperative is no longer to be convenient, but more likely trusted by everyone on the marketplace. The threat intelligence is carefully gathering and there is a complete and novel tendency that should be followed in order to prevent the mankind getting into such a situation.
The technological projects of nowadays need to meet some technical and economical requirements and from a perspective of the modern engineering an intersection of the curves of the technological performances and economic costs is an optimal solution. That solution is a good starting point for any well-planned and calculated engineering task as it can provide both – functionality and cost-effectiveness. The majority of the ongoing technical systems work well, but they are mostly without any controlling mechanisms and countermeasures which could avoid any sort of their misusing.
On the other hand, the idea how to choose security demands at an initial phase of any technical problem comes from cyber defense as in that field anything novel begins with strictly defined cyber security requirements. That’s logical for a reason the final outcome in such a case should be some cyber industry solution and in case of the engineering challenges the ultimate goal should be to satisfy security demands as they are the best possible response to current risks, threats and challenges in the area of defense. This is not only the case in highly sophisticated landscapes such as defense and space industries, but more likely an appeal to experts in civilian sector to many people’s everyday activities being much secure.
In order to try to explain such an idea in a practical fashion it will be selected the case of the ticketing machine being installed at any transportation stop within some area. That system serves to sell the public transportation tickets simply choosing their sort and price. Once the payment is made the machine will issue a ticket. At the end of the day someone from that company will come to collect a daily income from machine’s slot. That’s nothing strange if the company trusts their employees, but if it is about the insider threat that person or the entire team could get some amount of such picked up money. That can happen day-by-day and even many years at a daily basis and it’s clear the financial losses for that company could be significant. The reason for so is there are no controlling procedures that could prevent those criminals from going against employer’s interests. Such a scheme could be tackled manually, semi-automatically and automatically – it’s only important to receive awareness about that kind of risks.
Above all, it is an engineering challenge to design a technical system which can prevent some criminal scheme and literally reduce a crime rate within communities. In total, there is no an absolute security only maintaining a risk at an acceptable level and that is essentially feasible through investing a lot of hard work into making this world being a better place for living and functioning in, so far.
- Security is About Risk Management
The risk is a possibility for some negative event occurs. On the other hand, the matter of security is closely correlated with a risk management. The variations of the risk could be diverse as the security of the modern time certainly must cope with techniques, methodologies and tactics how to respond to some unwanted happening. In a today’s criminology, it’s known that there are three main steps in dealing with an incident. Those are pre-event, event and post-event phases in the criminal justice case.
The pre-event step includes all actions and operations being done in order to plan, prepare and organize the offence as such a step could be from a crucial importance to the incident even happens. In other words, if the Police through routine controlling collect some findings about possible threats to communities the entire drawback can be mitigated before it was launched. That is the matter of crime prevention and such an area in policing is the toughest one as it seeks the good controlling mechanisms, as well as cooperation with the members of public which could report any suspicious anomaly with their community.
In the past, the advanced societies have developed some programs in order to reduce the crime and even nowadays the ongoing global situation is carefully monitored and analyzed by defense agencies worldwide. Also, the event by itself means the incident is committed and the Police get the entire case to investigate and lawfully resolve. The similar situation is with post-event phase as in such a fashion it’s significant to figure out what the criminal actors have done after the crime and where they can be located. This was the real challenge to criminology, but with some innovations in the case best practice the majority of the criminal justice problems have become solvable.
The highest imperative in this time is how to collect intelligence and successfully put the offenders under the evidence gathering procedures as in such a case those actors will be arrested or removed and the case will get its epilogue on the court giving an adequate punishment to the guilty ones. The legal system knows a lot about the people living and working somewhere and as the policing registers are connected with each one at the international level it’s obvious why an operational collaboration at a daily basis must bring some results to the Police Forces over the globe. The modern days are the time of challenges and the grave lessons to everyone as defense communities have made the promising breakthrough in delivering security in the world and enforcing the law within their areas of responsibilities.
According to the Interpol, the terrorism is a crime area and that will not just capture a physical threat, but also bio-terrorism and cyber terrorism being the most notorious security challenges at present. Therefore, there is the entire methodology how to handle some risk today as the present time is a historical age getting with itself two challenges – technological and security ones. It appears how seriously there has been a need for digital transformation there is also a demand for more ingenious approach to defense. The criminals will attack if they have an opportunity to do so and no matter how hard they worked on pre-event preparation they will not let the criminal event occurs if they are not confident they will avoid punishment.
Apparently, there are many countries over the planet which law enforcement agencies are with poor capacities and those regions are such a vulnerable to crime as they are so weak to respond on their own. That’s why the international cooperation matters bringing with itself a support of those which are stronger or simply making a union of the small countries in fighting against crime together. The point is the mission of security is to provide betterment to many and that is feasible only through commitment, solidarity and collaboration. In addition, it’s not sufficient combating crime in some area expecting that will solve all possible issues as such an approach can lead to arising threats somewhere else for a reason no society is isolated enough to prevent crime from being reflected from one part of the world to another. Maybe some developed economy can make their communities being relatively safe, but their residents will travel the world and sooner or later get in touch with the crime not only experiencing something, but literally getting the victims. Many people if in a position love to explore the world and they will mostly believe if they are safe in their homelands the rest of the world will function in a similar way.
The developed countries work hard to offer the quality of life and great conditions to their people and there must be the entire background how that is obtainable in the practice. Those societies also carefully select who will get a life or access to their territory as threat can exist anywhere. In other words, it’s all about a level of the trust someone can be with. In policing, any good officer or the entire team can make a rapport with anyone potentially being used for some law enforcement task, but even then no one will believe anyone such a blindly as there will always be some security checks trying to estimate that degree of the trust.
Indeed, the risk can be managed in order to avoid some complicated incidental situation, but from a current point of view; there is a need for much wider perspectives and deep understanding of the geo-strategic situation, so far. In other words, everyone can be trained to mitigate the risk and indeed; many people in the world deal with the true skill, but it appears the ongoing trend is challenging many of so being previously believed. The risk management as a tactic of the modern security works well in some case, while in others it yet needs some improvements and fresh ideas as it could provide a comprehensive response to any uncertainty, unpredictable event or unwanted happening being the consequence of always available risk which can in a lower or higher amount threaten a wellbeing of the people, businesses and their resources.
- Initializing Main Demands at 0-Phase
Either it is necessary to design some software or hardware any R&D process should include defining security requirements at its beginning. Such a step is considered as a 0-phase in the R&D project which totally invokes security demands, preparation, research, development, verification and validation as crucial steps in a design of something brand-new. Indeed, excluding the 0-phase all those are typical phases in any R&D production. The summarized overview of such a procedure is given in Table 1 as follows.
Table 1. The R&D production process
| Phase | Phase name | Description | Challenges |
| 0 | Security requirements | Initialization of the project through starting with forensic findings which can contribute to make a product or service being more trusted | Forensic findings are not necessarily fully comprehensive and from time to time they need some updating |
| 1 | Preparation | Usage of all available resources and procedures in order to collect data which will be further analyzed via research | This phase needs to prepare the project for the next phases and estimate which directions of the project could be |
| 2 | Research | Processing data being gathered during preparation in order to confirm if some of those ideas are feasible to be made | Research phase needs someone with experience or at least a young fellow with some mentoring giving a weight to that effort |
| 3 | Development | Relying on all previous phases it’s important to create something step-by-step that will function as wanted | Development is not feasible without an adequate skill |
| 4 | Verification | This phase means a lot of laboratory testing and checking as the solution would be fully confirmed and ready for a final R&D phase | Verification must meet all defined demands as the project would succeed |
| 5 | Validation | Final model should pass through all possible measurements, tests and confirmations in order to gain an approval to continue with the next steps in manufacturing | This phase is only a preparation for industrial tasks as it should offer a confirmed R&D |
The ways of misusing some technological solution are the reason why some product or service is more or less trusted. In the practice, there is no technology which is absolutely trusted and the only road to put so into consideration is to debate about the certain level of trust. As long as there are a plenty of false-negatives with some technical system such a system can serve as a security threat in hands of those who prefer to break the law. For example, it is well-known that there are a lot of fraudulent activities with cash registers and no matter how attractive the new generations of such a device are they will not be assured enough to allow their usages for financial criminalities.
The experts who can prove some kind of technological actions in sense of committing the crime applying cutting-edge solutions are technology forensics examiners who cope with deep understanding how the technical system works and what its most appealing weaknesses are. Those vulnerabilities are significant in case of being aware of them and proposing some novel approaches in preventing those anomalies. In other words, the forensic findings can explain what the weaknesses of the previous generations of technology were and truly suggest how such sensitivities can be removed in some coming engineering projects.
For such a concern, it’s important to handle the current forensic findings and bring them at the initial phase of any R&D process as the next generation solutions would not cope with the issues being available at this stage. Maybe all holes will not be patched through the first iteration, but as time goes on and the overall knowledge and awareness raise probably the technical systems will be more superior and less sensitive to the crime.
Indeed, once the project meeting is appointed and the entire team has become to tackle some engineering problem it would be more than welcome to engage the forensics experts who can communicate with engineers and developers about all the past challenges, as well as provide some new requirements to the technical group trying to support them in solving such a hard concern. The role of forensic findings is to strongly advise the members of academia, industry and research institutes to cooperate with security professionals who are there to put a completely novel standard in science and technology.
It seems the economy has been a factor which led so many communities across the world and after such turbulent decades to the entire international landscape it’s clear the security and trusted systems should get a priority. It’s not the point to put aside technological performances and economical interests, but more likely to correlate the trust with the ultimate engineering demands. Apparently, in such a case the intersection of the curves of the technology, economy and trustworthiness would give an optimal choice.
On the other hand, that’s the task for researchers of tomorrow to carefully develop such mathematical models which could serve in a studious approach to any new project. Hence, that might look like as a totally new theory which will need to be proved as calculations and modelling of the future could offer a better security to all. Moreover, this paper is in compliance with the modern trends and tendencies as many researchers worldwide have noticed a need for more secure and well-controlled progress.
Next, the global landscape has been put in a time of the increasing risk, threat and security challenge and anyone normal in this world is not willing to live and work under stress, fear and danger. The people are simply saturated with so many problems and they all vote for prosperity and sustainable development, but not for a price to lose their peace and harmonized everyday routine. It appears all it is needed already exists and from a today’s point of view; the only thing being necessary is a re-organization of the endeavors being developed at the ongoing scale.
Finally, there is all being needed and those are academia, industry and defense and those three pillars must be connected with each other very carefully in order to improve the modern organizational criteria not losing the appeal for progress and prosperity, but mostly making more order into communities, societies and marketplaces being present today. In other words, there is yet a space for innovations and business advancements, but all so should be well-monitored via defense agencies which must contribute to the next generation technologies getting benefits to everyone, as well as preventing the entire human population to get lost in a maze of the crime, threats and terrorism being the most dangerous security challenges the ongoing world has ever faced up.
The task is difficult, but undoubtedly obtainable as those who bring the justice can also come with new ideas how to make this planet being the better place to all its residents giving hope to all generations which come after these days that they will never again suffer such a traumatic experience as the people before them did. The engineering is a light of the progress during all times in the humankind’s history and no matter if it is manual, semi-automatic or at present automatic it is worth investing into it. This epoch has put many problems on the surface and from a technological perspective; all those issues can be recognized as the engineering challenges which once resolved can provide a peaceful nap to many, as well as contribute in building up much better conditions to everyone who currently straggles attempting to find the exit from this trickery maze, so far.
- Why Defense is an Engineering Matter
The modern time is an age of the technological explosion as anyone across the globe can get a technically functional solution for a quite suitable price. It seems the optimal choice is such an easy to make which is great for economies as many commercial actors literally grab the marketplace for their purposes. It’s a time of the expansion and boom as it was never simpler to obtain a good profit just mastering how to produce an emerging technology being welcome everywhere. The web service is very cheap and the majority of the novel technical systems use such a data transmission in order to assure a communication between people and devices.
The main challenge with the internet is it’s vulnerable to hacking attacks and from a criminology point of view; it’s a convenient zone for committing a cybercrime as there is not yet an adequate response to that kind of the criminality within the law enforcement organizations. In other words, the method how to fix that is up to engineering community that should inside cyber industry or widely amongst the other branches of commerce find some ways in replying to that sort of the security challenges. In that fashion, cyber security as a fragment of the defense is obviously an engineering challenge as many other areas of security are.
Perhaps it was considered only one area of the crime which is a high-tech criminality it’s obvious there could be committed offences such as financial crimes, frauds, robberies and much more literally applying technological solutions in order to take advantage over weaknesses of the currently used systems. For instance, the ongoing investigations came to findings how it is possible to trick a cash register and convict a true range of the financial criminalities. The business persons could not do that on their own, but as they are with a deep pocket they can pay or even corrupt someone being a hacker or within a solution providing company to show them how to misuse those machines on their behalf.
Also, there are a lot of techniques to transfer financial funds from one bank account to another as a banking sector offers a heap of the methods of payment such as wire transfer, e-payment via some credit card, services like PayPal and much more. In such a case, it is possible to hide a track to investigators just using forged documents to open up some account. Indeed, that is not an irresolvable task to many defense agencies as there is an entire methodology how to uncover what the case is really about. The majority of business people committing a financial crime through the payment options do that believing there is a minimum or no risk to them and they mostly use blank ID documents in order to create their accounts considering they will remain invisible to the authorities. If there is a word about the financial crime it’s clear that someone must produce a counterfeited ID to offenders and tracking such footage the investigators can come to a true forgery underworld smashing once again those security threats, so far.
The next case being so alarming today is a collecting the money from bank machines using re-programmed credit cards. In other words, that’s a classical sort of the robbery giving an opportunity to offenders to pick up all the banknotes from the machine’s slot. In the majority of cases, any bank machine is covered with security monitoring systems, but the criminals can find a way to camouflage their appearance. That means they will not be identified such easily and the only hope for the Police is to play on a card of the left DNA or fingerprint, as well as try to find a trace of any portable device being available on the crime scene.
The experience suggests that the cyber criminals are with capacity to re-program a lot of technical systems which leads in a misusing of many technological solutions. On the other hand, the bank machine is not a product of the cyber industry, but the cyber criminals can attack even such a technical system as regarding those technology bad actors are fully able to figure out how some technology works and what its weaknesses are. The purpose of cyber industry is to produce high-tech solutions being assured more or less from hacking campaigns. That’s why the cyber security demands come at the beginning of any cyber industry project as those requirements can once implemented into task prevent or at least reduce the majority of the known concerns.
In addition, those bad guys emptying the entire bank machine’s slot are doing a robbery which is a heavy case, while their cybercrime backup is preparing something that can provide them a complete access to funds being stored with the machine’s slot. The majority of the law enforcement agencies have their departments for combating cybercrime and indeed; those officers will mainly be on that sort of the tasks, while someone doing a heavy robbery case will need to get coordinated within the rest of the services in the Police. The nature of the modern crime is mostly transnational and for such a reason it’s significant to include an international collaboration wherever it is possible.
Apparently, how some stuff operates and how it is feasible to collect the evidence from the technological advancements is the role of the forensics detectives. Those experts can gather some findings and explain them through their skillfully written reports as such a kind of the communication can get its place in a case management and later on the court. In other words, if those findings would, say, be shared with the bank machine manufacturers they could make a deep dive into their projects getting them being with no or minor false-negatives. Therefore, in such a case those systems would be more trusted and less vulnerable to the crime which is a great benefit in comparing with today’s situations.
The crime can literally appear anytime and anywhere as the ongoing communities yet need time to jump at the higher level of the development and deployment. The forensics professionals are with skill and expertise and they can contribute greatly in the crime prevention making this surrounding being more certain and predictable to a numerous of the nations.
- Situational Awareness through Technology
The modern technologies can suggest what is going on within some environment, while their capacities to provide a comprehensive insight are yet limited. This is possible through a wide spectrum of the sensor networks as those grids are created more likely to mimic human’s senses. The human nervous system works on electricity and some of the sensor’s devices are powered with an electrical current, as well as some non-electrical variables mainly being analogue by their nature. Also, there are a plenty of the wireless sensor’s networks which are complicated to design and which heaviest enemy is interference as their electromagnetic waves can be in collision with each other. The problem of the interference is not fully resolved and engineers modelling such a phenomenon will need to work hard many decades ahead before that challenge gets completely understood and mitigated.
The fact with technological systems is they are not capable to offer a full picture about some situation, but if they are connected with one another they can serve in a deeper understanding of the condition. The similar case is with legal, defense and justice systems as they can give an access to data only via strictly defined hierarchical order. All those systems use the entire records about their people and anyone else being registered with them and the overall tendency is to make something which will be networked and provide all the system knows about anyone being in so. In addition, the international grids are also important as they offer a chance to globally capture the entire world’s situation. It seems investing into emerging technologies is never bigger and such a strategy only can get more votes from anyone caring about the needs of the planetary population.
The ongoing technical products and services if smartly applied can deal with a situational awareness letting know to everyone better figure out the conditions at national, regional and transnational scales. The threats of nowadays are overwhelmed across the globe and as they are connecting with each other the tendency of the system must be to cope with such a trend. Today is more or less possible to resolve a high percentage of the cases as the novel technologies allow such an approach. The system is stronger than ever and the situation being present nowadays gives an option through some analytics and innovation in a case management to make any crime getting beatable. Relying on the new technologies it is possible to make a good crime prevention never letting on some incident even occurs. In other words, the power is in the hands of the legal communities and the only challenge to the modern investigation is to make a case as it is a piece of cake to uncover some crime and locate such offenders in their attempt to get hiding from the authorities. Indeed, with such a power in the hands of the good guys it’s only needed to explain some criminal schemes, as well as collect some findings and evidence in order to win a case on the court.
After the 9/11 tragic events in the USA, the world has adopted new concepts in the case management being the intelligence-led investigation. It appears the entire planet was alarmed then as the terrorism was knocking at many doors. This prolonged situation has caught many people unprepared, but with the increased risk there has been made a response to the occurrences of this epoch. In other words, this tough age has given many specialists in crises management as the entire humankind yet needs to demonstrate solidarity and cooperation at the international level. It seems it’s necessary to go deeply back to the past in order to figure out how the bad actors have done all they made. There were obviously some weaknesses in communities and no one was ready to even expect such a hard wound coming from the asymmetric threats. Next, no one has even imagined such brutality and barbarism in the new millennium when many have dreamed about the flying cars – not the beheaded persons.
If properly used, the current technology can contribute in getting a closer and clearer picture about some situation. That’s significant for many reasons and some of them are prevention, monitoring and responding to some incidental happening. The risk is present at any place and in any time and if escalating it can turn into a crisis which also needs readiness programs and strategies in order to get avoided. From a today’s point of view, it’s possible tackling some risk only if there is an awareness about so as only if someone is familiar with somewhat presence it is feasible to develop and formulate an appropriate response to that situation. The ongoing tendency suggests the majority of nowadays investigations can be processed with much better effectiveness and accuracy. The technology works in regards to very strict laws of physics and in order to make something technical it’s necessary to cope with exact findings, great accuracy and mathematical precision as those are all requirements some technical system must meet. For such a reason, if the joint situational awareness is based on the novel technology it’s obvious why the entire picture being made relying on those advancements must be more trusted than ever. The situational awareness is something that can decide someone’s victory in the war and as a today’s condition is such a prolonging it seems it’s needed to deal with the advantages of the novel solutions in order to uncover and prove any criminal and terrorist action. Those being a threat to many worldwide are deeply destructive individuals being prepared to destroy the entire planet just for their own power and dominance.
Luckily, the good guys are fully aware about all potential risks and they are more than capable to resist and consequently send into the history those who were daring to challenge the normal side of the mankind. With the technological progress and development the humans will be more and more in position to build up a great accuracy about the situation across the globe as some of such trustworthiness will be projected to society and undoubtedly the better controlling mechanisms will be in usage offering less risk to the entire mankind’s population, so far.
- There is no a Silver Bullet
No concern can be removed simply making a touch or investing a minimum of the time and effort to tackle so. It’s needed to operate hard in order to mitigate a risk, as well as apply all new methods of the automatics and control as those theories can accelerate the entire process of the risk management. Indeed, the next step in safety, security and engineering is to design technological products and services which will work faster and more effective as the human effort would be symbolic and the machines could resolve a good portion of the problems within a minimum of the time not affecting the quality of the work, so far.
- Discussion
With the epochs of the crises and 4th industrial revolution the mankind has never been in a more complicated situation. It’s about so who will take control over the earth’s resources and fortune. It seems the time of the great reset and recovery is coming and as it is well-known the overall planet will need to set into the new normal getting a plenty of the next generation opportunities to everyone.
- Conclusion
Finally, in this effort it is given an overview of the possible approaches on how the engineering projects of tomorrow could look like. The challenge is tough, but no doubt of that the current and novel leaders are more than capable to go ahead of those problems.
Acknowledgements
Milica is such a deeply grateful to her family for all their love, care and support through her life, education and career.
References
[1] Djekic, M. D., 2017. The Internet of Things: Concept, Application and Security. LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing.
[2] Djekic, M. D., 2021. The Digital Technology Insight. Cyber Security Magazine
[3] Djekic, M. D., 2021. Smart Technological Landscape. Cyber Security Magazine
[4] Djekic, M. D., 2021. Biometrics Cyber Security. Cyber Security Magazine
[5] Djekic, M. D., 2020. Detecting an Insider Threat. Cyber Security Magazine
[6] Djekic, M. D., 2021. Communication Streaming Challenges. Cyber Defense Magazine
[7] Djekic, M. D., 2021. Channelling as a Challenge. Cyber Defense Magazine
[8] Djekic, M. D., 2021. Offense Sharing Activities in Criminal Justice Case. Cyber Defense Magazine
[9] Djekic, M. 2019. The Informant Task. Asia-Pacific Security Magazine
[10] Djekic, M. D., 2020. The Importance of Communication in Investigations. International Security Journal
[11] Djekic, M. D. 2019. The Purpose of Neural Networks in Cryptography, Cyber Defense Magazine
[12] Djekic, M. D. 2020. Artificial Intelligence-driven Situational Awareness, Cyber Defense Magazine
[13] Djekic, M. D. 2019. The Perspectives of the 5th Industrial Revolution, Cyber Defense Magazine
[14] Djekic, M. D. 2019. The Email Security Challenges, Cyber Defense Magazine
[15] Djekic, M. D. 2016. The ESIS Encryption Law, Cyber Defense Magazine
[16] Đekić, M. D., 2021. The Insider’s Threats: Operational, Tactical and Strategic Perspective. LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing.
About The Author
Milica D. Djekic is an Independent Researcher from Subotica, the Republic of Serbia. She received her engineering background from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Belgrade. She writes for some domestic and overseas presses and she is also the author of the books “The Internet of Things: Concept, Applications and Security” and “The Insider’s Threats: Operational, Tactical and Strategic Perspective” being published in 2017 and 2021 respectively with the Lambert Academic Publishing. Milica is also a speaker with the BrightTALK expert’s channel. She is the member of an ASIS International since 2017 and contributor to the Australian Cyber Security Magazine since 2018. Milica’s research efforts are recognized with Computer Emergency Response Team for the European Union (CERT-EU), Censys Press, BU-CERT UK and EASA European Centre for Cybersecurity in Aviation (ECCSA). Her fields of interests are cyber defense, technology and business. Milica is a person with disability. Milica can be reach via email at milicadjekic82@gmail.com.
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