ulation, privacy, security, impact on children, advertising, information accuracy, and monopolistic control (Hargittai 2). According to Northcutt, Novak, and McLachlan in Network Intrusion Detection, the potential threats to society from electronic intrusion can be grouped into macro- and micro-threats (xxvi-xxxii). The macro-threats pertain to the Internet economy and country dominance, while the micro-threats pertain to business failure, physical harm, and exposure of sensitive information.
As Internet and WWW technology become standard practice for a majority of businesses and consumers, so, too, they become the newest target for another element of society that remains ever present – criminals. Criminals view the Internet and WWW, especially in its infancy, as a lucrative milieu for their nefarious deeds. Myriad criminal scams exist and have been perpetrated over the Internet and WWW, scams that are as old as crime itself but now take place via the Internet and WWW without the victim or the criminal ever leaving their home or office. Part of the momentum toward increased security measures such as NIDS has come from law enforcement’s inability to keep up with old kinds of crime being conducted in new ways via technology. Northcutt (et al 209) comment on the need for refocus and new ways of thinking and sharing information among law enforcement agencies because of a lack of technical expertise on behalf of otherwise extremely efficiency law enforcement agents “The FBI is not stupid, not even close. They are very bright; they just aren’t coders. Over time, they will observe that the Internet is full of a lot of really bright people and if they are going to do the law-and-order thing, they need to craft an approach that lets the FBI use these really bright people’s strengths to the FBI’s advantage. The forces for sharing outstrip the forces for secrecy in this case.” Regardless, we see that a lack of trained ...