Internet Security Security is critical to any thriving society like the one we Americans live in today. Imagine if there were no law enforcement in New York City. No one except criminals would dare walk the streets. People would live in fear every day. No one would work and no one could enjoy nature and the outdoors. We all barricaded ourselves indoors, only daring to venture out into the dangerous world when we absolutely needed to. Everything would be different. By thinking of the Internet as a society, or a global community, this notion of the importance of security can also be applied. Imagine if everyone had access to every file on every individual and every company's computers. It would be as if all the stores in a city were open to the public 24/7, with all merchandise available for free, as well as all citizens' homes, credit cards, family heirlooms, etc. It would be anarchy, it would be disastrous. Today in America citizens generally feel safe. We feel safe not only from our neighbors, but also from attacks from foreign countries. We have the most advanced military defense systems and have proven ourselves to be a power in recent years, as in the Persian Gulf War. For a while, many of us perhaps even thought that America was invulnerable. On September 11th of this year 2001 we learned the opposite. We learned that America had security flaws. We learned firsthand the horrors that criminals could bring upon us as a nation. Likewise, over the past twenty years or so, the Internet has exploited a wide variety of criminals who have committed new types of crimes. Furthermore, everyone is at risk, the rich and the poor, m...... middle of paper ......5(4), 161-185.Source of popular printed information: Bansal, Parveen. (2001, November). Hole in the wall update. The Banker, 151, 81. Electronic academic journal article: Schultza, Eugene E, Proctorb, Robert W., Lienb, Mei-Ching and Salvendy, Gavriel. (October 2001). Computers and security. Retrieved December 8, 2001, from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science%3f_ob=JournalURL&_cdi=5870&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=0&md5=7ad5f679d398b70e02e99cc968692ddaReliable multimedia video/audio online: The Morning Show: Internet Security. Retrieved December 10, 2001, from http://search.npr.org/cf/cmn/cmnpd01fm.cfm%3fPrgDate=2%2F16%2F2000&PrgID=3 Trustworthy website: National Institute of Standards and Technology. (January 19, 2001). Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) fact sheet. Retrieved December 8, 2001, from http://csrc.nist.gov/encryption/aes/aesfact.html