21st Century Security Threat

By: Sean McGowan and Elizabeth Kilbride 

We all remember the day. Our seemingly peaceful existence and domestic tranquility was forever altered by four hijacked planes used to kill our own people. It was time when we began asking the tough questions: Just how safe is America? How vulnerable are our lives and our institutions? If terrorists could come to our soil, gain entry, learn how to operate our planes in our schools, and then learn our security protocols and expected responses, then in what other areas are we at risk? These are tough questions we did not imagine having to ask, but did so for the sake of our families and future generations.

At a time when the world’s governments are responding to multiple cyber threats of hacking, identity theft, and a thousand other cyber vulnerabilities, we must ask ourselves a few simple questions.

What if we are not as safe as we think we are? 

And what if our area of strongest vulnerability contains the segment of society we rely on for our enduring legacy – our children? Is the safety of our future leaders being put in danger by those we entrust their safety to? Are they more at risk now than when we first learned of the physical breach to our homeland’s security?

In today’s world of fast-paced information and technological savvy, we entrust computer databases with our most sensitive information, allowing them to harvest and catalog our personal, financial, and vocational histories. We allow others access to use, analyze and store private information that includes not only our identities, but identifiable database connections to our parents and other contacts for the sake of credit references.  Are these databases secure enough from being taken over by unwanted cyber-intruders who could sell our information to the highest bidder? Are they currently in the hands of companies of unknown financial solvency that may have to sell that knowledge as leverage to avoid bankruptcy and default?

What if these databases are taken over by an enemy who wishes to steal our identity in order to infiltrate our country to do us harm? And what if this enemy finds that the most vulnerable segment of our society, those just starting out into this brave new world, are the very targets for a type of identity invasion to an epic degree?

These are the questions we should be asking ourselves before we allow our personal and professional information to be shared with such databases. The sad truth is, we as citizens have allowed this to happen to our society by trusting those we do business with every day. We have given our trust over our very identities to those with little background in securing such information. And we are finding more and more that in order to engage in the modern workplace, we are being forced to give our information in order to succeed in today’s increasingly interconnected yet decreasingly secure world.

Over the next few weeks, we will be examining one such database and explain how it has not only become entrenched in our society, but how the involuntary inclusion of our personal information today will have serious repercussions in the future. We will begin to examine the social, political and security threats that it poses. Currently, there is a breach in our wall of security that we hold so dear. It will be known as the new 9/11 threat to our nation and the world. And how we safeguard against and respond to this threat will ultimately determine whether or not we leave this world a better place for our children to thrive in.

Invited co-author of this article, Sean McGowan is published author, a teacher of Civics and American History, as well as a Chaplain.