Cyber Security And The Digital Age - 1457 Words

Introduction In summer of 2013, numerous global surveillance programs were widely acknowledged by the public and media, because Edward Snowden leaked thousands of classified documents of them from National Security Agency (NSA), triggering a global debate about national security and citizens’ rights to privacy on the Internet (Philippens, 2013). The development of Internet provides great convenience for the companies and consumers, such as e-commerce and social networking. Meanwhile, it poses certain risks to some extent, such as leakage of corporate secrets and personal privacy. Thus, multinational companies should find their ways to respond to the problem of cyber security in the digital age. Perspective of multinational companies†¦show more content†¦Blyth (2008) explains that the purpose of the cyber crime related to companies is commercial gain, whose forms include unauthorized use of the system and cloud computing to steal confidential data and release malicious programs to damage system and data. Based on the source of the risk on the network, firstly, companies should contract an accountable Internet Service Provider (ISP) to protect their systems. ISP could prevent the release of malicious viruses on the network to some extent (Blyth, 2008). Secondly, advanced planning and crisis management could be adopted to reduce impacts when the crisis occurs. Specifically, the education of employees should be included in the process of planning. Based on the transnational strategy of multinational companies, they give more power and freedom to the subsidiaries and employees to enhance the efficiency (Bartlett and Beamish, 2014). For example, certain companies are putting forward flexible work programs including Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy (Dell, 2014). Companies permit employees to use personal owned devices, such as laptops, tablets and smart phones, to access the organization’s network. According to the survey of Siponen, Mahmood and Pahnila (2009), employees would put their system and network of companies at risk if they do not follow security policies and operation specification of organizational network.