Information technology

Definition
Information technology is:

"[a]ny equipment, or interconnected system(s) or subsystem(s) of equipment that is used in the automatic acquisition, storage, manipulation, management, movement, control, display, switching, interchange, transmission, or reception of data or information by the agency.”"

Overview
Information technology has become pervasive in every way &mdash; from our phones and other small devices to our enterprise networks to the infrastructure that runs our economy.

Security issues
Improvements to the security of information technology are essential. As the critical infrastructures of the United States have become more and more dependent on public and private network]s, the potential for widespread national impact resulting from the [[disruption or failure of these networks has also increased.

Securing the national critical infrastructures requires protecting not only their physical systems but, just as important, the cyber portions of the systems on which they rely. The most significant cyberthreats to the nation are fundamentally different from those posed by the “script kiddies” or virus writers who traditionally have plagued Internet users.

Today, the Internet has a significant role in enabling the communications, monitoring, operations, and business systems underlying many of the nation’s critical infrastructures. Cyberattacks are increasing in frequency and impact. Adversaries seeking to disrupt the nation’s critical infrastructures are driven by different motives and view cyberspace as a possible means to have much greater impact, such as causing harm to people or widespread economic damage.

Although to date no cyberattack has had a significant impact on our nation’s critical infrastructures, previous attacks have demonstrated that extensive vulnerabilities exist in information systems and networks, with the potential for serious damage. The effects of a successful attack might include serious economic consequences through impacts on major economic and industrial sectors, threats to infrastructure elements such as electric power, and disruptions that impede the response and communication capabilities of first responders in crisis situations.