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.”[1] | ” |
Overview
Information technology (IT) is widely recognized as the engine that drives the U.S. economy, giving industry a competitive advantage in global markets, enabling the federal government to provide better services to its citizens, and facilitating greater productivity as a nation. IT is revolutionizing society as profoundly as mechanical technology did in creating the industrial revolution. As a result, we are increasingly dependent for society’s everyday functioning on electronic ways to gather, store, manipulate, retrieve, transmit, and use information.
Information technology has become pervasive in every way — from our phones and other small devices to our enterprise networks to the infrastructure that runs our economy.
The U.S. Government is the world’s largest consumer of information technology, spending over $76 billion annually on more than 10,000 different systems.
Security issues
This increasing dependence on information technology is creating a need to improve the confidentiality and integrity of electronic information, i.e., its security, so that computer and communications systems are less vulnerable to intentional and accidental error or misuse. As the critical infrastructures of the United States have become more and more dependent on public and private networks, 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.
References
- ↑ Federal Acquisition Regulations 2.101 (1999); NIST Special Publication 800-53; NIST, FIPS 200; NIST, FIPS 199; 40 U.S.C. §11101.