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Our country is still in the early stages of the 21st century where technology is advancing on a daily basis allowing the threat of terrorism, both domestic and foreign, to pose a serious risk to both its citizens and its assets if not addressed soon. There are numerous potentially vulnerable sites throughout the country that are still left under guarded and under-protected, specifically my emphasis for this project, the California Independent System Operator (ISO). This multilayered project utilizes public information from the Department of Homeland Security manual. The project also includes information from various national publications of defense principles and security countermeasures, as well as law enforcement protocols in place to deal with these types of security threats and potential breaches, scholarly articles, and industry trade journals.
The California ISO lacks physical and some virtual controls that make it more vulnerable to attacks. Specific recommendations have been made to ensure that the ISO is better protected and can still run an effective business.

The use of the Internet to spawn hate sites and recruit advocates for hate began as early as the mid-1980s in bulletin boards, and the first acknowledged hate site was Stormfront, in the early 1990s. Since then hundreds of hate sites and other websites advocating terror have been developed, some with stated aims of recruiting young people and influencing extreme action. This article reviews what is currently known about the development of hate sites into sophisticated recruitment and attitude-influencing mechanisms. The questions asked are: how do hate sites recruit members who might normally not be involved in hate and extreme action, how may hate sites radicalize the actions of young people already accepting of the mindset advocated by the website, and how effective is Internet recruitment?

Summary Report on conference organized by the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Cooperation with the Royal Jordanian National Defence College.

This monograph by RAND surveys social-science literature relating to counterterrorism. It also takes steps toward integrating the knowledge reflected in that literature and suggesting theories and methods to inform analysis and modeling.

Advertising, business, community, privacy concerns, politics, sex, love – these are issues that are associated with the term social networking platforms in popular media clippings, such as the ones just cited. The examples, which certainly have differing depth, character, and quality, show that social networking sites (SNS) and what many term “Web 2.0” have become important topics all over the world and seem to shape economic, political, and cultural communication of contemporary society. Some see SNS as creating new opportunities for democracy, business, or entertainment. Others consider them as risk that will destroy culture and society. Many of these mass- mediated debates are oversimplified and one-sided. But nonetheless they show that there is an interest in the question how online communication tools transform society and our social relations.

The United Kingdom’s Strategy for Countering International Terrorism, 2009