Digital Earth - Cyber threats, privacy and ethics in an age of paranoia
Whether it's the next big ransomware attack or cyber terrorism, digital threats have evolved drastically in recent years. Issues surrounding phishing, misinformation, cyber terrorism, physical security, and privacy continue to arise for both individual users and large enterprises.
With technology an intrinsic part of our everyday lives, we need to be aware of digital threats, and be able to identify other threats such as phishing, ransomware, and spyware before they can wreak havoc in our professional or personal lives.
This book discusses the most prevalent technological threats that we face today. It is an accessible guide that highlights the most common cyber attacks, and explores data ethics and privacy in an age where we hold so much of our PII (personally identifiable information) online.
It covers cyber threats such as phishing, disinformation versus misinformation in a post-COVID-19 world, cyber terrorism, and the power of social media, and analyzes ever-evolving privacy concerns in response to technological advances. For example, does the use of drones by law enforcement offer us complete security or raise questions around the privacy of citizens?
The book focuses on:
- The spike in phishing amid the COVID-19 pandemic
- Cyber terrorism
- The risks associated with social media
- Whether drones are a search-and-rescue solution or the all-seeing eye in the sky

Portrait

Sarah Katz is a graduate of UC Berkeley with a background in cybersecurity. She works as a Technical Writer at Microsoft, and previously worked at NASA. Her writing has appeared in Cyber Defense Magazine, Dark Reading, Infosecurity Magazine, and Tech Xplore. Sarah has served as a cybersecurity speaker for the Brazilian technical institute IGTI, and is pursuing a PhD in cyberpsychology with a focus on user security in augmented reality. The short film -Rationale- - currently in production - based on her eponymous short story and published in Thriller Magazine, is about the risks of using mood-altering technology to enhance cognition.