ABSTRACT
The cyber world was born in the post-Cold War era with the explicit purpose of making economic sense of the huge investments made in the development of computers which were hitherto considered as a strategic technology, often denied to unfriendly countries. Though it initially started as a “military” effort to develop distributed control of assets, it soon found its niche use in the academic community for sharing of scientific resources. The civilian application was built with an implicit trust and open standards for interconnection, wherein computers were permitted to connect to each other without any need for authentication. With rapid advances in microprocessor, communication, particularly the mobile, storage, and software technologies, the internet became a medium of inexpensive, friendly, and easy-to-use ubiquitous technology for the government, business, and society. The growth was unplanned and uncontrolled. Unquestionably, this was also the strength of the internet and a motivator for its unprecedented growth.
