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Running head: CYBERLAW CONSUMER PROTECTION IN CYBERSECURITY

Cyber-law; Consumer Protection in Cybersecurity

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Abstract

The law has been interested in ensuring that necessary it protects people under it not just physically but just in terms of their connectivity. This is the purpose that is served by cyber law. There are many topics under cyber law, all of which seem to encourage observance of safety by providers of cyber services and consumers of such services. Cybersecurity is growing in volume due to increased interconnectivity among devices all over the world. This has made it possible for cyber-attacks to perform various cybercrimes to anyone in the cloud irrespective of where they are located on a global basis. To ensure consumers of cyber services are protected, the law comes in and intervenes on how consumers relate with their cloud services providers. In this case, the cyber law intervenes security at the cloud through legislative of consumer protection. This is an act that is developed and captured by the legal system pertaining protection of the consumer of cloud service by their providers. This paper sheds light on the legislation of consumer protection by assessing different parameters and areas of interest of cyber law in consumer protection at the cloud. Therefore, the paper discusses what has been achieved under the legislation of consumer protection in the enhancement of cybersecurity, what is yet to be done, and how it should be done.

Introduction

Consumer protection at the cloud is a business functionality whose complexity is growing day by day. Big businesses that are associated with cloud connectivity are being closely watched by the law to ascertain if they have appropriate policies in place to assure the protection of their customers in cyberspace. Majorly, the legal system is determined to ensure that consumer’s digital identities are protected by businesses that operate in the cloud, and their financial details are not leaked at any given instance (Howells, G., & Weatherill, 2017).

Attackers at the cyberspace are majorly interested in compromising financial information r digital documentation of cloud users. This is because they can enrich themselves massively when they successfully breach consumer’s financial documentation in the cloud. Therefore, consumers have been changing their pattern on how they consumer cyber services. In this case, consumers have been willing to as much as they can afford provided that they get to enjoy the benefits. This implies that consumers in modern times do not hesitate to pay more to service providers who can protect consumer’s financial details.

Governmental bodies have been set in place to screen companies that operate in the cloud space to ascertain how much they protect any identify that is associated with their customers. Federal Communications Commission has been responsible for the assessment of companies that have a virtual life. Their assessment has been in action since 2014 across the United States, which was a legislation that was issued by the president. This was after increased cases of leakage of consumer financial details, which were then used against consumers by cyber attackers to enrich themselves. Legislation of consumer protection at the cyberspace has been used or some years now to serve two primary purposes.

The first purpose served by the legislation of consumer protection at the cyber is to raise awareness to consumers that their safety begins with them. They are responsible in deciding who they can disclose their financial information to in the cloud. Therefore this legislation improves consumer’s level of alert whenever they are leaking any of their financial information in the cloud space. The second purpose that is serviced by the legislation of consumer protection at the cyberspace is educating consumers and providers of cybersecurity services on how they can protect cyber compromises.

Problem statement

Consumers of cyber services are losing millions of money on an annual basis when their financial information is leaked to third parties with malicious intentions. Their own information is used against them by cyber attackers to make a significant amount of money from innocent consumers of cyber services. However, this is only possible in a relaxed environment where risk is not analyzed as much as they should. To mitigate the about of money that innocent consumers of cyber services lose to hackers, cybersecurity is a business function that should not be left at the hands of providers of cyber services entirely. There has to be legal interest in the interaction of service providers and their consumers to ensure service providers remain on their toes in facilitating the cybersecurity of financial information of their clients.

Literature review:

As a topic under cyber law, cybersecurity, and protection of consumers involve subjecting providers of cyber services into fines and penalties when they are hacked, and financial information of their customers leaked. Therefore, it consists in punishing providers of cyber services like the case with punishment, which destroyers of physical laws are subjected to. This is an exercise that is practiced by the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) and is impacted by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). In the recent past, C has exercised CFPB y subjecting some companies which had not implemented sufficient protection measures to secure financial information of their customers. Therefore, when cyber attackers victimized such companies, cyber law was manifested through fines to these companies. An excellent example, in this case, is TerraCom and YourTel, which were heavily fined due to their failure to protect their consumer’s financial information against loss. These companies were taxed $10 million, on account that they violated the communication act.

This was a violation that attracted reference to cyber law to ascertain how these companies were going to be fined. From cyber law, it was clear that a company should give factual information to their customers about how safe their information in the cloud is. However, for these two companies, they mislead their customers in that they claimed to have established sufficient measures of cloud security only to be exploited by cyber attackers in the future. This was one case that was a manifestation of how financial information of consumers can be compromised. In this event, it was due to the negligence of the provider of cyber service to ensure that they had installed sufficient measures to protect their customer’s information.

Cyberlaw continues expanding its functionality in 2015 when another scenario pertaining to loss of consumer’s financial information was manifested. In this case, ATT&T was vict9mized and had to feel the pinch of cyber law. For them, they had sufficient security measures in place to guard their consumer’s financial information, but a data breach could not be avoided. This coasted the company $25 million fine by the FCC. This was meant to impact the notion that FCC was there for the welfare of consumers. The body was not intended to penalize any form of negligence by providers of cyber services. Therefore, it assumed it as their duty to ascertain that they anticipate all events in which financial information can be leaked to attackers. In the case of ATT&T, this event was avoidable only if authorization was closely monitored. Therefore, the FCC impacted the notion that companies had the responsibility of assessing the loyalty of their staff before entrusting them with their consumer’s confidential financial information. At this time, companies were already on their toes to avoid such high penalties on the risk that they can prevent. This increased demand for cybersecurity services because customers were now more sensitive to who they allowed having their information. In the same measure, companies were determined to improve their reputation.

Need for consumer protection in the cyberspace

The world is evolving at a faster rate than maybe we can manage. This is why we are advancing technology that is being used against us. We are inventing cyber functionalities to increase capabilities of the functionality of cyberspace to suffer management issues of this advanced technology. This is why it is necessary for aw o take its course to demand consumer protection by providers of cyber services. This is people who force customers to avail of their financial information in the cloud space. Players at the market place have taken their operation in the cloud, and soon, the market place will have mainly shifted from physical retailers to online retailers.

This increase of online platforms to carry business under cloud utilization is what calls for stick monitoring of how these payers protect the financial information of their customers (Markou, 2019). Technology is promoting development in inefficient markets. This is because customers do not know how good has a particular dealer in the web has facilitated the implementation of security measures. This, therefore, leaves consumers very vulnerable chances of making the wrong choice are very high. Equally, any dealer in the web can be attacked provide that attackers have identified a loophole that they can exploit to their advantage. This is why cyber law is essential in that it assesses security measures adopted by each dealer in the web on behalf of the consumer. Therefore, cyber law reduces the inherent risk of consumers falling in the trap of providing incompetent dealers at the cyberspace with their financial information.

Consumer protection as a consideration of this act is also necessary because of the consumer education gap. Not all consumers have relevant knowledge of assessing quality assurance of their financial information. This, in most cases, fall within the middle-class people who are most at the market place. Therefore, if this responsibility to assess the cybersecurity quality of a dealer at the cloud space, then it can be the widest loophole that the law can be exposing customers to. Thus, it should be a shared responsibility between the law, customers, and dealers in the cloud space. Each should have their role to play, all for the benefit and security assurance of consumer’s financial information. With that being said, cyber law should audit dealers who utilize the cloud space for any monetary consideration with their customers. The cyber law should also be exercised against those dealers who are victimized, and financial information of their customers lost. With dealers and companies who utilize and avails financial information of their customers in the cloud, they have the duty of making the strategic decision of which the third party to use to oversee the cybersecurity of their customer’s financial documentation. From the customer’s point of view, they have to research how efficient a company has been on protecting its customer’s information against compromise before making the actual decision to provide them with your financial information.

A financial institution is growing in terms of interconnections with each other. They are developed systems that are developed to facilitate inter transfer of data pertaining to customers from one financial information to another. This is very dangerous and is a loophole that arguably, takes more to protect that the benefit associated with it. This is a high-risk financial information conveyance from one financial information to another. This is because, if any information system of interconnected financial information is compromised, millions of financial information is at risk among interconnected financial institutions.

Therefore, cyber law needs to be amended in a way they it is very elastic to capture new business functionalities that utilize the cloud. At the moment, cyber law is yet to rate, which is the beast bureau of consumer protection for businesses that use the cloud space. Because this seems to be the future of the global and local market, more losses will be suffered at the market place due to events of a data breach. Thus, to minimize these losses in the future marketplace, there is a need to impact the necessary pressure, especially companies that offer their services to customers in the cloud.

Cyberlaw must be enacted all over the globe to protect global economic activity from being eroded. In the present, customer’s awareness is increasing as the first role of cyberlaw has been enacted to the public. The cyber law has, by far, increases people aware of the type of risk and what they can suffer in case of leakage of their financial information. This impacts fear to avail of their financial information in any online platform which facilitates the global market. This implies that there are reduced transactions in the local and global market for companies that serve their customers from online platforms (Markou, 2019).

Some of these financial losses to cyber attackers are used to finance criminal and terrorist gangs. Therefore, failure to take chances by legislation exposes not only consumes of cybersecurity services but has a far reach to an ordinary human being who does not use cyber pace. Thus, this raises the cost of its management, making it an expensive exercise for the government. Therefore, instead of incurring a cost to fight initiates from money stolen from cyberspace, it is better to bear the cost of stopping the storage of funds at the cyberspace.

Benefits of the government initiating cyberlaw as a legislation

Consumers of cyber services have all reason to cost their fears due to legal interest in their protection. Of course, they enjoy the most benefits of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It is consumer’s right o get educated on the kind of risk that they can expose themselves to by providing their financial information in the cloud space. The cyber law comes in and educates consumers of cyber services on the risk that are underlying to their financial prowess as much as they transact through the web. Therefore, their alert level is increased significantly and, consequently, their strategic decision making.

Through CFB, it has become compulsory for the government to take it as their responsibility in educating the public on financial risk at the cloud space (David, 2015) consumer protection and cybersecurity: the consumer educational gap, retrievable from

https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1032&context=brookings_pubs

. Therefore, this increases people’s literacy level and relevance of their decisions. Besides, CFPB educates consumers on a timely response when they discover that their financial information has been compromised. Therefore, the government’s complements on knowledge of risk mitigation that consumers might have to reduce the level of financial loss that they can suffer in the event of a compromise of their financial information.

Consumers and companies who interact through the cloud space do enjoy the benefit of increased efficiency of the market place. The government promotes cybersecurity hence increasing users of cloud services confidence and trust to those who share personal financial information within cyberspace. This increases economic activity, thus the efficient market for both companies and their customers. This benefit increases customer satisfaction and increases the profitability of industries that utilize cloud services for financial transactions from their customers. Besides, the government helps companies to evade fines and penalties that they could have suffered by motivating them to accept to bear the cost of enhancement of cybersecurity.

Government involvement in consumer protection through consumer protection of cybersecurity promotes the development of a friendly market place in which players enjoy air competition (David, 2015) consumer protection and cybersecurity: the consumer educational gap, retrievable from https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1032&context=brookings_pubs. In this case, the government forces companies to increase their efficiency by implementing guaranteed measures of cybersecurity protection. This, in turn, promotes a company’s reputation at the market place. At this point, the company finds it easy to retain their market share, attract new customers, and even penetrate new markets. Hence, the legislation of cyber law is a policy to impact fair and healthy competition of players in the cloud space.

This is an opportunity that the government develops for players in the cloud space to build their competitive advantage. Anyone who wants to be most competitive than their players would accept to meet the cost of the most efficient and guaranteed measure of facilitating cloud security. If this measure proves to be unbreakable by attackers, other players would be looking at such a company. This is where most customers would prefer to consume. This consequently identifies such a measure as a company’s competitive advantage that would work for them in the retention and attraction of new customers. This would impact increased capital flow in such company at regulated losses hence increased profitability.

Educating customers through the CFPB is more effective than demanding implementation of specific cybersecurity measures by providers of cyber services. Therefore, this would induce servers to improve their cybersecurity even without demand r strict and consistent monitoring by the government. Thus, this would promote the automatic improvement of the efficiency of the market place. It is more cost-effective for the government that forced alteration of the market forces to restore its integrity and competence (David, 2015) consumer protection and cybersecurity: the consumer educational gap, retrievable from https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1032&context=brookings_pubs.

Achievement of the cyber law in the establishment of consumer protection

It has been able to improve economic performance significantly, whereby a crisis of financial performance have been strategically avoided. Specifically, the mandated role of CFPB to educate consumers from cloud service has promoted alert of consumers, total implementation of up to date policies by servers hence an efficient market. Therefore, market forces have been structured in a way that predetermines the safety of consumer’s financial information at the cloud space, consequently increased trust to providers of cyber services. Therefore, cyber law has been able to facilitate an economy where people are not afraid of uncertainty.

The cyber law has also achieved the increased trust of government policies by the public. This, as an initiation to protect consumers, is portraying the government’s concern and good intent to consumers. Therefore, both consumers and servers have been cooperative with FCC and CFPB in the fight against cyber compromises of financial information. This has made it simple and useful for the government to look out attackers who could have exploited disagreements of cybersecurity policy between the government and serves and a loophole to exploit and compromise consumer’s financial information.

The government has also facilitated strategic decision making by consumers before they decide who to share their financial information with. From screening and assessment of companies by the FCC, the government gives feedback on its findings in the field. This feedback is essential to customers in decision making. This is what they use to decide which retailers they can share with their financial information online. It also helps consumers in the determination of hospitals that they can trust by sharing their medical financial information. Therefore, cyber law has facilitated research on behalf of consumers. Thus, cyber law has significantly eliminated delayed decision making due to the lengthy assessment of servers by customers.

Areas for improvement in cyber law

Although cyber law has significantly achieved a lot in facilitating cybersecurity in consumer’s financial information, it is not yet fully effective. Something has to be done before thinking that the war against cyber attackers has been won. There is a gap that needs to be addressed cyber law that has not been addressed since the legislation of cyber law. If this will not be addressed, consumers of cyber services are not yet safe enough to trust their servers. In addition, failure to address this gap will leave some people more vulnerable to suffer compromise of their financial information more than others. Millions of people have accepted to entrust their financial information to companies at the cloud apace, although they fail to have the relevant knowledge to ascertain how secure they are. This leaves them vulnerable and increases the degree of uncertainty of their safety.

Besides, companies avoid negotiating on cybersecurity policies by their customers (Serabian, 2015). This hinders a comprehensive understanding by customers of how much their financial information is secured before sharing it with such providers of cyber services. In this case, CFPB should exercise its mandate more strictly to ensure that companies communicate factual to their customers. This s to increase consumer’s awareness of guaranteed security of their information. This would reduce events of avoidable compromise consumer’s financial information. The payment card industry should be standardized and graded accordingly. This would mitigate incidences where consumers fall in the trap of sharing their financial information to servers without the relevant knowledge of the server’s degree of guaranteed cybersecurity. In the long run, attackers will be rendered irrelevant, and consumers, as well as companies, would be saved too much cost that would be others incurred as losses and treatment of such losses.

Recommendation

Technology is advancing very fast, enabling more loopholes that can be exploited by cyber attackers to compromise financial information of consumers of cyber services (v 2019). Therefore, cyber law should also be dynamic and elastic to capture new areas that are opened up by advancing technology. This way, it will be more useful to impact the implementation of relevant cybersecurity measures by companies that use customer’s financial information in the cloud. This will also enable the law to exercise up to date regulations while impacting the establishment of robust cybersecurity measures by companies or servers in the cloud space. Also, consumers of cloud services should not leave their security under the hands of their online dealers. Instead, they should make efforts to ascertain the reputation that a particular dealer has regarding firm protection of consumer’s financial information. Equally, dealers in the online market should ensure they have in place the right cybersecurity policies to provide financial details that consumers, as shared, is optimally protected and guarded against the compromise of a data breach.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it has been explained that the cybersecurity of consumers of cyber services cannot be left entirely on the hands of companies utilizing cloud functionality. This is why it is crucial to have a legal interest that examines how companies facilitate the protection of their customer’s financial information in the cloud. The paper has discussed comprehensively the benefits that are enjoyed by both consumers and companies in the cloud space by the legislation of cyber law. The paper has also discussed what has been achieved by cyber law since its legislation. The paper has used a holistic approach to recommend areas that need to be of great concern to cyber law. These are areas that cyber law as not anticipated, yet they handle a lot for the protection of consumer’s financial information.

REFERENCE:

Serabian, D. (2015). Consumer Protection and Cybersecurity: The Consumer Education Gap.

Williams, A. M. (2019). Reliance on Technology and the Increased Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities It Poses to Our Transportation Industry (Doctoral dissertation, Utica College).

Howells, G., & Weatherill, S. (2017). Consumer protection law. Routledge.

Markou, C. N. (2019). Consumer protection, automated shopping platforms, and EU law.

https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1032&context=brookings_pubs.