What is Cyber Law and Why it is Important?
Information Technology is changing rapidly and gaining popularity in most of our aspects of lives. Computer plays an important role in today’s era, but that also includes the people involving in the commission of crimes using computers. Our law enforcement must become more educated in the cyber sector just to be able to keep up with all these types of criminal elements. One of the major difficulties is about educating people on cyber laws and security practices, such as handling sensitive data, records, and transactions, and implementing robust security technology, such as firewalls, anti-virus software, intrusion detection tools, and authentication services on the computer systems. Therefore, this blog will work to explain a significant section of cyber security which is Cyber Law.
What is Cyber Law?
Cyber law is like any other legal rule or policy that should be followed in our day to day life to stay out of any kind of trouble. These laws are formed by keeping several issues into consideration such as our society, morals, computer ethics, etc. The only difference is that cyber law is applied to the internet and internet-related technologies only. Cyber law is formed to maintain discipline and justice in the cyber world. This area in the legal system is introduced because the crime related to computers and other technology was increasing rapidly. These types of crimes were not falling under the category of any existing legal category therefore a separate section was formed named Cyber Law.
Cyber law provides legal protections to people using the internet including both businesses and regular citizens. It is important for anyone using the internet to be aware of the cyber laws of their country and local area so that, they know what activity is legal online and what is not. Also, if anything happens with them online, they know how they can act regarding that matter accordingly.
Areas Encompassing in Cyber Laws
These laws cover many areas & activities occurring online and serve a variety of purposes. Some laws are formed to protect to defend people online from malicious activities, some laws explain the policies if using computers and the internet in a company. All these wide categories fall under the cyber laws. Some of the wide range areas encompassing the cyber laws are:
Scam/ Treachery
Cyber laws exist to protect people from online frauds and scams, these laws prevent any financial crimes and identity theft that happen online.
Copyrighting Issues
The Internet is the source of multiple types of content, but it is not right to copy the hard work of any other person. There are strict policies in cyber laws against copyright that protects the creative work of companies and individuals.
Online Insults and Character Degradation
Online platforms like social media are the best platform to speak your mind freely but there is a thin line between the liberation of using the right to speak and defaming someone online. Cyber laws address issues like online insults, racism, gender targets to protect a person’s reputation.
Online Harassment and Stalking
Harassment is a violation of both civil and criminal laws. This crime is a major issue in cyberspace. The legal system has some strict laws to prohibit these despicable crimes.
Data Protection
People using the internet risk their privacy while being online and often rely on cyber laws and policies to protect their secrets. Also, companies should maintain the confidentiality of data of their users.
Importance of Cyber Laws
Cyber laws are important to punish criminals who commit serious crimes related to the computer such as hacking, online harassment, data theft, disrupting the online workflow of any enterprise, attacking another individual or website.
Cyber laws decide different forms of punishment depending on the type of law you broke, who you offended, where you violated the law, and where you live.
It is important to bring criminal behind the bars, as most cybercrimes do not enter the category of common crime and it may lead to denial of justice.
These crimes may endanger the confidentiality and financial security of a nation therefore these problems should be addressed lawfully.
Conclusion
Implementing laws in cyberspace is an important step to create a safe and secure environment for people on cyber platforms. To protect from cybercrimes, computer forensic science should focus on ethical hacking training and implementing cyber security plans addressing people, process, and technology issues arise nowadays. Strict cyber laws are the need of this era where technology is growing at rapid speed because the budgets have not been increased to keep up with this rate of change in technology.
