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by jnewland 4121 days ago
Step 1: Stop saying "cyber"
5 comments

Well, the cyber-criminals are committing cyber-crimes in cyberspace and we need our cyber-intelligence to be up to speed.

(cyber-speed)

Learned something new today: cyber, via cybernetics, originates from the Greek word for "steersman," kybernetes.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=cybernetics

Government says cyber to differentiate from traditional "security", which means "establishing or maintaining control by putting people in cages or killing them". When talking with someone who can launch missiles, order soldiers to kill, or dispatch law enforcement officers to assault a crowd of students holding a protest, then saying cyber isn't ridiculous.

Computer security people just say "security" without any qualifiers, because none are required. When a salesman pitching an anti spam product says cyber, he's failing the shibboleth

Who cares? Honestly, who cares what word they use. We all know what they mean.

Comments like this one just seem to me like a form of avoidance: let's mock their vocabulary, because we don't want to think about the substance of what they're doing.

What do you think would be a better term?

Network security is accurate I think but not specific enough.

What's wrong with "cyber"? - does it not relate to computers?
It's a term that you mostly find in government circles, media reporting and advertising. Outside of these, it is a warning sign that a person comes from that background and has not much down-to-earth experience with security topics and/or is trying to sell you something. (At least that is my impression from reading various discussions about the word)
A lot of my fellow security analysts have an irrational dislike of the term cyber. Personally, I'm indifferent towards the word. When someone uses it, I know exactly what they are talking about. Isn't that the important thing?
It is increasingly used in situations that have pejorative connotations, "cybersex", "cybercrime", et cetera.
I thought cyber meant systems, like cybernetics.
Cyber means to steer and cybernetics is self-steering systems based on feedback and goes back to Norbert Wiener in the the 1940s.