Cyber Security Vulnerabilities in Critical Infrastructure Protection

In this assignment you will craft a research paper on a homeland security issue. In the prior assignment, you presented the first three sections of your paper. This week, you will add the final sections and present the full paper. Be sure to make any changes to your literature review based on instructor feedback. 

The three main sections you should add to the paper for this submission are the Methodology and Research Strategy, Analysis and Findings, section and the Conclusions/Recommendations section. 

Methodology and Research Strategy: This section provides the reader with a description of how you carried out your qualitative research project, and the variables you identified and analyzed. It describes any special considerations and defines any limitations and terms specific to this project, if necessary. If you use any data, you will identify the data and its source. This section can be brief or more complicated, depending on the project, written in 1-2 pages. 

Analysis and Findings: are not the same as conclusions. In the analysis component of this section, you identify how you analyzed the data. The second part is the finding you got from your analysis of the data. The findings are the facts that you developed, not your interpretation of the facts. That interpretation is conducted in the conclusions and recommendations section of the paper. Findings will come from the prior research you examined and your analysis of those prior findings to create new findings for your paper. While there may be some facts that are such that they will stand and translate to your paper, the intent is to create new knowledge, so you will normally analyze the data to create your own findings of what facts that data represents. This section should be at least 2-5 pages. 

Conclusions and Recommendations: is the section where you give your interpretation of the data. Here you tell the reader what the findings mean. Often the conclusions and recommendations sections will mirror the findings in construct as the researcher tells the reader what the researcher sees as the meaning of that data. Then, drawing on those conclusions, the researcher tells the reader what they believe needs to be done to solve/answer the research question. This section may include recognition of any needs for further research and then finishes with a traditional conclusion to the paper as a whole. 

Remember, your paper should seek to answer a question that helps to solve the research puzzle you identified. 

Technical Requirements

• Your paper must be at a minimum of 10-15 pages (the Title and Reference pages do not count towards the minimum limit).
• Scholarly and credible references should be used. At least 8 scholarly sources are required for this assignment.
• Scholarly sources include peer reviewed articles, government publications, and academic texts.
• Type in Times New Roman, 12 point and double space.
• Students will follow the current APA Style as the sole citation and reference style used in written work submitted as part of coursework. 
• Points will be deducted for the use of Wikipedia or encyclopedic type sources. It is highly advised to utilize books, peer-reviewed journals, articles, archived documents, etc.
• All submissions will be graded using the assignment rubric.

Week 2: Emergency Management and Response
Week 3: Critical Infrastructure Protection
Week 4: Transportation Security
Week 5: Immigration & Border Security
Week 6: Intelligence Collection & Civil Liberties
Week 7: Terrorism and Detention of Suspected Terrorists
Week 8: Cyber Security and Technology
Topic areas to choose from.