Threat assessment for electronic and physical systems
The second question asks for two technologies you can actually point at where you work or study — and for their disadvantages, which is the half that separates an answer from a brochure.
Editorial process
Last reviewed · August 15, 2026
Two questions, and the second one is local
Question one asks what threats exist for electronic systems and how they can be protected, and the useful discipline is to organise rather than list. Threats to electronic systems fall into recognisable families: deliberate external attack such as intrusion, malware and denial of service; insider misuse, whether malicious or careless; physical threats to the equipment itself including theft, tampering and power loss; environmental threats such as fire, flood and heat; and supply-chain or third-party compromise. Grouping them this way shows you are working from a model rather than from headlines, and it makes the protection half straightforward: each family attracts different controls, and they layer. Access control and encryption for confidentiality, backups and redundancy for availability, logging and monitoring for detection, and an incident response plan for when prevention fails, which it eventually does. Naming the layer each control belongs to is what turns a list into an argument.
Question two is local and personal, and that is the point. Identify two assets in your own work or school environment that public safety uses to protect something from harm, and name the technology involved — video surveillance covering a car park, badge access on a restricted corridor, an emergency notification system, a duress alarm at a reception desk, automatic licence plate recognition at a gate, or a fire detection and suppression system. Then give advantages and disadvantages for each, and take the disadvantages seriously, because that half is where most answers go thin. Cameras deter and provide evidence but record after the fact, require monitoring nobody funds, and raise privacy questions about who watches and how long footage is kept. Badge systems create an audit trail but fail open or closed in a power cut and are defeated by one person holding a door. Say which trade-off your own institution has accepted.
Likely learning objectives
Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.
- 01Organise threats to electronic systems into families rather than listing incidents.
- 02Match protective controls to the threat family and the security property they defend.
- 03Identify protective technology in a real environment.
- 04State the disadvantages and trade-offs of a security technology, not only its benefits.
Read the full question
Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.
Course-wide instructions that accompany this question
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes. Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages. Discussion: Physical and electronic systems Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor. The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument. ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS Discussion Questions (DQ) Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words. Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source. One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words. I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses. Weekly Participation Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately. In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies. Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work). Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week. APA Format and Writing Quality Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required). Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation. I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition. Use of Direct Quotes I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly. As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content. It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source. LopesWrite Policy For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me. Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes. Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own? Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score. Late Policy The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies. Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances. If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect. I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension. As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading. Communication Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me: Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class. Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours. Discussion: Physical and electronic systems
Turn the brief into deliverables
- 01A structured account of electronic system threats and their countermeasures.
- 02Two named assets and the protective technologies applied to them.
- 03Advantages and disadvantages for each technology.
- 04Citations in the format your course requires.
Threats, protections, then your own two assets
Threat families for electronic systems
Group threats into external attack, insider misuse, physical, environmental and supply chain.
Layered protection
Match controls to families across prevention, detection and response.
First asset and its technology
Name a real asset and the protective technology, with advantages and disadvantages.
Second asset and its technology
Do the same for a second, different technology.
The accepted trade-off
State which cost or limitation your institution has decided to live with.
Sources for threat and physical security frameworks
Recommended databases
- Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
- NIST Computer Security Resource Center
- Your institution's own security or facilities pages
- Criminal justice databases for public safety technology
Search sequence
- 1.Use a published framework to organise the threat families rather than inventing categories.
- 2.Walk your own building and note what is actually installed before choosing your two assets.
- 3.Search for evaluations of your chosen technologies, since disadvantages are documented in the literature but not in marketing.
- 4.Check your institution's own policy on camera retention or access logging for the trade-off question.
Reference shortlist
These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.
Nothing here is cleared for citation until you have read it.
- 01
Physical Security
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency · 2024
Government guidance on protecting physical assets, which is the frame for the second question.
- 02
Cybersecurity Framework
National Institute of Standards and Technology · 2024
Organises controls into identify, protect, detect, respond and recover, which is the structure the first answer needs.
- 03
SP 800-53 Rev. 5, Security and Privacy Controls for Information Systems and Organizations
NIST Computer Security Resource Center · 2020
Named control families to cite rather than describing measures generically.
- 04
FERPA | Protecting Student Privacy
U.S. Department of Education · 2024
Relevant if your school environment is the one you describe, since surveillance and record access both engage student privacy.
Review before submission
Common mistakes
- Listing threats without organising them, which reads as recall rather than analysis.
- Naming technologies from general knowledge rather than from your own environment.
- Giving advantages at length and disadvantages in a sentence.
- Ignoring insider and environmental threats, which are the two most often omitted.
- Treating prevention as sufficient with no detection or response.
Submission checklist
- Are the threats grouped into families with a control for each?
- Are your two assets ones you could point at where you are?
- Does each technology have real disadvantages listed?
- Have you named a trade-off your own institution has accepted?
- Are both questions answered separately?
Use this guide to plan and review your own work. Follow your institution's rules and read our academic-integrity policy.
Written by
Aaron Bishop
MA, Education
assignment interpretation and research-methods coaching across disciplines
Aaron leads the EssayCrackers editorial desk. He works on how assignment briefs are read — what a rubric is actually asking for, and where students most often answer a different question than the one set.
Reviewed by
Dr. Nathan Cole
PhD, Rhetoric & Composition
Argumentation and thesis development
Nathan teaches first-year composition and directs a university writing center. He reviews EssayCrackers guides for argumentative soundness and citation accuracy.