Considering the technology around us, the amount of data we store online these days, and our dependency on data it’s very important to protect our smartphones, laptops, PC from any cyber-attacks. Not only is cyber security important to large organizations, it is also important for individuals.
We are surrounded by technology in our daily life and it’s more important to us than ever before. It is sometimes difficult to believe that potential threats are always behind every device and platform that we use daily. A steady rise in cybercrime exposes flaws in the products and services we’ve been relying on. Hence we should consider what cyber security is, and why it is important.
What is cybersecurity?
Cybersecurity is the protection of internet-connected devices and services from malicious attacks by hackers, spammers, and cybercriminals. Companies use the practice to protect themselves from phishing schemes, ransomware attacks, identity theft, data breaches, and financial losses.
Cyber security is the study of how to protect devices and services from malicious actors such as hackers, spammers, and cybercriminals. While some cyber security components are designed to strike first, most professionals today are more concerned with figuring out how best to defend all assets from mobile devices and computers to networks and databases from attacks.
Why is cybersecurity important?
One cannot ignore cybersecurity in today’s digitalized world. One single breach can lead to exposing the personal information of millions of people. These breaches can lead to a loss of customer trust with a financial impact on companies. As a result, cyber security is crucial for protecting businesses and individuals from spammers and cyber threats.
The importance of cybersecurity is growing. Fundamentally, our society is more technologically dependent than ever before, and this is not going to slow down. Data leaks that could lead to identity theft are now being published on social media accounts. Social security numbers, credit card information, and bank account information are now stored in cloud storage services such as Dropbox or Google Drive which needs to be protected.
Every day, whether you are an individual, a small business, or a large multinational corporation, you rely on computer systems. When we combine this with the rise of cloud services, inadequate cloud service security, smartphones, and the Internet of Things (IoT), we have a plethora of potential security vulnerabilities that did not exist a few decades ago.
What are common types of cyber threats?
Malware
Malware refers to malicious software variants such as worms, viruses, Trojans, and spyware that allow unauthorized entry or cause computer damage. Malware attacks have become difficult to track as they are designed to avoid detection methods such as antivirus software that scans for malicious file attachments.
Ransomware
Ransomware is a type of malware that encrypts files, data, or systems and threatens to destroy the data or expose private or sensitive data – unless a ransom payment is made to the computer hackers who launched the attack. Most ransomware attacks have targeted state and local governments, which are easier to negotiate than organizations and are under pressure to pay ransom in order to restore critical applications and websites used by citizens.
Phishing
is a type of social engineering in which users are duped into providing personal or sensitive information. Phishing scams involve emails or text messages that appear to be from a legitimate company and request sensitive information such as credit card information or login information. During the pandemic, many cases of phishing came to light.
Man-in-the-middle attacks
A man-in-the-middle attack involves a cybercriminal intercepting and relaying messages between two parties in order to steal data. On an insecure Wi-Fi network, for example, an attacker can intercept data passing between the guest’s device and the network.
Denial of service
A DDoS attack tries to bring down a server, website, or network by flooding it with traffic from multiple coordinated systems.
What is risk analysis in cybersecurity and how to perform risk analysis?
The review of risks associated with a specific action or event is referred to as risk analysis. Risk analysis is used in information technology, projects, security issues, and any other event where risks can be quantified and qualitatively assessed. Every IT project and business organization involves risks. Risk analysis should be done on a regular basis and updated to identify new potential threats. Strategic risk analysis aids in reducing future risk probability and damage.
A risk analysis is one step in the overall risk management and risk assessment process for cybersecurity. The analysis entails examining and prioritizing each risk to the security of your organization’s information systems, devices, and data. IT systems must be monitored over time to ensure that cybersecurity measures are functioning properly. Set performance metrics for your security controls and then monitor them to ensure that activity remains within your risk tolerance. Conduct annual audits of the effectiveness of your cybersecurity program as well.
Cybersecurity controls must be developed to reduce risk exposure and prevent security incidents in order to mitigate risks. Cybersecurity controls are safeguards that are used to detect, prevent, and mitigate cyber threats and attacks. Depending on your specific threat landscape, these mechanisms can take a variety of forms. Physical controls, such as security cameras or guards, are examples. Firewalls and two-factor authentication are examples of technical controls.
Risk mitigation can also help with data protection, regulatory compliance, and threat response.
Challenges involved in cyber security
Today, cybersecurity is a critical component of any country’s overall national and economic security strategies. With the increase in cyber-attacks, every organization requires a security analyst to ensure the security of their system. These security analysts face numerous cybersecurity challenges, such as protecting government organizations’ confidential data, securing private organization servers, and so on.
Evolution of Ransomware:
Ransomware is a type of malware that locks the data on a victim’s computer and demands payment before the ransom data is unlocked. The victim’s access rights are restored after successful payment.
Ransomware attacks are becoming more common in cybercrime. To protect their organization, IT professionals and business leaders must have a strong recovery strategy against malware attacks. It entails careful planning to recover corporate and customer data and applications, as well as reporting any breaches in accordance with the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme. Today’s DRaaS (Disaster recovery as a service) solutions offer the best protection against ransomware attacks. DRaaS solutions can automatically take backup of our files, easily identify which backup is clean, and initiate a fail-over with the click of a button when malicious attacks corrupt our data.
Revolution of blockchain:
Blockchain technology is a vast global platform that enables two or more parties to conduct a transaction or business without a third party’s need to build trust. It is difficult to predict what cybersecurity benefits the blockchain system will provide. Cybersecurity professionals can make calculated guesses about blockchain.
Conclusion
As technology and the internet are deeply connected cyber security is of critical importance in today’s world. With increasing cyber attacks it has become very important to protect our personal and professional data from being misused. It is necessary that individuals, organizations, and businesses should be more proactive to secure our data by following cyber security practices like using strong and complex passwords, keeping software up to date, training employees on cyber security, using firewalls, etc.
