Fundamentals of Cyber Security

Cybersecurity is the most concerned matter as cyber threats and attacks are overgrowing.

Attackers are now using more sophisticated techniques to target the systems. Individuals, small-scale businesses or large organization, are all being impacted. So, all these firms whether IT or non-IT firms have understood the importance of Cyber Security and focusing on adopting all possible measures to deal with cyber threats.

With the game up for cyber threats and hackers, organizations and their employees should take a step head to deal with them. As we like to connect everything to the internet, this also increases the chances of vulnerabilities, breaches, and flaws.

Gone are the days when passwords were enough to protect the system and its data. We all want to protect our personal and professional data, and thus Cyber Security is what you should know to ensure data protection.

So, lets being with defining the term Cyber Security….

What is Cyber Security?

Cyber Security is the process and techniques involved in protecting sensitive data, computer systems, networks and software applications from cyber attacks. The cyber attacks are general terminology which covers a large number of topics, but some of the popular are:

• Tampering systems and data stored within
• Exploitation of resources
• Unauthorized access to the targeted system and accessing sensitive information
• Disrupting normal functioning of the business and its processes
• Using ransomware attacks to encrypt data and extort money from victims

The attacks are now becoming more innovative and sophisticated that is capable of disrupting the security and hacking the systems. So it’s very challenging for every business and security analyst to overcome this challenge and fight back with these attacks.

To understand the need for Cyber Security measures and its practices, let’s have a quick look at the types of threats and attacks.

Ransomware

Ransomware is a file encryption software program that uses a unique robust encryption algorithm to encrypt the files on the target system.

The authors of the Ransomware threat generate a unique decryption key for each of its victims and save it in a remote server. Thus, users cannot access their files by any application.

The ransomware authors take advantage of this and demand a considerable ransom amount from the victims to provide the decryption code or decrypt the data. But such attacks have any guarantee of recovery of data even after paying the ransom.

Botnets Attacks

Botnets was initially designed to carry out a specific tasks within a group.

It is defined as a network or group of devices connected with the same network to execute a task. But this is now being used by bad actors and hackers that attempts to access the network and inject any malicious code or malware to disrupt its working. Some of the botnet attacks include:

• Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks
• Spreading spam emails
• Stealing of confidential data

Botnets attacks are generally carried out against large-scale businesses and organization due to its huge data access. Through this attack, the hackers can control a large number of devices and compromise them for its evil motives.

Social Engineering Attacks

Social engineering are now a common tactics used by cyber criminals to gather user’s sensitive information.

It may trick you by displaying attractive advertisements, prizes, huge offers and so and ask you to feed your personal and bank account details. All the information you enter there is cloned and used for financial frauds, identity frauds and so.

It is worth saying about the ZEUS virus that is active since 2007 and is being used as a social engineering attack methods to steal banking details of the victims. Along with financial losses, Social engineering attacks are capable of downloading other destructive threats to the concerned system.

Cryptocurrency Hijacking

Cryptocurrency hijacking is the new addition to this cyber world.

As the digital currency and mining are becoming popular, so it is among cyber criminals. They have found their evil benefit to the crypto-currency mining which involves complex computing to mine virtual currency like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Monero, Litecoin so on.

Cryptocurrency investors and traders are the soft target for this attack.

Cryptocurrency hijacking also known as “Cryptojacking”. It is a program designed to inject mining codes silently to the system. Thus the hacker silently uses the CPU, GPU and power resources of the attacked system to mine for the cryptocurrency.

The technique is used to particularly mine Monero coins. As the mining is a complex process, it consumes most of the CPU resources which impacts the system’s performance. Also, it is done under all your expenses, so the victim may get ha huge electricity bill and internet bill.

It also lessens the lifespan of the affected device.

Phishing

Phishing is a fraudulent action of sending spam emails by imitating to be from any legitimate source.

Such mails have a strong subject line with attachments like an invoice, job offers, big offers from reputable shipping services or any important mail from higher officials of the company.

The phishing scam attacks are the most common cyber attacks that aims to steal sensitive data. Like Login credentials, credit card numbers, bank account information and so on. To avoid this, you should learn more about phishing email campaigns and its preventive measures. One can also use email filtering technologies to avoid this attack.

Along with these, 2019 will seek the potential in biometric attacks, AI attacks and IoT attacks. Many companies and organizations are witnessing large-scale cyber attacks and there is no stop for them. Despite the constant security analysis and updates, the rise of cyber-threat is consistent. Thus, it is worth to educate yourself with the basics of cybersecurity and its implementations.

The key concept of Cyber Security?

The Cyber Security on a whole is a very broad term but is based on three fundamental concepts known as “The CIA Triad“.

It consists of Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability. This model is designed to guide the organization with the policies of Cyber Security in the realm of Information security.

Confidentiality

It defines the rules that limits the access of information. Confidentiality takes on the measures to restrict the sensitive information from being accessed by cyber attackers and hackers.

In an organization, peoples are allowed or denied the access of information according to its category by authorizing the right persons in a department. They are also given proper training about the sharing of information and securing their accounts with strong passwords.

They can change the way data is handled within an organization to ensure data protection. Various ways to ensure confidentiality, like: two-factor authentication, Data encryption, data classification, biometric verification, and security tokens.

Integrity

This assures that the data is consistent, accurate and trustworthy over its time period. It means that the data within the transit should not be changed, altered, deleted or illegally being accessed.

Proper measures should be taken in an organization to ensure its safety. File permissions and user access control are the measures controlling the data breach. Also, there should be tools and technologies implemented to detect any change or breach in the data. Various Organizations uses a checksum, and even cryptographic checksum to verify the integrity of data.

To cope with data loss or accidental deletion or even cyber attacks, regular backups should be there. Cloud backups are now the most trusted solution for this.

Availability

Availability in terms of all necessary components like hardware, software, networks, devices and security equipment should all be maintained and upgraded. This will ensure the smooth functioning and access of Data without any disruption. Also providing constant communication between the components through providing enough bandwidth.

It also involves opting for extra security equipment in case of any disaster or bottlenecks. Utilities like firewalls, disaster recovery plans, proxy servers and a proper backup solution should ensure to cope with DoS attacks.

For a successful approach, it should go through multiple layers of security to ensure protection to every constituent of CyberSecurity. Particularly involving computers, hardware systems, networks, software programs and the data which are shared among them.

Conclusion

In an organization, to accomplish an effective Cyber Security approach, the peoples, processes, computers, networks and technology of an organization either big or small should be equally responsible. If all component will complement each other then, it is very much possible to stand against the tough cyber threat and attacks.

Source: Geekflare