Cyber Security: Facts, What is cyber security, learn cyber security, cyber attack, challenges and Opportunity.

 CYBER SECURITY 

#BE ALERT & BE SECURE.

Many people might be surprised to hear that cyber security has made it to our list of the top tech trends to look out for in 2021, but it definitely deserves its spot. 

Cyber security now dominates the priorities of every organization as they adapt to a post-COVID 19 world. Remote workers’ identities and devices are the new security perimeter and cyber security technology is constantly evolving in line with hackers who are becoming ever more advanced. Cyber security investor Nazo Moosa is one of Europe’s most prominent cyber security investors and predicts rapid growth. Reports suggest that the global cyber security market is currently worth $173B in 2020, and will be worth $270B by 2026. Jobs in this industry are also growing 3x faster than any other jobs in the world of tech, so look out for cyber security tools becoming more present in your everyday work and home life in 2021.

WHAT IS CYBER SECURITY ?

Cyber security can be described as the collective methods, technologies, and processes to help protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of computer systems, networks and data, against cyber attacks or unauthorized access. 

The main purpose of cyber security is to protect all organizational assets from both external and internal threats as well as disruptions caused due to natural disasters. 

As organizational assets are made up of multiple disparate systems, an effective and efficient cyber security posture requires coordinated efforts across all its information systems. Therefore, cyber security is made up of the following sub-domains.

#Application Security

Application security involves implementing various defenses within all software and services used within an organization against a wide range of threats. It requires designing secure application architectures, writing secure code, implementing strong data input validation, threat modeling, etc. to minimize the likelihood of any unauthorized access or modification of application resources. 

#Identity Management and Data Security

Identity management includes frameworks, processes, and activities that enables authentication and authorization of legitimate individuals to information systems within an organization. Data security involves implementing strong information storage mechanisms that ensure security of data at rest and in transit.

#Network Security

Network security involves implementing both hardware and software mechanisms to protect the network and infrastructure from unauthorized access, disruptions, and misuse. Effective network security helps protect organizational assets against multiple external and internal threats.

#Mobile Security

Mobile security refers to protecting both organizational and personal information stored on mobile devices like cell phones, laptops, tablets, etc. from various threats such as unauthorized access, device loss or theft, malware, etc. 

#Cloud Security

Cloud security relates to designing secure cloud architectures and applications for organization using various cloud service providers such as AWS, Google, Azure, Rackspace, etc. Effective architecture and environment configuration ensures protection against various threats. 

IMPORTANCE AND CHALLENGES OF CYBER SECURITY 

Given the rapidly evolving technological landscape and the fact that adoption of software is ever increasing across various sectors including finance, government, military, retail, hospitals, education, energy to name a few, more and more information is becoming digital and accessible through wireless and wired digital communication networks and across the omnipresent internet. All this highly sensitive information is of a great value to criminals and evil doers which is why it is important to protect it using a strong cyber security measures and processes.

The importance of good cyber security strategies is evident in the recent high-profile security breaches of organizations such as Equifax, Yahoo, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), who lost extremely sensitive user information that caused irreparable damage to both their finances and reputation. And as the trend suggests, the rate of cyber-attacks show no sign of slowing down. Companies, both large and small, are targeted everyday by attackers to obtain sensitive information or cause disruption of services.

The same evolving technological landscape also poses challenges in implementing effective cyber security strategies. Software constantly changes when its updated and modified which introduces new issues and vulnerabilities and opens it up for various cyber-attacks. Furthermore, IT infrastructure evolves as well with many of the companies already migrating their on premise systems to the cloud which introduces a whole new set of design and implementation issues resulting in a new category of vulnerabilities. Companies are unaware of the various risks within their IT infrastructure and hence fail to have any cyber security countermeasures in place until it’s far too late.

WHAT IS CYBER ATTACK ?

A cyber-attack is a deliberate attempt by external or internal threats or attackers to exploit and compromise the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information systems of a target organization or individual(s). 

Cyber attackers use illegal methods, tools and approaches to cause damages and disruptions or gain unauthorized access to computers, devices, networks, applications and databases.

Cyber attacks come in a wide variety and the following list highlights some of important ones that criminals and attackers use to exploit software

#Malware

#Ransomware

#Injection attacks (e.g., cross-site scripting, SQL injection, command injection)

#Session management and Man-in-the-Middle attacks

#Phishing

#Denial of service

#Privilege escalations

#Unpatched/Vulnerable software

#Remote code execution

#Brute force

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A CUBER ATTACK AND AND A CYBER BREACH ?

A cyber-attack is not exactly the same as a security breach. A cyber-attack as discussed above is an attempt to compromise the security of a system. Attackers try to exploit the confidentially, integrity or availability of a software or network by using various kinds of cyber attacks as outlined in the above section. Security breach on the other hand is a successful event or incident in which a cyber-attack results in a compromise of sensitive information, unauthorized access to IT systems or disruption of services.

Attackers consistently try a multitude of cyber-attacks against their targets with a determination that one of them would result in a security breach. 

Hence, security breaches also highlight another significant part of a complete cyber security strategy; which is Business Continuity and Incidence Response (BC-IR). BC-IR helps an organization with dealing in cases of a successful cyber-attacks. Business Continuity relates to keeping critical business system online when struck with a security incident whereas Incidence Response deals with responding to a security breach and to limit its impact as well as facilitating recovery of IT and Business systems.

THE BEST JOBS IN CYBER SECURITY 

#Information Security Analyst

#Lead Software Security Engineer

#Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)

#Security Architect

#Penetration Tester

#Information Security Crime Investigator/Forensics Expert