Cybersecurity is an integral part of our lives, whether you own a business or are employed by one.
Cybersecurity refers to the preventative measures and methods which are adapted to protect any information on computers, networks, programs and data from unauthorized access, stealing or compromise. The International Telecommunications Union describes Cybersecurity as the collection of tools, policies, security concepts, security safeguards, guidelines, risk management approaches, actions, training, best practices, assurance and technologies that can be used to protect the cyber environment and organization and user’s assets.
Cyber Security can is divided into four broad categories. For an end to end protection, all four essential categories must be fulfilled. These are:
- Application Security
It includes the measures that are taken in the development stages of an application to protect it from threats due to errors in design or deployment. It has some basic techniques like Input parameter validation, user authentication, authorization, session management, parameter manipulation, exception management, auditing and logging.
- Information Security
It protects information from unauthorized access to avoid identity theft and to protect privacy. Some of the techniques used to cover this are cryptography, identification, authentication, authorization of a user.
- Disaster Recovery
Disaster recovery is a process that includes performing risk assessment, establishing priorities, developing recovery strategies in case of a disaster. It’s essential that every business should have a backup plan for disaster recovery.
- Network Security
Network security includes activities which protect the usability, reliability, integrity and safety of the network. The most important network security components include anti-virus, anti-spyware, a firewall, intrusion prevention systems (IPS) and Virtual Private Networks.
Hence, it is imperative for every organization to ensure that cybersecurity is an integral part of the agenda. Over the last few years, the money spent on cybersecurity has only grown. From 71.1 billion in 2014 it is expected to reach 101 billion before the year 2018 ends. Now organizations have started to realize that malware is a publicly available commodity which makes it easy for anyone to become a hacker or cyber attacker. Therefore, cybersecurity requires a lot of focus and dedication with continuously updated solutions.
There are myriads of cybersecurity attacks. Ones that have been listed and are popular while others which may emerge with the advancement of technology.
- Malware
Malware is any software intentionally designed to cause damage to a computer, server or computer network. Malware does the damage after it is implanted or introduced in some way into a target’s computer and can take the form of executable code, scripts, active content, and other software.
- Phishing
Phishing is the fraudulent attempt to obtain sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, often for malicious reasons, by disguising as a trustworthy entity in electronic communication.
- SQL Injection Attack
SQL injection is a code injection technique, used to attack data-driven applications, in which problematic SQL statements are inserted into an entry field for execution.
- Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks are a type of injection, in which malicious scripts are injected into otherwise benign and trusted websites. XSS attacks occur when an attacker uses a web application to send malicious code, generally in the form of a browser side script, to a different end user.
- Denial-of-Service (DoS)
In computing, a denial-of-service attack is a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host connected to the Internet.
- Session Hijacking and Man-in-the-Middle Attacks
In computer science, session hijacking, sometimes also known as cookie hijacking is the exploitation of a valid computer session—sometimes also called a session key—to gain unauthorized access to information or services in a computer system. Man-in-the-middle is a form of session hijacking.
- Credential Reuse
Credential stuffing is a technique where hackers use your stolen credentials to access some of your most valuable online accounts, like retail gift card accounts, travel and hospitality loyalty programs, and online banking accounts.
- Zero-Day Exploit
A zero-day vulnerability is a computer-software vulnerability that is unknown to those who would be interested in mitigating the vulnerability. Until the vulnerability is mitigated, hackers can exploit it to adversely affect computer programs, data, additional computers or a network.
Cybersecurity is not just a business process but rather should be a strategic business priority. It’s not only the responsibility of the IT department of an organization to take care of it, rather at an individual level by all the employees to ensure cyber safety.
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