What is cybersecurity? An overview;
Cybersecurity is a vast landscape that covers various fronts. In general, the definition of cybersecurity includes the practice of defending the computers, servers, mobile and electronic devices from being manipulated by the illicit cybercriminals and hackers. It might involve building dedicated defenses for the sake of protecting the important data that is present within those devices. The important data might be user-oriented such as having their personal files and other relative information or it could be corporate based having all the nitty-gritty secrets of a corporation.
That is why many cyber actors out there are always trying their best to manipulate people or corporates to give up their personal data via phishing, social engineering, or practicing other wild tactics. If these entities don't cooperate in giving up what these attackers are looking for the upfront then they would go about finding the vulnerabilities of their target and hitting them where it hits the most.
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Why cybersecurity is important?
The reliance of people, corporates, and the digital media on cybersecurity is increasing day by day, its importance and need are not coming any slower. There are hardly any signs that this trend will slow down in the upcoming future. There is simply too much sensitive information of people lying around that they can't risk all of it getting leaked or being posted on social media where it would become the public information. That is why the need for cybersecurity has increased more than ever.
An example to understand the concept
Try this example if you want to understand why cybersecurity has grown too much and why it is extremely important in this digital space; consider a bank where people store their money, now it is an extremely protected place, why? Because people, companies, and corporates have their money lying around there, they won’t risk losing it over some petty bucks they are going to spend on building defenses against the criminals and thieves. Banks as an institution are not only protected physically in the form of bodyguards and security systems, CCTV cameras, and stuff but are also financially insured.
Even if some calamity hits banks, they have the capability of defending themselves or recovering from the damage. Similarly, the digital companies, corporates, or even the internet users must be met with the same fate and service as banks have, thus the need for cybersecurity on a constant basis.
Even for a small second consider that the cyber guard of a website or company is let down, what would happen do you think? The cybercriminals would easily break off the defensive firewalls and gain access to the main network of the company, they now have control over the digital presence of the company as well as the electronic data. They can forge identities on management level, have the company's secret made public, rob people off their money, or leak the secret, or personal data of the employees.
The worst scenario is yet to come, what if some hacker bumps into the secret data of the users such as their personal info, address, phone number, social security number, or credit card information? You can only imagine the havoc it can wreak. Still, think cybersecurity is not worth it?
Events that lead to the evolution of the cybersecurity
Only in the past few decades, the world came around its first computer-oriented virus, which then gradually transformed into a computer worm, and this action has never stopped or slowed down ever since. Even to this day, the cyber events take place on a daily basis and their intensity and engineering are only increasing and getting better. The cyber attacks that take place on a day to day basis are consistently evolving. There have been all types of attacks from small attacks originated by high school students or the attacks done on the state, or on other corporate world.
Even if the attacks continued to develop the defenses against them also continued to grow and get better. All the changes that cybersecurity got through didn't happen over the night, it was more of a milestone oriented journey. But still, we have transcended from the 1970s introduction of the first computer virus into the current state of the cybersecurity and striving hard to take everything that we have learned all the way to the future development of the cybersecurity. Following are some of the events that changed the cybersecurity for good or helped in its evolution.
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Introduction of the first computer virus
Creeper was the first virus that got out and was engineered by Bob Thomas, it was the first computer program and was not termed initially as malware or threat. But it continued to replicate on its own and infected any computer device it could find on the internet to display the message that "I'm the creeper, catch me if you can". To its impact, the world's first antivirus system was developed that was named "Reaper" which took care of the virus.
Largest Insider attack
The second event that changed cybersecurity for good was stretched over 30 years from 1976-2006 lead by the Greg Chung of Boeing who stole almost $2 billion worth of the aerospace docs and gave them to China. This is still considered the biggest insider attack on human civilization. Later on, it was conveniently understood that this threat was not only focused on giving away the sensitive data of aerospace engineering and military spacecraft to China but was the most tenacious attack to not only Boeing but to the security of the whole country.
The Snowden effect
Edward Snowden who was the former employee of the CIA and contractor for the United States government did copy and leaked out the classified information from the national security agency. It might not be the biggest cybersecurity attack or threat in history but it was the one that seriously had an extreme societal impact and controversy going on for years to come. Many people lost their trust in the Government and the spying campaigns that it was an active part of and for some the issue of the moment was whether Snowden was a hero or not.
The largest data breach
Yahoo reported the biggest data breach that the world ever encountered in 2013-2014 where a group of hackers jeopardized the accounts of all three billion users. Everything was compromised in this attack from the usernames to passwords and security questions too. Yahoo failed to report the breach to the world and was fined heavily in the year 2016 for not disclosing the breach in a timely manner for the public. The sale price of Yahoo was reportedly dropped to almost $350 million that year.
OPM data breach
The US office of personal management endured an attack in which the classified information on the former and current government employees 4.2 million to be precise was stolen. Also, the security clearance background files containing enormous data as well as the millions of fingerprints were stolen. It is one of the biggest breaches in terms of the Government data within the US history which led to all the Government departments to adopt a more data-centric security system.
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The first ransomware
WannaCry was the first ransomware that was reported in the history of the electronic media. This was the most efficient in its action which leads to the encryption of the important computer files. This included the important user data such as pictures, documents, and other files to be encrypted. The main target of this ransomware were the people running the Microsoft Windows as their OS. The group of hackers who designed and spread the ransomware demanded to be paid in cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin for the important files of the users to be decrypted.
It was the first ransomware the world has ever seen and according to some reports, this ransomware did affect more than 230000 computers in a single day in over 150 different countries.
NotPetya Ransomware attack
The NotPetya virus targeted the potential vulnerabilities within the Microsoft Windows OS and affected more than 12500 computers. The data was wiped clean from the banks, senior government officials, energy firms, and the airports. This happened in the year 2017 and was pretty shocking. Not only the important data was encrypted but it led to zero functionality within computers, being proof of how lethal and uncontrollable the Ransomware attacks can be.
Largest credit card attack
The credit bureau, Equifax failed to tend to a vulnerability in the year 2017 that led to the essential financial data of 143 million Americans being compromised. The hackers eventually got access to almost 209000 consumer credit cards and wreaked unbearable damage.
This was the largest credit card breach regarding the credit card numbers and information. The eventual result was the resignation of CEO Richard Smith.
This tells us that data breaches and cybersecurity events are no joke and the need for cybersecurity is more than we are ready to accept at the moment. If a path to the freedom of the digital world is to be paved then the services of cybersecurity are required upfront, otherwise, it would come out to be an impossible feat.
Evolution of Cybersecurity along the way; a powerful insight
In today's world, digital resources have not only grown in number but they have also become available for all kinds of people, attackers and defenders included. Today we have increased computer power, prospects of machine learning and artificial intelligence as well as the aspiration of building algorithms faster than anything else, what would the endgame of all of this? More knowledge spread across borders regarding cybersecurity? Sure but along with it, another feat is being accomplished by the malicious cyber attackers.
They are not only using this advanced and highly equipped technology to launch new threats and cyber attacks but their intensity is also getting more and more lethal over time. Therefore the cyber defenders need to have a grip over their actions and jump into the battle that is not taking place on the perimeter but within the network.
The malicious actors have found ways to infiltrate the network of their victims and have nested deep, therefore there is no chance of beating them by luring into an open field the battle needs to be taken on within the network.
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Thread landscape shift over the years
When it all started, the attackers needed to be very concise and mindful of the attack they were pulling as resources were well distributed between people and the attacks were also not that sophisticated, to begin with. But over the course of time as the technology evolved so did the ways of pulling off a cyber-heist. In today's world, hackers are more interested in pulling off their attack or a breach in a non-violent way and without having to flinch many keys on their keyboard behind a computer screen.
For them, thanks to the phishing emails, social engineering, and overall carelessness shared commonly in between people they can now easily find out a vulnerability within their victim to pull off a cyber-heist. And even if there is no vulnerability present, they can easily create it themselves.
The defender's side is sadly still lurking behind as there are only small advancements being done in the development of the Antivirus, anti-malware, and anti-ransomware systems. And even if some leaps are done, these are merely the response to the attack first commenced by a cyber attacker. Innovation seems to be indulged more towards the attacking side then being practiced fairly by the defender's side.
Services offered by businesses
Suppose there is a tech company building software, tools, and apps for easing the life of their customers. Now the very development and deployment system needs to be secured greatly in order to beat off any cyber breach that comes their away. Here, businesses need to adopt a more direct and innovative standpoint of dealing with how a service is being developed, processed, and shipped to their customers. Integrating their working environment and systems with DevOps might help them with it in a great manner. As it will present them with a dedicated way they can choose for the sake of working with these tools and making their interaction with their customers and how the customers interact with these services safer and much more potent.
Security issues and how these need to be addressed?
When we talk about the security of the systems we often relate it to the security of the data that is being shared around. Cybersecurity companies need to come around the fact that the security of their data, the employees, their corporate self, and the users or their customers is equally important.
These companies need to adopt the latest approach to data security and need to think and design the security systems that can help in biting off the cyber culprits that are trying around the clock to hurt their perception of security. Automation is always the key when it comes to dealing with the challenges of the future as well as dealing with the current workload. Back in the day when the concept of cybersecurity was only a vague idea, most of the work was done manually without any integration of the technology. It took seriously long hours to work on the development of software or services or getting them delivered to the customers.
But with the introduction of a new concept which is automation a lot of things got back on track and the product development life cycle was speeded up pretty great. But unfortunately, still to this day, there are some companies that don't use the concepts such as DevOps and automation and are not really doing all that great maintaining a feasible security standard. In today's world, the idea of automation needs to be praised and adopted more than it is currently being. This way the higher management would have more time to focus on improving their security standards and working closely with the innovative products and technologies that can help them in achieving that goal.
Even if it means integrating with machine learning, adopting artificial intelligence or deep learning, or simply applying the latest and greatest technology to work for them.
Detection and suppression
There is no way that someday there would be some technology or a defense system or a firewall so strong that it would be able to hold off the cyber-attacks and threats. The bitter truth is that cyber threats would continue to evolve and hit the businesses where it hit the most but there is no way that you should refrain from working with the innovative technology to help you extract insight from the attacks. Such as using the deep or machine learning to make certain predictions for you about the attack vector, how fatal it could be, and what should be done to lay it off.
A glimpse at the future of the cybersecurity
The future of the cybersecurity remains unprecedented still to this date despite the availability of such high powered technology. The main reason is that this industry is evolving at a constant pace and to make any predictions such as what this technology will hold in the future is a little difficult. But one thing is for certain that despite the circumstance s the idea of cybersecurity will continue to grow in terms of innovation and evolution of the security systems.
AI will become the core component of the cybersecurity systems
AI (artificial intelligence) is not a new term and it has been around for some time now. But still, to this date, we have seen but a little use of the AI but not anymore. Because the future of the cybersecurity belongs to the AI. Artificial intelligence will be so ferociously nested into the security and threat detection systems that it would be hard to design a new security protocol without integrating it with AAI first. AI offers a great deal of insight especially when it comes to machine learning. How intimidating it is that only by scanning the data the technology can predict what it stands for even in its most raw form?
Extraction of insight from the big data has been a great endeavor pulled off by machine learning which can help the security systems of the future to be more potent and vile against the emerging cyber threats and attacks.
Intrusion detection made easy
Intrusion detection is a useful skill especially when it comes to the discovery and mitigation of the harmful cyber activity taking place over the networks of a corporation. With the help of advancements in the cybersecurity systems not only the current threats to the secure data or networks could be scanned or predicted early but could also be mitigated so easily. Data protection is the main domain in which this concept is being used but still, a large number of organizations still would have to find out and or instate various rules and standards for the use of such dedicated systems.
There will be more hackers to deal with
One of the most enticing predictions about cybersecurity is that there will be more and more hackers to deal with. The number of people that will have the skill and insight to work on these malicious scripts will also grow in the future. One of the reasons why is the advancement in technology and access to cyber resources and a better learning environment. It is almost as anyone could learn how to code and be on their way to carve their own future in terms of cybersecurity.
The future regarding feats in cybersecurity is bright but at the same time, it also favors the cyber culprits and actors. But the future belongs to those who will be mindful of what comes next and how to better prepare themselves for such advancements.
If you want to explore a richer and more enticing experience then it is recommended that you take on with cybersecurity certifications that are made available to you or decide on the basis of what do you like.