What is Cybersecurity?

Cybersecurity is a term with diverse definitions through multiple perspectives. The diversity in its definition satisfies the need of academia, industry and government and non-governmental organizations to manage the cybersecurity challenges.

Simple said, cybersecurity is the practice of organizing and collecting resources, structures and processes to protect cyberspace and cyberspace-enabled systems for preventing occurrences of misalignment of true property rights. Cybersecurity is the protection of computer systems and networks from digital attacks, data theft and breach.

Cybersecurity or IT security protects critical systems and sensitive information from cyberattacks. It is designed to fight threats against networked systems and applications. The threats may originate from inside or outside of an organization. Cybersecurity management is critical for small, medium and large organizations. In the current era of a plethora of technologies, it is crucial for organizations to hire experts skilled in specific technologies like advanced analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning in order to fight cyber threats effectively, thus reducing the impact and lifecycle of breaches when they occur.

We will discuss the most critical areas that require cybersecurity in this article.

Types of Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity is required in protecting various aspects of the property. It is required to protect the cyberspace of an organization from disruption, destruction or malicious controlling of the computing environment. It further involves protection of data integrity and theft prevention. This protection can be accomplished by following a strategic approach for reducing cyberattack and equally considering the various kinds of cybersecurity techniques so that the organization can address its security concern comprehensively. The major techniques are discussed below.

Infrastructure Cybersecurity

This technique is used to protect all the systems that have critical infrastructure as well as systems on which the society is profoundly dependent upon. These involve electricity and water system, traffic signals, healthcare systems, shopping centers, etc. Such platforms may be used by attackers to affect the end points to which they are connected.  These platforms are extremely critical to the functioning of society. Their destruction or incapacity shall lead to debilitating impact on physical and economic security of public health and safety. The public and private sector experts must employ interconnected and collaborative platform for securing critical infrastructure.

At an organizational level, infrastructural cybersecurity can be accomplished by accessing the vulnerable points of the infrastructure so that the business connected with them are protected. The organizations should evaluate the damage that a cyberattack causes and should develop a contingency plan in order to overcome the brunt of the attacks.

Network Security

Network security shall protect the computer networks of organizations from intruders, targeted attackers and malware. Organizations are targeted by unauthorized intruders with malicious intent. User activities are tracked via the websites that have third party cookies. This technique may be helpful in growing business but may affect users by making them prey to exploitation. A security program is crucial for organizations to include in their network in order to counter cyberattacks and malware targeted at their network. Machine learning is the most applicable technology to prevent such attacks on network. The technology shall alert the authorities in case of abnormal traffic. It is further important to keep upgrading the network security by implementing and deploying policies that can foil the attacks.

Network security shall involve combining the layers of defenses at the edge as well as the inside of the network. Each security layer has policies and controls associated with it. Malicious actors are stopped from exploiting or entering the network and authorized users are allowed to access the network.

Some of the main types of network security are firewalls, intrusion detection system, network segmentation, virtual private network and access control, email, web and wireless security.

Application Security

It is important to ensure the security of applications right from the inception of its code. A simple coding error can lead to unverified inputs and then further lead to SQL injection attacks and data leaks if an attacker identifies it. Therefore, application security significantly impacts the overall security of cyber space.

Application security applies to applications that operate on–premises as well as those in the cloud. It is recommended by researchers that security should be built within applications at the design stage. Numerous tools are available to secure applications portfolio. These tools are capable of assessing inadvertent coding threats and lock down any code changes. The tools are capable of evaluating suitable cryptography technology and keep a check on access rights.

Cloud Security

Security of cloud involves confidential computing in which data at rest, in motion and in use is all secured through encryption. This will ensure that the organization’s overall cloud privacy is maintained in line with regulatory compliance standards, and further ensure that business requirements are supported. It is crucial to understand what to protect and which system aspects to manage.

Security vulnerabilities are largely managed by the cloud service providers. Cloud service providers offer significant control to run business. They offer data centers and network to protect information, identities, applications and devices. Several network security tasks that are done manually within an organization can be automated through cloud providers’ offerings. Human configuration errors are further reduced.

Apart from provider, clients should consider the security of their network and end-user hardware. Cloud security can be ensured once the security aspects of physical networks, data storage, servers, OS, middleware and end-user hardware, data and applications, runtime-environments are all taken care of.

Internet of Things Security

An end-to-end IoT device and IoT network security involves security of all smart machinery and smart energy grids. IoT device security requires the technologies, processes and measures necessary to protect them.  Developers can protect IoT devices from vulnerabilities while deploying the security level that is best suitable to their application needs. Attacks can be prevented using cryptography technologies and security services. They can be curbed using isolation measures. Physical attacks on IoT devices can be managed through tamper mitigation and side-channel attack mitigation technologies. A detailed discussion on those technologies shall be considered in future articles.

It would be difficult to set a universally acceptable definition of cybersecurity. It is important to consider multidimensional aspects of cybersecurity that includes all technological and scientific advancements. Cybersecurity is interdisciplinary and separating the disciplines to address the complex cybersecurity challenges requires further research.