Cyber security can be defined as Technologies, collective methods and processes that help protect the privacy, integrity, and usability of computer systems, networks, and data against cyber attacks or un-authorized Access. The main purpose of cyber security is to protect all corporate assests against internal, external threats as well as setbacks caused by acts of god.

 
Corporate assets are formed of multiple different systems, which is why having and effective and efficient cyber security set-up requires all IT systems’ coordinated efforts put together. The sub fields of cyber security are as follows.

• Application Security

Application Security is applying various security measures against multiple threats towards all the the softwares and services offered by a company. For example, minimizing all unauthorized access or changes to applications, designing reliable application structure, writing secure code and having strong data entry approval approaches along with threat modeling are some of the processes that could be included in this sub field.

• Identity management and Data security

Identity management is comprised of all frames, processes and actions that allow for individuals within a company to get the correct authorization, and id approval. Data security, is the application of strong info storage mechanisms that help secure the integrity of pending, and transferred data.

• Network Security

Network security is using hardware and software mechanisms to ensure that the network and infrastructure is safe from unauthorized access, malicious intent, and outages. Effective network security applications help in protecting corporate assets from multiple internal and external threats

• Mobile Security

Mobile security is the protection of mobile devices like cell phones, laptops and tablets etc and the protection of personal and corporate information against various threats like unauthorized access, theft or misplacement, malicious intent etc.

• Cloud Security

Cloud security is designing secure cloud structures and applications for companies that use the services offered by AWS, Google, Azure, Rackspace etc. An effective structure and environment configuration helps protect the company against various threats.

• Emergency situations and Work Security

Processes, warning systems, tracking systems and plans that help the company start up their systems, help keep critical work systems online and recover lost operations after the event of a disaster.

• User Training

 
Providing official training to individuals about computer security, is essential for increasing awareness when it comes to following the best applications in the industry, corporate procedures and policies and tracking malicious actions and reporting.

Importance of Cyber security and Challenges

Considering the rapidly developing technological environment and multiple industries like finance, governmental, military, retail, hospital, education, energy starting to adapt to software usage, more and more information is becoming digital, wireless, and accessible. All this highly sensitive data is quite valuable to criminals and people with bad intentions. This is why protecting data with a strong cyber security measure and process is vital.

As the trend suggests, the frequency of cyber attacks are not showing signs of going down. Both big and small scale companies are always the target of assailants with the intent of stealing sensitive information or crippling the services they offer.

The same technological environment that is developing also brings forth challenges in the application of an effective cyber security method. When a software is updated it is constantly changing, this brings with it new problems and potential security weaknesses and makes the software susceptible to various cyber attacks. Also with many companies integrating their internal systems to the cloud the IT infrastructure is developing as well which brings with it a new security liability category and a series of design and application problems. Companies are not aware of the multiple risks in their IT infrastructure which is why they don’t take any cyber security measures before it’s too late.

What is a Cyber Attack?

A cyber attack is an intentional action carried out by internal, external threats or other hostiles that aims to jeopardize, exploit an individual or a companies IT systems’ security, integrity and usability. Cyber assailants use illegal tools, approaches and methods in order to get unauthorized access and cause harm and setbacks to computers, devices, networks, applications, and databases.

There are many kinds of cyber attacks and the list below highlights some of the more important ones used by assailants.

·       Malware

·       Ransomware

·       Injection attacks ( i.e, creating a command file between sites, SQL injection, command injections)

·       Session management and man-in-the-middle attacks.

.       E-Fraud

·       DDOS

·       Elevation of Privilage

·       Unpatched/sensitive software

·       Remote code execution

·       Brute Force

What is the difference between a cyber-attack and security breach?

A cyber attack is not necessarily the same thing as a breach. As mentioned above, a cyber attack is an attempt to jeopardize the security of a system. Assailants use various methods like the ones  listed above and try to exploit the networks security, integrity or usability. On the other hand, a security breach is a successful event in which the system recognizes that a malicious attempt is being made and either shuts down the entire process to prevent the assailant or applies some other method.

Assailants know that one of their attack attempts will end up in a security breach therefore they constantly try to attack their targets with multiple cyber attacks. This is why alongside security breaches, an essential part of a foolproof cybersecurity system is BC-IR ( Business continuum and incident management ). In the event of a successful cyber attack BC-IR helps a company. The BC side tends to keeping the critical business systems online while IR responds to a security breach and mitigates its effect and helps in recovering the IT and business systems.

Top 11 Cyber Security Applications to Prevent a Breach: 

1. Cyber security and awareness training

If the employees do not get cyber security, company policies and incident reporting trainings, a strong cyber security strategy will not be successful. Even the best technical defenses will be ineffective if the employees are not involved or are intentionally acting maliciously towards the company which could lead to a very costly breach. Seminars, classes, online courses can be used to train employees about company policies and create awareness about the best security applications which would help limit any potential security negligence or breaches.

2. Conduct risk assessments

Companies should conduct an official risk assessment in order to determine all the valuables in the firm and prioritize which assets would potentially cause the most harm when jeopardized. This will help companies decide how to allocate resources to secure each valuable asset in the company in the most effective way.

3. Provide security gap management and software patch/update management

It is crucial for corporate IT teams to determine, categorize, improve and mitigate all threats towards the software and networks in the company. Also occasionally security researchers and hostiles sometimes find out new security gaps in certain softwares. They can gather this data from sources like reports made to software providers or public reports and they can then exploit these gaps. Software providers release patches that patch these gaps and mitigate the risks periodically. This is why it is very important to make sure that the IT systems are up to date, ensuring this would help in keeping corporate assets safe.

4. Use POLP (principle of least privilege)

POLP ensures that both the software and the employee only use the bare minimum required authorizations to carry out the tasks they need to do. This would help in mitigating the effects of a successful breach because limited level access like this would keep the high value assets safe. Also for upper level account holders that have infinite access and authority, having a two factor id approval should be used.

5.Make mandatory secure password and principles

Companies should implement having mandatory strong password usages as recommended by the industry for all employees. Also, these passwords should be changed periodically to help protect against breached passwords. Also when it comes to hash salting and using strong karma algorithms , companies need to keep track of the best applications in the industry.

6. Have a sturdy BC-IR ( Business continuum and incident management ) plan

Having a sturdy BC-IR plan and policies would not only help a company keep their critical business systems online against cyber attacks but would also help in responding in the most effective way against security breaches.

7.Conduct periodic security inspections

Having periodic security inspections would help in determining potential security problems early and in a safe environment. Security inspections consist of application and network penetration tests, source code inspections, architectural design inspection, red team assessments etc. When a security gap is discovered, companies should prioritize and mitigate these as soon as possible.

8.Back up

All data should be periodically backed up. Having consistent back ups would prevent the loss of all sensitive data. Injections and ransomwares jeopardize data integrity and endanger their usability. Back ups help in preventing these types of situations.

9. Use encryption for pending and transferring data

All sensitive information should be stored with strong encryption algorithms and then transferred. Encrypting data provides anonymity. Effective key management and rotation policies should also be implemented. All web applications/software should use SSL/TLS.

10. Design software and networks with security in mind.

While designing apps, coding, designing webs always keep security in mind. Remember that it is more costly to add security measures or to re-organize a software later on than it is to start the process with security in mind. A secure app will help mitigate threats and even in the event that networks/software fail, it would fail in a secure manner.

11. Use industry standards and strong input authentication in secure coding.

Strong input authentication is generally the first line of defense against various injection attacks. Software and applications are designed in a way that would accept the user input that would make them susceptible to attack. This is where having a strong authentication helps, and it filters the malicious inputs from the other ones. Also it helps against many of the security gaps as mentioned in OWASP and CVE as well so these secure coding standards should definitely be implemented into the coding process.