An Introduction to Cybersecurity and Its Importance in The Modern World

Introduction:

Cybersecurity can be known as the practices and methods that are combined together to protect computer networks, programs and information from being attack by a hacker, malware, spyware, phishing, farming, or any other form of data attacks. When we talk about the security in computer context then we call it cyber security.

Cybersecurity is very important in our lives. As there are huge databases and programs that are run by computers, they are updated by computers, and they can be accessed, manipulated, or copied by only an authorized personnel. In general public, cybersecurity means securing the facilities in which there is an involvement of public. For example, according to a survey, it has been observed that more than 432 million of people are falling victim to cybercrimes. The act of securing these facilities like, websites, ATM machines, computer networks etc. means cybersecurity. It is a shared responsibility of all of us and we cannot blame our government for acting against it. Though government would be taking proper action against cybercrimes we cannot eradicate this threat if we totally rely on governments. There are different people who would believe on some of the information that is being wrongly communicated to them. For example, a hacker can get an illegal access to the computer of a person and can steal the important information from his computer. The same can happen with an organization if the network of the organization does not have firewalls, or any sniffing policy.

Similarly, there are different malwares which are constantly monitoring the screens of the user of a computer without being detected by the user. The malwares has the ability to record the key presses on the keyboard of a computer. This information is taken from the computer of a user and then being transferred to the person who is the intruder. Most of the malwares are installed in the form of toolbars and they jam the traffic which results in slow browsing as well. Spywares are also same like malwares which are constantly spying the network or a computer of a user.

There is also even a worse case than spywares and malwares. That form of cybercrime is called phishing. In phishing a real looking email is being forwarded by a user which may ask about some bank account details and when the link is opened, the user may be redirected to a fake link which would not belong to a bank. Pharming is also a form of cybercrime in which some lottery claims would be send to the users. In our today’s life, there are different people who believe on these types of information being conveyed to them and they lose their personal information like bank account numbers, addresses, or phone numbers. They are then threaten and when they come to know about the status of their bank accounts, it is very late.

To address these kind of cyber threats, there are different organizations working under federal government which are responsible to eradicate threats to the information of public related networks.

Dangers and Harms:

There are major threats to theft or loss of information in our daily life which involves cybercrimes. Most of the organizations hire specialized professionals, network administrators, and moderators, who would try their level best to keep the information secure and they are installing APIs for detection of intrusions. There are firewalls being designed to prevent the data loss. On personal an individual levels, people are involved in purchasing different software to prevent themselves from data loss. Following are the dangers that can affect general public.

Engineered Trojans:

This is a major threat that has been faced by a number of people in the entire world. This method is considered to be the most popular method used by attackers in the world of cybercrimes. It is a method in which the user is said to browse a certain website which would normally look fine but it contains Trojans that would harm the computer of the user. They would ask the user to run an online antivirus to scan the system, defragmenter, or a fake hardware scan. When the user does so, his information is copied to the website and is hacked afterward.

Software Patches:

In this method a user is asked to patch a software already installed on his computer. But that software would normally not need any patch to be run. For example, Java does not need to patch but the website would ask to patch. It then copies the information and hacked.

Phishing Attacks:

In this method, there are spam emails sent to the user. There are different other links in them and there are referrals that would copy the personal information of a user. These are unwanted emails that normally 70% of the cyber world users receive. They look fine and authentic but these websites are not used by any kind of organizations which they claim in emails.

Network Worms:

This is another great danger in cyber world. There are viruses that would run the network of an organization or an individual’s network. They can also affect the networking hardware used by these computers. They are not a great threat and they attack seldom.

Advance Persistent Threats:

This is also a huge threat or danger to the world of cybersecurity of general public. In this type of attack, a phishing email is sent to a number of employees. In general public, same emails can be sent to the address book of a person. It means that the friend list of a person would also receive that particular email and when such an email is received by a number of people at one time they consider it a legit email and act on what is said in it but this is a huge harm to cybersecurity.

Countermeasures:

There are different countermeasures that can be implemented to reduce the risks of cybercrimes to the general public as well as to organizations. They are listed as follows:

Firewalls:

There should be firewalls implemented to personal computers and as well as on the devices used for computer networks. Nowadays, there are different software based and hardware based firewalls available that can increase the integrity of a computer network. They have the ability of filtering certain protocols and do not let them to enter into a network.

Educating the End User:

Cybercrimes can only be eradicated by the help of general public. We need to educate the end user about the phishing and farming emails that are being sent by the intruders.

Avoiding Any Online Scanning Software:

Online software that claim to scan the computer for viruses, spywares, and malwares of defragmentation should be always avoided. They copy the personal information from a persona computer.

Executable Mails Avoiding:

It is a best practice to avoid those emails that have executable files in them and they should be opened only when they are properly scanned.

Conclusion:

From the above discussion, we can conclude that cybersecurity is an attempt of providing protection to the end user. This is a major threat to data loss and it can be only eradicated with the help of mutual efforts between the government and the general public. There are different threats which include, hacking, spyware, malware, phishing, and farming. All of them are bad for computer networks but they can be eradicated through proper policies.

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