Essay Example on Securing Digital Data: Cybersecurity Strategies and Tactics

Introduction

Cybersecurity refers to securing information systems, computer networks, personal information, and any digital data which may occur at a threat from potential attackers from being illegally sabotaged by the attackers. While the industry continues to grow daily, the need to develop methods and techniques which can be employed to counter such cases is increasingly becoming a common area of interest. Every country may have its approach towards the meaning of cybersecurity and all the related issues which constitute data threat. Cyberspace is a growing industry with new methods and techniques of exploiting a system being developed every day. If the current system is unable to withstand the penetration attempts made the attackers, there is a high probability of potential system breach, potentially threatening the entire organization's data. The paper focuses on analyzing three top trends in cybersecurity. The paper also investigates how each identified trend employs different techniques to prevent potential security breach into the system.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Internet of Things (IoT)

As the name suggests, the Internet of things refers to the interconnection of different devices into a single operational network. Different devices, such as vehicles, television, and other computer devices, are interconnected to provide central control over the entire system (Tweneboah-Koduah, 2017). However, despite the Internet of things having associated benefits, there are raising concerns on whether personal privacy is maintained. Devices vulnerabilities can be used as the entry points for potential attacks to the system. Attackers can use reverse engineering to gain control over the system hence calling for redesigning the IoT infrastructure. Device developers are now ensuring all devices are thoroughly tested before they are released to the public to avoid potential attacks.

How to Combat IoT Cyber Risk

With the influx of the Internet of things, the need for security of devices is becoming a common need in daily life. Therefore most companies are looking forward to developing gadgets with extra security features. Most device development is implementing network-level security for authenticating individual Internet of things devices. By using authentication tokens at the device’s entry-level prevents acceptance of unrecognized requests (Abomhara, 2015). Consequently, all devices under development to be integrated over the network are being designed to achieve compliance with security regulations such as HIPAA regulation for medical information. HIPAA regulations include effective encryption and management of data. Since there is constant change in the Cybersecurity industry, regular changes and secure passwords must be maintained (Tawalbeh, 2020). Users are encouraged to change default passwords associated with IoT devices.

Most companies have started incorporating the concept of network architecture devices in the Internet of things plans execution. Attackers use routers and firewalls as entry points into the system; therefore, by redesigning the network architecture, an attacker may be stopped before they carry out malicious activity. Future software updates, patching, and software protection activities must be included at the network level. Preparedness to vulnerability exploitation in IoT devices is becoming a key goal in maintaining suitable security for devices. There is a high risk of a user becoming a cyberattack victim or possible attack on the system being made (Sulkamo, 2018). Therefore providing sensitive information concerning how user awareness on potential attacks being carried out can be helpful.

IoT devices must provide a contingency plan to aid in data recovery in case of a security breach. Alternative methods of returning to the safe state after an event of a network attack are essential since it helps necessary business measures for maintaining data availability. Any impacted devices must be isolated from the network to prevent further compromise to the company’s data. IoT device customers are being encouraged to select their device providers carefully. Considering the company’s reputation on the security level associated with their devices is essential since not all device providers offer the same level of security. Taking a case of android and Apple products, there is a significant difference in the level of security embedded on devices. Since android products are developed under the open-source community, there are high chances of having vulnerabilities compared to Apple products. Therefore, choosing Apple as an IoT device provider is better compared to choosing an android device since it minimizes the chances of reverse engineering associated with software that has not been tested for vulnerabilities.

Data Security and Privacy Law Standards

There are several reasons why data privacy is among the significant subjects in the cybersecurity industry. Privacy law standards and data security guidelines are put in place since data is an essential asset to companies and everyone. By companies being able to collect, use and share data, they achieve enormous value since there is a rise in the data economy. The evidence to this is looking at companies such as Facebook, Google and Amazon (Salami, 2017). Following the data economy, they have built well-established empires.

To achieve privacy among the company’s data, they have to abide and follow their privacy policies to the latter. Through transparency, companies build trust, consent and accountability with their clients. Following this, many companies have acknowledged the importance of privacy and securing their data the hard way. Despite existing data security regulations, they still experience privacy fails (Salami, 2017).

Data privacy and data security affect companies as well as at personal data. Even though privacy is based on one using their data freely, there have been several reasons that influence both data privacy and security. Malicious insiders and external attackers compromise how data is collected, protected, used and shared (Salami, 2017). As a result, there has been an increase in personal data breaches. Personal data breaches serve as the dominant type of cyber-attack since they are an all-time high. Furthermore, there has been an increase in the number of personal data retrieval after security breaches. It is a notable rate as the security breaches are rapid (Salami, 2017). It is also worth noting that the attacks accomplished via Web application secured the first spot in terms of data breaches.

A report stated that 33% in the previous years, and 95% currently are motivated and aimed at a financial gain (Mostafavi & Shafik, 2019). The report identified high chances that the personal data acquired is mostly used for illegal purposes. Some of the everyday unlawful purposes include blackmails, extortion, and identity theft. There are also additional consequences associated with personal data breaches (Mostafavi & Shafik, 2019).

It is the same reason why compliance gets stricter and broader (Mostafavi & Shafik, 2019). Currently, the need to protect personal data is on the rise. It follows the increase in privacy laws and data security, as outlined in lieu of CCPA and GDPR (Mostafavi & Shafik, 2019). Due to the rise in the need to secure personal data against breaches, there has been the adoption of measurements to curb the subject.

Within the next five years, various national data privacy standards would be put in place after being fully adopted in the US. Following an upsurge in the number of data breaches over the past years, stricter policies should be anticipated and enforced. Since the existing compliance standards have proved to fail to curb the security breaches, there must be new and updated ones. The first ones should capture how to get notified in the event of a data breach (Mostafavi & Shafik, 2019). They are the rules which should get priority in the implementation of the new stricter rules and policies.

Botnet Detection

Among the severe and significant threats in the cybersecurity industry are botnets. They pose a risk to both organizations and personal data. They act as the primary vector through which most cyber-crimes are channelled (De Lucia & Cotton, 2019). As a result, the cybersecurity industry has emphasized on botnet analysis and detection. However, several challenges remain unaddressed. Some of them include the ability to design botnet detectors as there are new forms of botnets manufactured every day.

The cybersecurity industry proposes different approaches to detecting botnet activity. A new method of analyzing the traffic behaviour adopted by networks while using machine learning has been highlighted as the new technique for detecting botnet activity (De Lucia & Cotton, 2019). The cybersecurity industries enforce using traffic behaviour analysis since it does not rely on packets payload. It means that they function even with network communication protocols that are encrypted.

Network devices assist in the retrieval of network traffic information without necessarily affecting the performance of service availability or the network. Through this method, botnet activity can be detected without the need to complete a network flow (De Lucia & Cotton, 2019). The technique Botnet activity is classified depending on time intervals. It was emphasized following the 2018 cybersecurity incidences. Since 2018, there has been an influx in the production and usage of IoT devices. Most of them are household items. However, as the devices' production increases, a type of time-ticking bomb is generated since there are high probabilities of large scale attacks linked to the botnets. It can be associated with the percentage increase in the large scale attacks caused by the botnet. In 2018, the percentage increase was 500% (Alauthman et al., 2019).

The massive influx in IoT devices attributed to the enormous increase in compromises caused by botnets attacks. The IoT devices joined the army of botnets that were easy and available to attack. However, a current trend of using and exploiting different information, especially hiding information, among other techniques have been employed. The techniques empower malware, for example, bypassing the frameworks set as security protocols for mobile devices. Moreover, they help in the exfiltration of sensitive data (Alauthman et al., 2019). To identify the vulnerabilities that companies face in connection with cyber-attacks, the real-time attack made by botnets towards data is scanned. Internet service providers (IPS), Honeypots, and traffic linked between targets and their attackers are checked, secured, and verified. Through that, they get informed concerning the global trends in cybersecurity.

In 218, more than 500,000 routers got attacked and infected by a VPN filter (Alauthman et al., 2019). The attack's cause was a ghost DNS, as it also affected more than 100,000 home routers. After scanning for botnets, more than 280 000 IP addresses were infected by Satori botnet within less than 24 hours. Anarchy botnets also affected more than 18,000 routers (Alauthman et al., 2019). Following the attacks, it can be concluded that there were many reasons why they occurred. One of the core reasons is that IoT devices are perfect for botnets. When infected, viruses can dwell in these devices until the associated malware is triggered to launch an attack.

Conclusion and recommendation

Computer security threat has been on a constant increase affecting businesses across a vast number of industries and even governmental agencies. Concerning the growing technology advancements, hackers are devising new techniques to exploit...