The need for cyber security
The connected electronic information network has become an integral part of our daily lives. All types of organizations, such as medical, financial, and education institutions, use this network to operate effectively. They utilize the network by collecting, processing, storing, and sharing vast amounts of digital information. As more digital information is gathered and shared, the need to protect them becomes more vital.
Cyber security is the ongoing effort to protect these networks and data from unauthorized use or harm. To ensure this is done, cyber professionals have to think and act like attackers, but work within the bounds of the law.
What organization data you ask?
There are different types of organization data that we need to protect:
1. Traditional Data
Corporate data include personnel information, intellectual properties, and financial data.
Personnel information includes application materials, payroll, offer letters, employee agreements, and any information used in making employment decisions.
Intellectual property, such as patents, trademarks and new product plans, allows a business to gain economic advantage over its competitors.
This intellectual property can be considered a trade secret; losing this information can be disastrous for the future of the company.
Financial data, such as income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements of a company gives insight into the health of the company.
All these are termed as Traditional Data
2. IoT and Big Data
IoT(Internet of Things) is a large network of physical objects, such as sensors and equipment that extend beyond the traditional computer network. All these connections lead to the exponential growth of data, creating a new interest in technology known as "Big Data".
Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability
These are three important pillars of security in a company.
Confidentiality(Privacy)
Company policies should restrict access to the information to authorized personnel and ensure that only those authorized individuals view this data. The data may be compartmentalized according to the security or sensitivity level of the information.
Integrity
Integrity is accuracy, consistency, and trustworthiness of the data during its entire life cycle.
Data must be unaltered during transit and not changed by unauthorized entities.
File permissions and user access control can prevent unauthorized access. Version control can be used to prevent accidental changes by authorized users.
After a file is downloaded, you can verify its integrity by verifying the hash values from the source with the one you generated using any hash calculator.
By comparing hash values, you can ensure that files have not been tampered with or corrupted during any transfer.
Availability
Maintaining equipment, performing hardware repairs, keeping operating systems and software up to date, and creating backups ensure the availability of the network and data to the authorized users.
Plans should be in place to recover quickly from natural or man-made disasters. Security equipment or software, such as firewalls, guard against downtime due to attacks such as denial of service (DoS).
Denial of service occurs when an attacker attempts to overwhelm resources so the services are not available to the users.
Consequences of a Cyber Attack
To protect an organization from every possible cyberattack is not feasible, for a few reasons. The expertise necessary to set up and maintain the secure network can be expensive. Attackers will always continue to find new ways to target networks. Eventually, an advanced and targeted cyberattack will succeed. The priority will then be how quickly your security team can respond to the attack to minimize the loss of data, downtime, and revenue.
If an organization website or network has been breached, this could lead to leaked confidential documents, revealed trade secrets, and stolen intellectual property. The loss of all this information may impede company growth and expansion.
The monetary cost of a breach is much higher than just replacing any lost or stolen devices, investing in existing security and strengthening the building’s physical security.
The company may be responsible for contacting all the affected customers about the breach and may have to be prepared for litigation. With all this turmoil, employees may choose to leave the company. The company may need to focus less on growing and more on repairing its reputation.
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