Cyber Security : A Multi Billion Dollar Operation

Cyber security threats change quickly as Internet increases, and also the related dangers are getting to be progressively international. Being covered against cyber security threats requires almost all end users, actually the most complex versions, to know the particular threats in addition to enhance their particular safety measures with a continuing foundation. On April 28, 2014 President Obama has declared that the “cyber threat is one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation” and that “America 's economic prosperity in the 21st century will depend on cyber security.” The internet enables and also helps people in a many ways and a example is collect, store, process huge amounts of data, which includes vulnerable data of small business, transactional and personal. Everything in this world is based on internet now a days.

Modern organizations that utilize technology must now use their resources to protect themselves from malicious cybercrime activities. A “hacker” could illegally intrude into an organizations information network and use accounting software to mine information and steal assets at a relatively low risk of being caught.

Private organizations in the United States come under attack weekly if not daily and their cyber defenses must be kept up to par otherwise there will be an extreme loss of information and resources. FBI director James Comey can be quoted as saying “There are two kinds of big companies in the United States. There are those who 've been hacked by the Chinese and those who don 't know they 've been hacked by the Chinese” (Comey). Comey can also be quoted as having said that, “China was seeking to obtain "information that 's useful to them so they don 't have to invent" (Comey). This stolen information can be used against these companies when brokering a trade deal or even Chinese companies could begin manufacturing American goods illegally

In today’s world it is highly impossible for any kind of business to function without the assistance of technology. Any company that relies on digital data and computer networks have exposure to a host of varying Cyber Attacks. As technology continues to evolve, cyber security breaches become even more difficult to solve. The cybersecurity world rightly believes in the maxim – It’s not if, it’s when!

Recently, Ponemon Research conducted a survey consisting of 583 companies in the U.S., ranging from employee size of 500 to 75,000 (Bidgoli, 2015.). Ninety percent of those companies indicated that their organization had been compromised through computers and their network systems by hackers within one year. Sixty percent of the breaches reported, stated that two or more breaches happened within the last year and half indicated that there was little confidence in their organizations ability to avoid attacks in the future (Bidgoli, 2015.). Although time may vary when it comes to recover, security incidents caused a downtime of 8 hours

People across the world are becoming disproportionately dependent on modern day technology, which results in more vulnerability to cyber-attacks including cybersecurity breaches. Today, the world continues to experience inordinate cases of cybersecurity meltdowns. There is a rapid growth in complexity and volume of cyber-attacks, and this undermines the success of security measures put in place to make the cyberspace secure for users. Cyber-attacks on both private and public information systems are a major issue for information security as well as the legal system. While most states require government organizations and certain federal vendors to report incidences of data breaches, no equivalent legislation exists to cover private entities.

The trajectory for 2015 was expected to be 42.8 million cyber attacks, roughly 117,339 occurrences each day. (Bennett, 2014). These are sobering statistics for any corporation aiming to thrive in today’s competitive global marketplace.

Cyber-security consists of various steps, one of the most important being the individual understands the type of attacks they may encounter. Once they have knowledge of this, then it is their responsibility to ensure that they have put in place the best security system they can get. There are different types of threats and these can be considered to be of varying severity and risk to a person 's personal information in their computers. The higher the likelihood of an attack, the more sophisticated the security has to be to make sure the that the threat is minimized.

In today’s generation, the complications that come along with cyber security are no longer just for the technologically advanced population; it is everybody’s concern. Whether you work in arts, military, media, and even business – this is an essential part of our lives that we should inspect carefully. A report published by Researcher Riley Walters states that a survey by the Ponemon Institute showed “the average cost of cybercrime for U.S. retail stores more than doubled from 2013 to an annual average cost per company of successful cyber-attacks increased to $20.8 million in financial services, $14.5 million in the technology sector, and $12.8 million in communications industries.” There were cyber-attacks earlier this year which led to the leak of eBay employee log-ins, allowing access to 233 million eBay accounts. Cyber-attacks like these are almost impossible to detect, and there are no measures to recover from them. With the increasing number of computers, cybercrime is also on the rise, hence close attention is recommended to protect personal information.

Technology advancement has led to more integration than ever, from controls within our homes and automobiles to smart phones linking our emails, social media, banking information and more. These technological progressions have vastly improved quality of life and the efficiency of work and education. Unfortunately these advancements are also being used for malicious attacks against corporations, governments and individuals of all backgrounds. To combat and defend against potential attacks, experts constantly continue their research and work in cybersecurity. Organizations, governments, businesses and individuals need to not worry about if they will experience a cyber-attack but rather be prepared for when the attack will occur. According to Garnaeva, Wiel, Makrushin, Ivanov, & Namestnikov, (2015), “34.2% of user computers were subjected to at least one web attack over the year. Kaspersky Lab solutions repelled 798,113,087 attacks launched from online resources located all over the world. Kaspersky Lab’s web antivirus detected 121,262,075 unique malicious objects: scripts, exploits, executable files, etc.” Attacks are numbering by the hundreds of millions and within time these numbers could easily be in the billions within a one year time span.

What is Cyber Security? The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) defines Cyber Security as “Cybersecurity is the collection of tools, policies, security concepts, security safeguards, guidelines, risk management approaches, actions, training, best practices, assurance and technologies that can be used to protect the cyber environment and organization and user’s assets. Organization and user’s assets include connected computing devices, personnel, infrastructure, applications, services, telecommunications systems, and the totality of transmitted and/or stored information in the cyber environment.” (ITU, 2008) Cyber-attacks have become ever prevalent in our society as the use of cell phones, emails, and computers become our primary source of sending and receiving information. To fully understand Cyber Security, we must delve into the history of

Today, cyber threats are becoming progressively more sophisticated, and attackers are harder to detect. What was once a seemingly straight forward safeguard using antivirus, antispam, and firewalls, has now grown into insidious and continuous system attacks. Within any enterprise, data is the forefront of its commercial capital, and any loss, reputation, or breach can result in catastrophic budgetary overhead. Organizations oftentimes ponder over lucrative security investments, sadly these aren’t the result of proactive but reactive measures. Attackers are fiercely penetrating enterprise networks, infrastructures, computers, and physical systems.

Today, real life and online activities have become indistinguishable which have pave way for cybercrime to become part of our daily lives. The news reports on attacks against businesses and nations everywhere with such consistency that, we’ve become numb to the sheer volume and acceleration of cyber threats. As the rate of security breaches continues to increase, so does the variety of attacks, and the technologies and processes deployed to prevent them.

Individuals and the government are trying to combat computer hacking in many ways. Individuals monitor sites they visit, purchase Spyware, and use passwords and usernames that make it difficult for hackers to gain information. The government is addressing computer hacking of its systems as well. It has created standards that help organizations and departments to practice safe security techniques to stop cybersecurity attacks, and uses cyber security systems to check its systems for hacking. The government has also made laws about taking information from computers that are encrypted. A law, considered a hole by hackers, of a

The main objective of information security is to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality and availability aspects of information systems and data. from any threats and vulnerabilities, especially when such threats and vulnerabilities are on the rise. The 2015 annual Global State of Information Security Survey conducted by the Internet Development Group (IDG) subsidiaries CIO and CSO in conjunction with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), shows information security incident increase of 48% from 2013-14, and a 66% compound annual growth rate since 2009; Furthermore, the same study found that employees were the most-cited culprits of security incidents (Global State Information Security, n.d.). The implication is that organizations need to look