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Cybersecurity & Its 6 Crucial Elements:
How Important Is Cybersecurity? [Types Of Threats]
Did you know that there was a 50% surge in cybersecurity attacks per week, globally, in 2021, as compared to the year 2020?
Cybersecurity is one of the greatest inventions of new-age technology!
The fast-paced & internet-driven world can be a scary place to live in. Internet brings with it various forms of threats - cybersecurity attacks being the most dangerous for corporate networks.
Humans are constantly devising new ways to battle against malicious attacks that pose a serious threat to our security. Thus, cybersecurity serves as an excellent medium to create a safe ecosystem for businesses, and individuals.
Today, we’ll be discussing what is cybersecurity, and its six different elements. Besides, get ready to explore the major benefits of cybersecurity.
What Is Cybersecurity? Why Is It Important?
Definition Of Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity is the process of protecting web-connected systems, such as software, hardware, and data from potential cyber threats. The goal is to secure sensitive databases & critical infrastructure from malicious elements or phishing attacks by employing necessary security measures.
Further, it is an excellent way to provide complete protection against accessing, altering, extortion, or deletion of sensitive data. Therefore, preventing attacks that may disrupt or defuse operations of a device or a system.
Here’s a list of different types of cybersecurity threats:
- Ransomware
- Phishing
- Spear Phishing
- Social Engineering
- Insider Threat
- Malware
- Man-in-the-middle Attacks
- Distributed Denial-of-services
- Malvertising
- Botnets
- Vishing
- Credential Stuffing Attacks
- SQL Injection Attacks, etc.
The Significance Of Cybersecurity
Every day, there’s a huge increase in the number of devices, users, software, and programs in the business world. Thus, giving a boost to the volume of sensitive or confidential data that needs to be protected from the reach of hackers & spammers.
Further, cyber attackers constantly develop new techniques to enter your systems and extract sensitive information.
Consequently, cybersecurity is a powerful solution for extended protection for modern-day enterprises. It creates a protective shield that defends individuals & businesses against unauthorized access to their electronic systems.
Advantages Of Cybersecurity In The 21st Century
The benefits of cybersecurity extend beyond protecting the data from cyber-attacks. Let's look at some of the top advantages it offers to users!
- It protects both networks and the data.
- It offers protection to the end-users & end-point devices.
- Cybersecurity protects enterprises against malware, phishing, ransomware, & social engineering.
- It prevents unauthorized users.
- Increases the total recovery time post-breach attempts.
- Provides business continuity.
- Boosts a company’s reputation & improves reliability for partners, developers, employees, stakeholders, & customers.
What Are The Six Major Elements Of Cybersecurity?
It’s time to discuss the six critical elements of cybersecurity.
1. Application Security:
The primary component of cybersecurity, application security, functions intending to keep devices & software threat-free. It is meant for businesses that deal with cloud services.
If an application is compromised, it may allow access to the data it is responsible for protecting. However, now security is provided during the designing process to ensure safety.
2. Network Security:
The key purpose of network security is to protect hardware, software & cloud services from intrusion, breaches, opportunistic malware, and other threats.
It is meant to protect the integrity of the data and a network from unidentified access or harmful attacks.
3.Information Security:
InfoSec, or information security, tackles data protection from unidentified access. Moreover, it maintains data privacy & integrity in the storage and the transit.
Information security lowers the chances of unauthorized usage, disclosure, access, alteration, corruption, destruction, disruption, recording, or inspection of data. Therefore, it is considered a major part of the risk management strategy.
4. Operational Security:
Abbreviated as OPSEC, operational security, is the security process to avert the access of critical data from malicious elements.
This smartly-designed process recognizes potentially innocuous activities that may accidentally disclose sensitive data to cyber attackers.
Moreover, OPSEC inspires security supervisors to check their systems & operations from a cyber criminal’s viewpoint. It encompasses assessment actions such as social media monitoring, best security practices, and behavior monitoring.
5. Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery:
BCDR, expanded as Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery, is an amalgamation of processes that enable organizations to operate despite adverse events.
The disaster recovery process defines the fixing of an organization's operations & data to the functional capacity as before the incident.
On the other hand, business continuity is a full-fledged plan that a business follows while attempting to function with insufficient resources.
6. End-User Education:
As the name suggests, the program focuses on enhancing security within an organization.
Some of the important steps of this program are, boosting employee awareness. Besides, it focuses on providing employees the necessary skills & tools to secure themselves and the business from losing the data or attacks. Thus, promoting healthy security practices.
Further, it teaches them about the deletion of suspicious email attachment files, avoiding the usage of unauthorized USBs, etc.
Bottom Line
We are witnessing a rapid hike in cyber threats, lately. Thus, it has become a global menace that directly affects the corporate world.
Cybersecurity is a powerful & effective way to prevent, avoid, curb, and manage this internet hazard. Besides, the different elements of cybersecurity serve their own unique purposes to manage potentially damaging threats & overcome the challenges.
We hope you found this post insightful!
