Cyber Security
Published: 2022-08-20 08:55:26

Relevance of cyber security in the digital industry By Adeyemo Oluwafunnmilakin Joshua 
ISACA's CISM Certification Certification Aspirant



What is cyber security: Cybersecurity is the protection to defend internet-connected devices and services from malicious attacks by hackers, spammers, and cybercriminals. The practice is used by companies to protect against phishing schemes, ransomware attacks, identity theft, data breaches, and financial losses.
       
        As of April 2022, there were five billion internet users worldwide, which is 63 percent of the global population. Of this total, 4.65 billion or over 93 percent were social media users. This makes it very easy for us the general  public to have our information phished or be victims to series of internet scams . 
As shown in the graph above out of the the 5 billion people in the world with an online presence 4.65 billion people are on social media  

Types of cybersecurity threats
1.Denial-of-service (DoS) and distributed denialof-service (DDoS) attacks A denial-of-service attack overruns the system resources so that it cannot answer to the service request. The host machine which are affected by malicious software that are controlled by an attacker launches DDoS attack. In this kind of cyber-attack, the machine or network resources are made unavailable for the intended user by disturbing the service of the host which is connected to the internet. TCP SYN flood attack, teardrop attack, smurf attack, ping-of-death attack and botnets are the different type of DoS and DDoS attacks. It is very difficult to prevent DoS attack as it is very challenging to differentiate a legitimate one from a malicious traffic request as they use same port and protocol. In order to protect the system from denial-of-service attack, make sure that the system contain IDS, DDoS protection product. It is necessary to ensure that there is surplus of bandwidth internet connection on a particular organization. As there is large bandwidth for service traffic requests, it helps to protect against low-scale DDoS attacks
2.Man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack A MitM attack takes place when a third party comes in between the communication of a client and a server. The third party impersonates both the client and the server and gain access to the information between them. This kind of attack makes a threat actor to seize, sent and receive the data which intended for someone else others. A MITM attack misuses the real time operation of transactions, communication or exchange of other information. The different types of man-in-the-middle attack includes session hijacking, IP spoofing and reply. An intrusion detection system can be set up in order to avoid man-in-middle attack. It helps to give immediate alert if someone tries to hijack the network flow. Virtual private network can also be used to prevent man-in-middle attack. This helps to create additional secure layers when accessing a company’s confidential layer via Wi-Fi.
3.Phishing attacks Phishing attack is the means of sending fraudulent emails that seems to come from trusted sources. The main goal of this kind of attack is gaining personal and credential information. Phishing attack is a form of social engineering and technical trickery. It is in the form of emails which consists of embedded hyperlinks that loads malware onto our system. Sometimes this link also leads to an illegitimate website that makes us to download malware or give up our personal information. To get sensitive data phishing attack make use of some media tools, messages, calls etc. whaling, spear phishing, pharming and deceptive are the different phishing techniques. In order to reduce the risk of phishing attack, critical thinking, hovering over the links, analyzing email headers and sandboxing can be used. Moreover, by giving awareness among the organization employees as well as for individuals we can prevent phishing attack to some extent.
4.Drive-by- download attack Drive-by-download attack is a common kind of cyber-attack carried out by the cyber criminals to spread malware and gain unauthorized access. This attack occurs when a computer becomes infected by a malicious software by simply visiting a website. The user does not need to click anywhere to get infected, that’s why it is called” drive-by” download attack. Here the criminals often use a legitimate website and inject a malicious object inside the web pages. The users cannot observe the infections and range from malicious JavaScript code to iFrames, links, redirects, crosssite scripting, and other malicious elements. At the time when a user visits that infected web page, malicious codes are automatically loaded into the user’s browser. Then it suddenly scans the computer security vulnerabilities in the operating system and other applications.
Updating the software quickly and regularly, removal of unwanted software applications and browser plug-in, by using firewall and web filtering software can be used to prevent drive-by download attack. Moreover, any kind of malicious software can enter itself into a system without any explicit permission when we are using a privileged account whenever to browse the internet. Such entry to the system can be prevented by keeping two separate account. One can be used for daily activities and other can be used for administrator account for installing software.The most common method to authenticate user is to use passwords and obtaining such passwords is an effective attack approach. Password attack is the technique in which user’s password is obtained or decrypted by illegitimate means. User password can be obtained by looking around the user’s desk, by guessing, accessing password database, sniffing the network connection to get the plaintext password etc. Password sniffers, dictionary attacks, cracking programs are the different methods used by the cyber criminals in password attack. By changing the passwords frequently, using unrecognizable words and minimum length can the different means by which password attack can be defended. Brute force and dictionary attack are the two main techniques in which password can be obtained. Brute force is a random method in which different passwords are tried expecting that one password will word whereas the later method gain access to a user’s computer and network. 
5.SQL Injection Attack SQL (Structured Query Language) is a computer language that is used to store, manipulate and retrieve data stored in the database. SQL language uses commands like select, update, delete to perform the required task. SQL can also execute queries against the database, insert records to the database and can create new tables in the database. SQL Injection (SQI) attack make use of malicious code in order to access information by manipulating database at the backend. This information may include any sensitive organization details, customer/ user private data etc. This may result in the illegal viewing of the user data, deletion of the table data and unauthorized attack of database. An attacker who wants to execute SQL injection will manipulate a standard SQL query to exploit vulnerabilities in a database that are not validated. Attackers can also use misfiltered characters to alter SQL commands. There are several effective ways to prevent and protect against SQLI attacks if they occur. Input validation can be performed to identify unlawful user inputs which is the writing code practice that can. But this method is not much suitable as the mapping of all legal and illegal inputs is not feasible. Because of this, usually a web application firewall (WAF) is used to remove out SQLI. Signature recognition, IP reputation and other

This are the common types of cyber security attack that we have and how we combat them


CIA TRIAD


In Cyber security there is a system we use in solving Problems Known as the CIA triad 

C: Confidentiality
I: Integrity
A: Availability 


Now in cyber security when doing threat and risk  assessment you check which of the CIA triad has been violated and how many have been violated and how to do the damage control

Examples:
Jane sent a message to Kamani and it is infiltrated by Kash then deleted 
In the message below confidentiality has been compromised so has the integrity and Availability of the message 

Peter sent a link to Jakes email and jake clicks on the link and his document is then phished peter has violated the confidentiality of  jakes documents and files and has also compromised but the availability of the message was not threatened 

Parker’s System was infected with a dangerous malware which wiped his files completely So here on the availability was affected 



Cyber security TIPS
Do not save your passwords on unprotected browsers 
Do not permit sites that you are just visiting
Suspicious links sent to your email should be avoided 
Avoid sharing your passwords to people 
Keep your Passwords with Special characters and should never be guessable so as to avoid penetration by brute for Attack examples Instead of using lakin111 as a password use L@k!n133
Do not visit Public networks 



REFERENCES

THIRD-PARTY SECURITY RISK MANAGEMENT PLAYBOOK A study of common, emerging, and pioneering capabilities and practices


International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET) e-ISSN: 2395-0056 Volume: 06 Issue: 03 | Mar 2019 www.irjet.net p-ISSN: 2395-0072