Cyber security is a discipline that concerns protecting individual and organizational interests from cyber threats. And protect their interests on the internet. In the post-pandemic world, remote employment is a must-accepted trend and these remote islands are always vulnerable to attacks. Even before this era of working from home, cyber attacks have always been a threat to individuals, institutions, and even governments. Thus, applications of cyber security in a multitude of spheres are a well-accepted phenomenon in 2022. In order to understand the importance of cyber security, we must learn about cyber attacks and their prevention paradigms a bit.
Table of Contents
What is a cyber attack?
A cyber attack is an online invasion where an unauthorized party tries to, or gains access to sensitive private information and assets. Based on the approach of the invasion, cyber attacks can be grouped into four popular and distinct groups.
Kinds of cyber attack
Malware based attacks
Malware-based attacks are done for sabotaging a system or software and gaining access to sensitive data. A virus can be embedded in a document or application attachment. And start acting accordingly as soon as the attachment is downloaded and accessed.
Man in the middle
This is a common kind of cyber attack encountered by users of unprotected wifi or private networks. In these attacks, the attacker gains access to the connections between a website and a user. And eventually takes over the user IP and accesses the private information on the website.
Phishing attacks
Phishing attacks are more interpersonal. In this kind of attack, an attacker gains information and in turn money, by deception. A fake offer or an opportunity is used for draining money from an unsuspecting user. These forms of cyber attacks are used for fetching private pieces of information like credit card numbers, bank details, and even passwords.
Passwords attack
In a password attack, an attacker tried out all possible combinations of passwords or most likely passwords for cracking into a website.
Precautions
Firewall
A firewall is a defensive paradigm against cyber attacks, that prevents suspicious invasions from taking root. A firewall also prevents a user from visiting websites that are statistically risky. Prevents suspicious websites from saving information from the user.
Honey pots
Honey pots are pseudo or proxy servers that are designed to look like vulnerable ones. These seemingly weak, fake IPs attract a lot of attention indirectly saving the original servers from facing attacks.
Avoiding suspicious communications
A user can simply avoid unauthorized and unfamiliar communications for avoiding cyber threats. Just by implementing a set of good practices, a user can be safe on the internet. That too, with a significant degree of independence.
Cyber threats to today’s commerce
In addition to threats on individual netizens, the threats on entire organizations and commercial entities are also a menacing affair. And can affect a lot of lives and involve a lot more damage. Thus, applications of cyber security are at another height in the commercial sector.
Advanced persistent threat (APT)
In this kind of attack, an attacker gains access to a company server or platform for a long amount of time. That too while staying undetected and fetching a gargantuan amount of data over a long period of time.
Imposed denial of service (DoS)
Servers are limited by capability. And excessive traffic can hamper the usual operability. Thus, attackers exploit this weakness by flooding a server to an extent so that legitimate service requests fail to gain attention. And the system is rendered incapable of keeping service promises. If the attack is done in a coordinated manner from multiple systems, it is termed a distributed denial of service (DDoS)
SQL injection attack
This infiltration technique involves an attacker injecting a SQL query into a website. And fetch all the information that is generated by the injection. A silent but very effective attack.
The solution
Cyber attacks in our times have become more efficient and attackers are utilizing automation to its full potential for achieving maximum success. Thus, dedicated cybersecurity-related roles are starting to emerge in all relevant sectors and employment in the sector is becoming a more lucrative proposition. Stopping today’s automated attacks is largely dependent on the temporal aspects of mitigation. And for this very reason, cyber security professionals are expected to possess significant skills with automation.
