What is Cyber Security? Threats, Types & Why It Matters

What is Cyber Security?

Cybersecurity is the practice of protecting our digital world from unwanted attacks. It’s a combination of processes, technologies, and human experts to secure networks, computer systems, and information from unauthorized access, use, and modification.

At its core, cybersecurity revolves around three key principles:

Confidentiality: This involves ensuring only authorized users have access to data. For example, cybersecurity measures make sure only you and those you authorize (like a bank teller) can see your financial details in your bank account.

Integrity: This involves keeping data accurate and intact. For example, when you edit a school project online, cybersecurity protects your work from being accidentally altered.

Availability: This involves guaranteeing authorized users can access information whenever needed. For instance, cybersecurity helps your online store and customer data be accessible during sales to ensure smooth transactions.

Pillars of Cyber Security

Like a sturdy building, cybersecurity works mainly based on a solid foundation (core principles) and well-constructed walls (pillars). These factors work together to create a robust defense for your data and activities online.

As for pillars, cybersecurity primarily operates on the following factors:

Processes

Just like a building following a blueprint, cybersecurity depends on well-established processes. Such procedures will outline each essential action to tackle security incidents and system updates.

Further, they need clear policies to guide how you should handle data, manage passwords, and use techs. Through the latest cyber threats, you can develop the best practices to secure your devices and data.

Technology

Beyond well-defined processes, you need the right tools to combat cyber threats. Common techs used for cybersecurity include firewalls, antivirus software, encryption, intrusion detection systems, and more.

People

Even the most advanced defenses are vulnerable without human vigilance. Therefore, security training needs to raise human awareness of cyber attacks and how to detect suspicious activities.

You should implement responsible behaviors like setting a strong password or avoiding suspicious links. Further, your cybersecurity teams should be trained to handle security breaches swiftly and effectively.

If you’re looking for the best ways to train your employees, contact Designveloper. Here, we customize training programs to fit your business needs:

Secure Coding Training: We equip your developers with the expertise to produce secure code and mitigate typical vulnerabilities.

Security Awareness Training: We educate staff members on cybersecurity fundamentals, recognizing threats, and implementing best practices.

Incident Response Training: We provide your IT and security teams with the skills needed to efficiently handle security incidents and breaches.

Threat Modeling Training: Through our training programs, you’ll get guidance on conducting effective threat modeling sessions to assess and mitigate potential risks.

Why is Cyber Security Important?

In today’s digital age, cybersecurity has become more crucial than ever. As we rely increasingly on technology for personal and professional tasks, cyber attacks pose a growing threat to different Internet users, from individuals and households to businesses. This highlights the rising importance of cybersecurity to handle these threats and protect our online data.

Here’s what cybersecurity can do:

Protect Sensitive Data

Cybercriminals are constantly developing new attack methods, like quantum computing or SEO poisoning to breach data. Accordingly, the first quarter of 2024 recorded security incidents like Russian Web Hosting Data Leak, Microsoft Azure Data Breach, and Mother of All Breaches (MOAB).

That’s why strong cybersecurity measures are essential to protecting your personal and business data from unauthorized access and other cyber attacks. Such data can be financial information, intellectual property, and other confidential records.

Safeguard Critical Infrastructure

Critical infrastructure involves the systems and assets (e.g., power grids, transportation, or communication networks) that are crucial for a society to function well. This infrastructure is like the backbone of a country, offering essential services to keep everything running seamlessly.

However, as critical infrastructure relies heavily on technology, cyber attacks can disrupt its relevant services. This leads to widespread chaos and potentially endangering lives. So, it requires governments and organizations to protect critical infrastructure with specific regulations and security methods. In the US, for example, the Federal Government has released new cybersecurity standards and rules to provide safety to critical infrastructure.

Maintain Business Continuity & Reputation

Cyberattacks can cripple your business’s operations, leading to downtime, financial losses, and even reputational damage. Therefore, strong cybersecurity can mitigate these impacts of attacks and allow for a swift recovery. This ensures your business works seamlessly and protects customer information while safeguarding your reputation and fostering trust.

Evolving Landscape of Cybersecurity

The global market for cyber security is estimated to increase from USD 172.32 billion in 2023 to USD 424.97 billion in 2030. This showcases a CAGR of nearly 14%, especially in industries like healthcare or BFSI (Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance) where data is susceptible.

This comes with the rising integration of advanced techs (e.g., machine learning) into cybersecurity. Here’s a glimpse into how these techs are accelerating this realm:

AI/ML: Artificial Intelligence can analyze vast data from network activities, user behaviors, and security logs. This helps detect unusual patterns that might indicate a cyber attack in progress. Further, it can automatically respond to security incidents, balance user access needs and security, etc. One typical example is United Family Healthcare leveraging the IBM Security QRadar SIEM platform to identify ransomware attacks promptly.

Internet of Things (IoT): IoT sensors can collect data on environmental conditions like temperature, energy usage, or humidity. By analyzing this data for unusual patterns, security systems can detect potential cyber threats.

Cloud Computing: This tech is a main contributor to cybersecurity. It offers robust security measures (e.g., secure access controls, security intelligence, or automated security monitoring) to better detect and respond to cyber threats.

10 Common Cyber Security Threats

We all see that tech advancements are leading to more sophisticated cyber security solutions. However, they also introduce new risks that cybercriminals can exploit. Here are 10 common cybersecurity threats you need to be aware of to protect your data:

Phishing

When hackers execute phishing, they’re using deceptive emails, text messages, or even phone calls that appear to be from legitimate sources like banks, social networking sites, or your relatives. The purpose of phishing is to trick you into revealing personal info or clicking on malicious links.

One Deloitte survey stated that phishing is the most popular cybercrime today, with more than two in five incidents. Its main targets include social media platforms (37.6%), web-based software services and webmails (21%), and financial institutions (9.8%). Not to mention that the advent of generative AI helps threat actors create superficially reliable phishing campaigns. This makes phishing become the most dangerous technique due to GenAI.

Malware

Malware stands for malicious software. It can be either software programs or code deliberately developed to harm your computer systems or data.

Deloitte also discovered an increase in malware targeting IoT devices in the manufacturing sector, including Mirai, Gafgyt, Kaiji, Ngioweb, and Meterpreter. Worse, threat actors are leveraging stealth malware, typical Snake Malware, to hide their cyber attacks without letting antivirus programs and security systems detect them.

Ransomware

As a type of malware, ransomware restricts access to your computer system and demands a ransom payment to restore it. In recent years, we’ve observed a surge in Ransomware-as-a-Service models like Lockbit, ALPHV, or Cl0p to support evasion techniques and speed up data encryption by hackers. Ransomware attacks on business operations cause serious consequences, typically the case study of MGM Resorts with a $100 million loss.

But ransomware’s impacts aren’t the concern of only businesses but a whole nation. According to the recent report sent to Congress, ransomware is threatening national and public security by targeting schools, hospitals, etc with a 22% increase in incidents in 2023. Threat actors, accordingly, continue using double and triple extortion attacks to encrypt data and threaten to publish that data if a victim doesn’t pay fees.

Zero-Day Exploitation

Zero-day vulnerabilities are security holes or weaknesses in hardware or software that a vendor is unaware of. By exploiting these vulnerabilities, hackers can gain unauthorized access to your system, steal data, or cause disruptions before the vendor can fix them.

Today, various security teams focus more on core network systems than edge devices (e.g., firewalls or VPNs). This gives bad actors a chance to attack their systems through vulnerabilities on these devices. The Clop gang used this tactic in 2023 to steal data from more than 130 organizations through GoAnywhere MFT, a file transfer platform.

Denial-of-Service (DoS) Attacks

DoS attacks are malicious attempts to overwhelm a website with traffic. This makes legitimate users hardly reach their destination (the website) while fake users (the attack traffic) fill all the space. DoS attacks are not only confined to websites, but their target can be a server, online service, or even an entire network.

One of the most popular DoS attacks reported is DDoS, short for Distributed Denial-of-Service. While DoS leverages a single hacked source (e.g., a computer or server) to attack a target with traffic, DDoS uses a vast network of compromised devices or computers (called a botnet). Compared to DoS, DDoS causes a larger-scale disruption and you might find it more challenging to identify and stop a DDoS attack.

According to the 2024 Cybersecurity Risk Report by Fair Institute, DDoS leads to the outage of several customer-facing banking applications and a whole manufacturing network. Accordingly, it causes a $98.8K revenue loss for small businesses and a $7.2M loss for large enterprises. Further, Deloitte also discovered a significant rise in HailBot, KiraiBot, and CatDDoS which are Mirai botnet variants widely used for DDoS attacks.

Insider Threats

These security risks come from within an organization. They’re posed by authorized users with legitimate access to systems and data. These users can be current or former employees, contractors, vendors, or even business partners.

There are two key types of insider threats:

Insider Misuse: This refers to intentional misuse of authorized access for personal gain or to harm the organization. The motives of malicious insiders vary, from stealing data and disrupting operations to manipulating systems for fraudulent transactions.

Insider Error (or Unintentional Insiders): This involves unintentional mistakes or negligence by authorized users that compromise security. These individuals don’t have any malicious intent, but their actions can cause data leaks or security breaches. For example, they can carelessly click on malicious links in emails, which gives attackers access to their computer system.

Fair Institute also reports that Insider Error and Insider Misuse are the top risk themes in various industries. For instance, healthcare has a high possibility of experiencing an insider error (involving misconfigurations), mainly because sensitive patient data is mistakenly sent to the wrong recipient by email. Accordingly, small businesses confront a nearly 26% probability, while that for larger organizations is up to 54.3%.

This is a psychological manipulation tactic used to trick people into revealing confidential or execute compromising actions. Sounds like phishing, right? In fact, social engineering is a broader term that covers phishing. While phishing primarily targets emails, social engineering aims at emails and other channels (like phone, social media, or in-person).

Social engineering is considered the No.1 risk theme for large enterprises, with an annual revenue loss of $91.2 million. Apart from phishing, it also includes other tactics like:

Vishing (Voice Cloning-as-a-Service): Threat actors leverage AI-based voice cloning tools for financial fraud or unauthorized access to your systems. However, more than half are unaware of this problem.

SMS phishing (smishing): This targets mobile users. Particularly, it uses text messages to trick victims into disclosing personal info, clicking malicious links, or sending money to threat actors.

These techniques are what Scattered Spider leveraged in 2023 to impersonate legitimate organizations and convince victims to provide passwords or reset multifactor authentication (MFA). Further, Google predicted that new social engineering techniques will be deployed in 2024, with the support of AI. They include mimicking domestic help services, banks or government officials, etc. to deceive victims into installing malicious apps.

Identity-Based Attacks

These attacks target the digital identity of an individual or business to gain unauthorized access to systems and data. In other words, they aim to steal your login credentials instead of hacking a whole system to get into your online accounts. Accordingly, phishing and social engineering we mentioned above are considered two popular identity-based attacks.

CrowsStrike reported that identity-based attacks have become noticeable these years. They realized 75% of attacks now are malware-free as threat actors can leverage new techniques (e.g., SIM-swapping or MFA bypass) or buy legitimate credential information from access brokers on the dark web. Their ultimate goal is not only to steal account credentials but also to target API keys, session cookies, Kerberos tickets, and one-time passwords.

Man-in-the-Middle Attacks (MitM)

This cyber attack occurs when attackers secretly add themselves to the communication between two parties. It enables them to eavesdrop on the conversation and possibly change the data being exchanged. MitM’s target can be the communication channel between any parties, for example, a user and a website, two computers on a network, or even two devices communicating wirelessly (e.g., Bluetooth).

There are various types of MitM attacks. Here are some of them:

Wifi eavesdropping: Cybercriminals trick you into connecting a malicious wireless network that sounds legitimate (e.g., Free Public Wi-Fi Network) and may require no password to enter.

Email Hijacking: Threat actors can take control of the email accounts of a specific organization (e.g., banks) and monitor transactions between you and that organization.

DNS Spoofing: This tactic disrupts the normal process of translating domain names (like google.com) into numerical IP addresses (like 8.8.8.8). Cybercriminals can intervene in this process and redirect you to malicious websites.

Cloud Intrusion

Our last cyber threat today is cloud intrusion. Contrary to our belief, unauthorized users still can invade cloud-based data or platforms, with a surprising 75% growth in 2023. Their goals are to steal sensitive information, disrupt business operations, and even launch further attacks on other networks or systems.

For example, Scattered Spider executed a cloud intrusion into a North American software company. They particularly added a new administrator access policy and a new access key to gain higher access (privilege escalation) within the company’s cloud system.

In addition, Google discovered that cybercrime in multi-cloud environments has become more sophisticated and impactful. They also predicted that threat actors could utilize serverless techs like crypto-miners (programs using computing power to generate cryptocurrency without server management) in 2024.

10 Types of Cyber Security

You’ve understood the top 10 popular cyber threats in today’s digital landscape. So, what are the best cybersecurity solutions? Let’s look deeply at a diverse set of practices designed to protect different aspects of our digital lives.

Network Security

This focuses on safeguarding your computer networks from unauthorized access, intrusion attempts, and malicious traffic. Here are several key tools used to keep your networks safe:

Firewalls: These act as the first line of defense that filters incoming and outgoing traffic based on predefined security rules. They can block suspicious activities and only allow authorized traffic to pass through. This makes firewalls the main security technology for various industries, including Industrial Control Systems (65%). Further, organizations adopt NextGen firewalls which offer more advanced features (e.g., Deep Packet Inspection or Application Awareness & Control) for better network security.

Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems (IDS/IPS): An IDS can constantly manage your network traffic to discover suspicious activities that might indicate a possible attack. Meanwhile, an IPS can help you prevent potential attacks beyond network management. By working together, these systems can detect and block threats more effectively.

Access Controls: These protocols identify who can access specific resources on your network. Accordingly, user authentication (verifying you say identity with passwords on multifactor authentication) and authorization (granting specific permissions based on user roles) are key to access controls.

Application Security

As the name states, application security refers to protecting software and apps from vulnerabilities that attackers can exploit. Here are several crucial aspects of application security you should consider:

Secure Coding Practices: This involves writing code with security in mind from the very early stage of the software development process. It includes practices like proper input validation to avoid SQL injection attacks, secure data storage to prevent data breaches, and following secure coding guidelines to mitigate vulnerabilities.

Vulnerability Assessments and Penetration Testing: These proactive measures help detect weaknesses in apps and the development process. Vulnerability assessments can scan your apps for known vulnerabilities. Meanwhile, penetration testing simulates real-world attacks to identify exploitable weaknesses. Are you looking for penetration testing services? Contact Designveloper as we here offer a wide range of testing procedures, from web and mobile apps to network and remediation suggestions.

API Security: APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) allow apps to communicate with each other. Securing APIs is essential to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive data or features within an app.

Cloud Security

Most organizations plan to increase investments in cloud security in 2024 (60%). Indeed, with the growing reliance on cloud-based services, securing data and apps in the cloud becomes paramount. Here’s a glimpse of some key aspects of cloud security:

Shared Responsibility Model: This model requires close cooperation between cloud providers and businesses. Accordingly, the providers need to be responsible for the security of the underlying infrastructure. Meanwhile, your business should be in charge of securing your data, apps, and access controls in the cloud.

Identity and Access Management (IAM): Managing user access is crucial. IAM solutions, therefore, ensure that only authorized users can access cloud resources and implement multifactor authentication (MFA) for an extra layer of security beyond just passwords.

Security Monitoring and Incident Response: Cloud providers offer various tools (e.g., Application Performance Monitoring) to manage cloud activities and early detect potential threats. Meanwhile, your business should have a plan for security monitoring and incident response. This involves procedures for identifying breaches, restraining damage, and restoring affected systems.

Information Security

Similar to cloud security, most organizations (59%) will boost investments in information security. This is the practice of safeguarding information and information systems from unauthorized access, modification, and destruction.

When it comes to information security, here are three key aspects you should consider:

Technical Controls: This involves the technical aspect of information security, from data encryption and classification to backups and disaster recovery. This helps your business restrict access to sensitive information, protect data in transit and at rest, detect suspicious behaviors, and restore systems quickly.

Administrative Controls: This involves policies and procedures guiding how people should interact with techs and information within an organization. It includes well-defined security policies, incident response plans, risk management, and security awareness training.

Physical Security: This refers to measures taken to protect people, information, and property from physical access and threats in the real world. It involves physical access controls (e.g., secure physical access to data centers) and proper disposal of devices containing sensitive data.

Endpoint Security

Endpoints here mean individual devices like laptops, desktops, mobile phones, or even the Internet of Things devices. They’re often the entry points for cyber threats as they can access the Internet and connect to different networks. So, endpoint security is security practices and tools that prevent these endpoints from unauthorized access, malware, and any harm.

In 2024, the global market for endpoint protection software is dominated by Trend Micro (17.48%), followed by Symantec Endpoint Protection (12.89%) and Windows Defender (9.72%). Such software can come into different categories as follows:

Antivirus & Anti-Malware Software: These traditional tools can scan devices for known malware threats and can block or quarantine them.

Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR): These advanced solutions go beyond basic antivirus by continuously monitoring device activity and user behavior. Their goal is to identify and respond to suspicious activities that might indicate an attack.

Further, you can leverage different techniques to protect endpoint security:

Application Whitelisting: This technique restricts your devices to only run authorized apps, helping prevent malware from executing.

Data Loss Prevention (DLP): DLP solutions help prevent sensitive data from being leaked intentionally or accidentally from your devices.

Disk Encryption: You can encrypt the data storage on your devices to protect data in case they’re stolen or compromised.

Mobile Security

Our mobile devices (e.g., smartphones and tablets) become increasingly crucial. They store a wealth of personal and professional information. Therefore, mobile security protects this data and our devices from becoming gateways for attacks on wider networks.

To secure your mobile devices from any threats, you should consider the following key practices:

Secure Your Devices: The first line of defense is setting a strong password, PIN, or fingerprint/facial recognition. Whenever available, you can activate two-factor authentication (2FA) for added login security. Further, regularly update your mobile operating system and all apps with the latest security patches.

Protect Against Malware: Next, you should install a reputable security app (e.g., Bitdefender Mobile Security) that provides real-time protection for your device. Also, you need to be careful with any downloads by reading app reviews and reviewing app permissions carefully.

Be Smart Online: You should be wary of suspicious links in text messages or emails. Do not provide sensitive information on untrusted websites. Further, you should avoid using unsecured public Wi-Fi networks for sensitive activities like online banking. If you must use public Wi-Fi, consider a virtual private network (VPN) to encrypt your internet traffic.

Protect Data: You can enable features like “Find My Phone” or similar services to locate and lock your lost device. Further, regularly back up your crucial information like contacts or messages to a secure cloud or local storage and think twice before sharing sensitive data. These things help protect your information from any harm.

Internet of Things (IoT) Security

The IoT refers to the vast network of physical devices embedded with sensors, software, and other techs to exchange data over the Internet. The global number of IoT devices is projected to double within 10 years (2023-2033), primarily used in the consumer sector, IT infrastructure, and asset tracking & management. Therefore, securing IoT devices is a must to avoid cyber attacks.

Some common IoT security threats include malware, botnets, physical security risks, and data breaches. It requires you to consider the best cybersecurity practices to protect your IoT devices:

Before You Buy: First, you should do some research on IoT device manufacturers to understand their reputation for security practices. Prioritize those offering built-in features like strong encryption, secure boot processes, and the ability to receive security updates.

Secure Your Devices: Once you’ve decided on the right IoT device for your business, change the default passwords to strong, unique passwords to prevent unauthorized access. Further, you should enable 2FA if your IoT device offers it. You also should keep software regularly updated, secure your Home Network, and be cautious with unfamiliar devices.

Segment Your Network: If possible you can consider segmenting your home network to create separate networks for different types of devices. This can further isolate your IoT devices and limit possible attacks if one device is compromised.

Monitor Features: If your IoT device provides monitoring capabilities, use them to detect any unusual activities that could signal an attack. Moreover, you may disable some features that you don’t need or use. This will mitigate the device’s attack surface and potential security risks.

Operational Security (OpSec)

OpSec is a risk management process that helps you safeguard sensitive information and activities from any harm. It’s technically a systematic approach that determines what needs protection and why, but not tools to execute such protection. As such, based on OpSec analytics, you can leverage security measures to protect your systems and data.

OpSec operates based on the following key principles:

Safeguard Information and Assets: OpSec protects your sensitive information (e.g., customer data, operational plans, or intellectual property) and even physical assets (e.g., computer systems).

Detect Vulnerabilities and Threats: OpSec focuses on understanding which activities and information need to be safeguarded and how they could be compromised. This includes threat analysis by considering potential vulnerabilities and their capabilities.

Implement Mitigations: After identifying vulnerabilities and threats, OpSec suggests proper actions to minimize the risk. Such actions can be technical (encryption), procedural (restricted access), or physical (security guards).

Continuous Monitoring: Finally, OpSec requires regular monitoring to determine new threats, assess how effective existing protection is, and adapt security measures as needed.

Infrastructure Protection

This refers to a diverse range of strategies and practices used to protect essential physical structures, systems, and networks from different threats. Such threats can be accidental (e.g., natural disasters or equipment failures) or intentional (e.g., cyber attacks or physical attacks).

Infrastructure protection is very important as it’s related to not only businesses but also national security, economic stability, and public health with safety. Here’s a closer look at infrastructure protection to help you understand why:

Critical Infrastructure: Infrastructure protection mainly focuses on systems and assets essential to the daily functioning of a society. They include energy grids (e.g., power plants or transmission lines), transportation systems (e.g., roads or airports), healthcare systems (e.g., hospitals or medical facilities), etc.

Protect Against Threats: Infrastructure protection includes security measures to prevent, minimize, and recover from different threats. For example, you can safeguard critical infrastructure from cyber attacks that could disrupt operations or cause physical damage.

Integrated Risk Management

The last type of cyber security on our list is integrated risk management (IRM). As cyber incidents (e.g., cybercrime or IT outage) are considered the biggest risk for businesses in 2024, you need to have a thorough plan to prevent and manage this risk.

Different from traditional risk management measures, IRM doesn’t separate cybersecurity risks from business risks. A cyber attack, for instance, can disrupt operations (operational risk), lead to financial losses (financial risk), and ruin your business’s reputation (reputational risk). By understanding these interdependencies, IRM enables a more proactive and risk-driven approach.

Accordingly, IRM entails the four following core elements:

Threat Detection and Assessment: IRM constantly detects and evaluates potential vulnerabilities and threats across your business.
Risk Prioritization: It then ranks such risks based on their likelihood and possible impacts on your business.
Risk Mitigation: It then suggests you develop and execute suitable controls and protection to handle the prioritized risks.
Performance Measurement: You then can monitor how controls are effectively implemented and adjust the IRM program as needed.

But how can you adopt IRM across your business? First, you should define your business’s acceptable level of risk to guide informed decision-making about risk mitigation strategies. Then, foster a culture where all employees and even the board management are conscious of cybersecurity risks and understand their roles in protecting the business. Next, leverage techs and tools to automate risk management, regularly review the IRM program, and make proper adjustments.

Final Thoughts

As techs evolve, cybercrime is everywhere, from sneaky phishing links to complex malware attacks. That’s why cybersecurity is more crucial than ever. Through this article, you may answer two key questions: “What is cyber security?” and “Why does cyber security matter?”. Further, you’ve learned about 10 cyber threats and cybersecurity solutions in today’s digital landscape. If you’d like to learn more or need help with cybersecurity, contact Designveloper for expert guidance!