What Is Cybersecurity?
Different organizations have different definitions of cybersecurity. The main objective of cybersecurity is to protect assets such as networks, computers, mobile devices, applications, and data against cyber attacks so as to prevent security issues such as data leakage and service interruption.
Various attacks, such as phishing, ransomware, social engineering attacks, and man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks, may bring data leakage, service interruption, and financial loss to enterprises or organizations, and may cause privacy infringement and personal property loss to individuals. Therefore, enterprises, organizations, and individuals all need to improve their cybersecurity awareness and implement cybersecurity practices to prevent security issues before they arise.
- Why Is Cybersecurity Important?
- What Are Common Cyber Attacks?
- What Are the Types of Cybersecurity? Which Domains Are Involved?
- How Does Cybersecurity Work? What Are the Best Practices?
- Cybersecurity Challenges and Trends
- Cybersecurity vs. Information Security vs. Computer Security vs. IT Security
- Related Solutions and Products
Why Is Cybersecurity Important?
As digitalization and cloudification advance, important data of enterprises and individuals is stored in various digital systems, such as computers, servers, virtual machines, and mobile devices. Most of these systems are connected to the Internet. Cyber attackers want to penetrate the systems more than ever to conduct malicious activities, such as data theft and extortion, for financial gain. According to statistics, at least 75% of organizations were targeted by ransomware in 2023, with global ransoms totaling US$1 billion. Various industries, such as critical infrastructure, financial institutions, governments, and manufacturing, face huge cybersecurity risks, and numerous enterprises, organizations, and individuals suffer huge losses. Therefore, cybersecurity awareness and implement cybersecurity practices urgently need improving.
As the scale of cyber attacks and attack methods increases, so too does global cybersecurity spending. Gartner predicts that global cybersecurity spending will exceed US$260 billion by 2026. Countries and regions around the world are proactively formulating cybersecurity guidance to help enterprises and organizations implement effective cybersecurity practices. Cybersecurity guidance consisting of sound cybersecurity policies, technologies, processes, methods, and tools can significantly reduce the risk that enterprises, organizations, or individuals become the target of cyber attacks or are compromised.
The main benefits of implementing cybersecurity practices include:
- Prevent unauthorized users from accessing the system and data, prevent data leakage, and minimize the impact of cyber attacks on the business, finance, and reputation of enterprises and organizations.
- Safeguard end users and endpoints to prevent security issues such as identity theft and privacy leakage while reducing the impact on end users.
- Shorten the service recovery time after a security event occurs. The pre-defined cyber security plan helps enterprises and organizations handle security events as soon as possible and quickly recover services.
- Mitigate the increasingly serious cyber threats. Cybersecurity technologies and policies are continuously upgraded to keep pace with the evolving attack technologies.
- Comply with laws and regulations: Enterprises and organizations must comply with cybersecurity laws, regulations, standards, and specifications. For example, the cybersecurity guidance formulated by an enterprise or organization must contain the security measures intended for ensuring data privacy.
What Are Common Cyber Attacks?
As new types of cyber attacks keep emerging, the cybersecurity landscape becomes more complex than ever. It is crucial to keep up with the latest cybersecurity threats and enhance attack defense technologies accordingly. The following describes some common cyber attacks.
Common cyber attacks
Malware
Malware is the software that is specially compiled to launch cyber attacks and damage user systems. It is usually spread through email attachments or other seemingly legitimate download methods. After successfully running on a user's computer or other endpoints, the malware conducts various malicious activities, such as stealing, encrypting, modifying, and deleting data, and monitoring user behavior.
Common malware includes viruses, worms, Trojan horses, spyware, and ransomware.
Ransomware
Ransomware, a special type of malware, can lock user endpoints or encrypt endpoint data (such as documents, emails, databases, and source code) to block user access. To regain control over their data, victims have to pay a ransom.
Without an effective data backup and disaster recovery plan, it is almost impossible to recover services without paying the ransom.
Phishing
Phishing is a type of social engineering where an attacker masquerades as a trusted sender and sends a deceptive email or text message designed to trick a person into divulging sensitive data, clicking malicious links, downloading malware, or incorrectly transferring assets to others.
Advanced Persistent Threat (APT)
APTs are complex and persistent cyber attacks. Compared with traditional attacks, APTs have a higher level of customization and complexity. Attackers who use APTs are highly organized and have clear targets, which they continuously monitor until they find a weak point. Once the attack succeeds, it will have a huge economic or political impact on the attack target.
MITM Attack
The MITM attack is a session hijacking attack. An attacker in the middle of communications hijacks the session between the two communication parties and manipulates the communication process without their knowledge. In this way, the attacker steals information or uses fake identities to access the service systems. An MITM attack is a broad concept containing many specific attacks, such as Wi-Fi spoofing, email hijacking, DNS spoofing, and SSL hijacking. MITM attacks are often used to steal personal information such as user login credentials, emails, and bank accounts. The attacks are extremely destructive to online systems such as e-banking, online games, and online transactions.
SQL Injection
SQL injection is a code injection technique considered to be one of the most dangerous web application threats. In an SQL injection attack, adversaries insert malicious code into user input fields to trick the database into executing SQL commands, with the aim of stealing, tampering with, or sabotaging various types of sensitive data.
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attack
During a DDoS attack, an attacker takes control of numerous zombie hosts scattered across the Internet. These hosts then flood the target with an excessive number of junk packets or access requests, overwhelming the target's link bandwidth, session resources, or service system processing resources. This ultimately prevents the target network from responding to the service requests of legitimate users.
DDoS attacks are simple and effective. Therefore, they occur frequently and can result in significant economic and reputational damage.
Insider Threat
Insider threats generally come from authorized internal users, such as employees, contractors, and partners. These users intentionally or unintentionally abuse their access permissions, resulting in data leakage or account hijacking by attackers. Insider threats easily go unnoticed and may bypass the detection of security devices such as firewalls. However, a large proportion of attacks are insider attacks, and so they require special attention of enterprises and organizations.
What Are the Types of Cybersecurity? Which Domains Are Involved?
Cybersecurity is an interdisciplinary subject that involves multiple domains. The following lists common cybersecurity domains, which may overlap with each other.
Network Security
Network security, a subset of cybersecurity, focuses on the attacks on network devices and communication between network devices. Network security devices and systems are usually deployed at the network border, functioning as the first line of defense. The Internet has become the main source of cyber attacks. Technologies such as firewall, intrusion prevention, antivirus, and file blocking need to be adopted to block malicious behaviors.
Application Security
Application security protects software and applications from attacks and prevents unauthorized access to applications and data. The application security device or system is designed for a specific type of applications. For example, the web application firewall (WAF) is developed to protect web applications, while the database firewall is for protecting database applications. Application security also includes the security measures taken during application development to prevent the vulnerabilities caused by program compilation defects. Furthermore, application security includes periodic updates of applications and vulnerability assessment.
Endpoint Security
Endpoint security safeguards the endpoints connected to the network, such as computers, laptops, and mobile phones. Endpoint security devices or systems are usually deployed on the endpoint side. Common technical means include network access control (NAC), endpoint detection and response (EDR), anti-phishing, antivirus, and anti-ransomware.
Data Security
Data security prevents unauthorized data access and data leakage, modification, and damage, ensuring data confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The protected data includes both statically stored data and data in transit. Common technical means include access control, data encryption, data isolation, data backup, and data loss prevention (DLP).
Cloud Security
Cloud security protects cloud-based services and assets, including cloud service providers' infrastructure as well as user applications and data. The cloud service provider and cloud users are both responsible for ensuring the overall cloud security, and the responsibilities of the cloud service provider and cloud users vary according to the cloud service mode (SaaS, PaaS, or IaaS). Cloud security devices or systems are deployed on the cloud. Common technical means include infrastructure trustworthiness, network security, data security, and user access control.
Mobile Security
As mobile office becomes more popular, mobile devices such as mobile phones and tablets are able to access enterprise data. If mobile devices have security risks, enterprise data, applications, and systems will be vulnerable to attacks. Mobile security includes protecting mobile devices and controlling data access modes and permissions of mobile devices.
Identity Security
Identity security protects user identity information such as access credentials, authenticates users, grants specific access permissions to users, and monitors users' access behaviors. Identity security can help to prevent unauthorized access, detect potential risks related to identities, and restrict the lateral movement of unauthorized users when attacks occur.
How Does Cybersecurity Work? What Are the Best Practices?
Composition of Cybersecurity and How It Works
Effective cybersecurity measures involve the coordination between personnel, architecture, and technology.
Personnel
Training personnel on the security threat trends and best practices for preventing cyber attacks is an important part of the cybersecurity guidance for enterprises or organizations. We can effectively defend against cyber attacks only when the cyber security awareness of related personnel is improved.
Architecture
In complex network environments, enterprises and organizations must have a stable cybersecurity architecture. Based on this architecture, comprehensive threat inspection, threat response, and post-attack recovery measures are defined for the entire IT system. Isolated single-point solutions or measures cannot cope with advanced unknown threats.
For example, the cybersecurity framework IPDRR released by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is widely followed by enterprises and organizations. IPDRR stands for Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, and Recover, which are the five core capabilities defined in the framework. IPDRR signifies a transition from a security protection–oriented model to a prevention- and business continuity management–oriented model and from reactive to proactive. It is intended to provide self-adaptive cybersecurity capabilities.
Technology
Specific cybersecurity technologies and devices — such as the firewall, antivirus software, intrusion prevention system (IPS), endpoint security system, and encryption technologies — are used to protect networks, systems, and data. No matter how many technologies and devices are used, timely updates and upgrades are especially important. This includes updating the system and software, installing patches, and updating the knowledge base of security devices. Only then can security protection be continuously effective.
The preceding briefly describes the main concepts regarding cybersecurity. Previously, there was no unified cybersecurity assessment system, and each enterprise or organization needs to flexibly formulate cybersecurity guidelines based on the actual situation. Gartner proposed the Consistency, Adequacy, Reasonableness, and Effectiveness (CARE) framework in 4 Metrics That Prove Your Cybersecurity Program Works, with the aim of helping enterprises and organizations evaluate the credibility and defensive capabilities of their cybersecurity guidelines.
- Consistency: Evaluate whether security controls operate continuously and consistently across the enterprise or organization.
- Adequacy: Evaluate whether security controls meet business requirements.
- Reasonableness: Evaluate whether security controls are appropriate and fair.
- Effectiveness: Evaluate whether security controls produce the expected result.
Gartner recommends that leaders in security and risk management specify 20 to 30 metrics based on this framework to translate cybersecurity standards to be easily understood by non-technical audiences.
Best Practices for Protecting Against Cyber Attacks
Complying with the following cybersecurity best practices can help to significantly reduce the risk of cyber attacks on enterprises, organizations, and individuals.
- Timely updating the operating system and software (including the antivirus software): Helps to fix system vulnerabilities and defend against known threats.
- Periodic data backup: If the system is damaged or under ransomware attacks, backing up data can maintain service continuity.
- Using enhanced passwords: Asking users to set complex passwords can help to reduce unauthorized access.
- Deploying the identity & access management suite (IAM) system: IAM provides multi-factor authentication (MFA) and defines the roles and access permissions for each user.
- Continuous monitoring and audit: The entire IT system and assets are comprehensively monitored and audited, including permission setting audit, asset stocktaking, and asset vulnerability scanning; and the attack surface is continuously monitored to identify potential risks.
- Implementing the zero-trust architecture: The zero-trust principle is the most effective method for ensuring secure access control. Continuous verification and dynamic authorization can significantly reduce the risk of assets being attacked.
- Cybersecurity training: Improves persons' cybersecurity awareness, for example, not opening emails from unknown sources or clicking links in unknown emails, to prevent cyber attacks such as phishing.
Cybersecurity Challenges and Trends
The ever-changing attack methods and evolving IT environments are major challenges to cyber security.
- Attackers continuously use new technologies to create attack methods. The emergence of AI not only promotes business development, but also brings new opportunities to attackers.
- The popularity of remote office and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) poses new security risks to enterprises and organizations.
- As IoT devices proliferate, insecure devices can be easily hijacked by attackers.
- Some IT resources are migrated to the cloud. As network edges continue to expand and hybrid network environments spanning cloud and on-premises services are deployed more widely, enterprise network architectures are more complex than ever. Enterprises are facing a severe challenge: the lack of collaboration between isolated security products and tools.
- Cyber security experts and practitioners are in severe shortage, making it hard to cope with a large number of attacks.
To cope with these challenges, the cybersecurity field is actively trying to leverage AI and automation technologies to defend against cyber attacks. For example, AI-powered advanced data analysis technologies are widely used to inspect cyber threats; the ever-developing machine learning algorithms can quickly detect new unknown threats. Driven by AI technologies, cybersecurity technologies are becoming more automated and self-adaptive. Of course, the emergence of AI also introduces new attack surfaces and even becomes a cybercrime tool for attackers. Cybersecurity also needs to cope with this transformation.
In addition, Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), a brand-new cyber security model, integrates software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) and various security functions to provide a host of subscription-based services for enterprises. SASE enables enterprises to manage distributed network resources and security policies more effectively so that users can enjoy secure and efficient network access wherever they are.
Cybersecurity vs. Information Security vs. Computer Security vs. IT Security
When it comes to cybersecurity, similar terms such as information security, IT security, and computer security will inevitably be mentioned. In most cases, these terms are regarded as being synonymous with cybersecurity. The difference between these terms varies, but what is generally agreed upon is that these terms overlap while focusing on different areas. The following content distinguishes them based on their areas of focus.
From the historical point of view, information security appeared earlier than the others. Early data and information were stored in physical objects or transferred verbally. Information security is involved when information needs to be kept confidential. With the emergence of computers and the Internet, protection of the data and information in digital systems emerges. This expands the scope of information security, and gradually introduces related terms such as computer security, IT security, and cybersecurity.
First, let's dive into the following concepts:
- Cybersecurity: focuses on the security of digital systems, networks, and data, excluding physical security. In short, cybersecurity prevents attackers from obtaining sensitive digital information from computers, servers, mobile devices, and related networks.
- Information security: is usually abbreviated as InfoSec. It focuses on protecting information systems and sensitive information from unauthorized access, disclosure, modification, and damage. Sensitive information can be stored and transmitted via digital documents, databases, or paper documents, or even verbally.
- Computer security: refers to the security of software, hardware, operating systems, and data in a computer system.
- IT security: protects all IT assets of an enterprise or organization, including digital and physical IT assets. IT security protects the entire IT infrastructure, not just information and data.
Therefore, cybersecurity is generally considered as a subset of information security and IT security, and is part of the overall information security strategy. However, the focuses of these concepts are different. Computer security has a smaller scope than cybersecurity, but this does not mean it is simply included within cybersecurity. Computer security focuses more on the computer than cybersecurity.
The scope of computer security is clearer. The following compares cybersecurity, information security, and IT security in detail.
Cybersecurity vs. information security vs. IT security
Related Solutions and Products
To cope with modern cyber attacks, enterprises and organizations need to cooperate with cyber security solution providers to build an end-to-end and collaborative cyber security system architecture. Huawei provides a host of professional cyber security solutions and products. Currently, Huawei is fully immersed in the network security field and covers other cyber security fields, helping you to build an accurate, fast, and stable intelligent threat defense system.
- Huawei Multilayer Ransomware Protection Solution: "Network + storage" double protection and exclusive AI cluster algorithm, accurately identifying ransomware and safeguarding user data assets
- Huawei Xinghe Intelligent SASE Solution: Builds a cloud-network-edge-endpoint integrated intelligent security system to provide comprehensive security assurance for multi-branch enterprises.
- Huawei AI firewall: next-generation NGFW product. Leveraging the intelligent detection technologies, this feature-rich firewall is ideal for detecting advanced and unknown threats.
- Huawei anti-DDoS system: A professional anti-DDoS system designed for carriers, financial institutions, and data centers. This future-oriented system provides second-level or even millisecond-level defense against hundreds of types of complex attacks to ensure service availability.
- Huawei security situation awareness system: performs multi-dimensional correlation analysis on massive amounts of data, detects various security threats in real time, and restores attack behaviors of the entire APT kill chain. Once a threat is detected, the system can automatically invoke other devices to handle the threat in a closed-loop manner.
- Huawei intelligent endpoint security system: The client software deployed on enterprise endpoints detects abnormal endpoint behaviors in real time, automatically handles threat events, and rolls back encrypted ransomware files with just one click. All of this helps enterprises protect their core endpoint assets.
For more information, see Huawei network security solutions and Huawei network security products.
- Author: Liu Shui
- Updated on: 2024-11-15
- Views: 2425
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