Cybersecurity and Cyber Resilience: What’s the Difference?
The significance of cybersecurity in today’s fast-paced world can’t be ignored. Business leaders globally are aware of the significance of cybersecurity, yet the needed attention isn’t given to its execution and cyber resilience. With a deep understanding of the cybersecurity and cyber resilience, it’s needed to learn the practical execution to protect you in the digital world. People who don’t pay close attention to these two often land in big fiscal loss with the loss of reputation within the market. Both terms have become typical in the industry and utilized as buzzwords to sound fancy. But the reality is many professionals don’t know the essential difference between the two. That can be very bothersome and can lead to devastating results in the aftermath of a data breach. Let’s look at the major difference between these two: What’s the Major Difference between Cybersecurity & Cyber Resilience? Let’s paint a picture for you to help further explain both terms in the simplest way possible. What’s cybersecurity? Cybersecurity is widely used by many. It talks about protecting your computer networks and system from modification, damage, and disruptions. For instance, using a VPN will stock malicious entities or hackers from modifying or intercepting the data packets delivered and received over your network. Here, using a VPN can be part of your cybersecurity strategy. Cybersecurity is composed of standard processes executed to stop hackers from compromising your IT networks. However, you will still find room for error even if your cybersecurity strategy is a part, along with industry standards. With continuously changing threat landscapes, you will find an opportunity where a hacker may find a loophole in your network. What about cyber resilience? On the other hand, cyber resilience identifies how well anybody can continue their operations in a post-cyberattack case. An entity must perform its daily operations as normal with proper cyber resilience strategy irrespective of a cyber disruption or cyberattack. What makes this crucial is its capability to keep operations during a mission-critical situation. Hence, cyber resilience concentrates on assessing threats, risk and building continuity planning to keep operations after a data breach. In short, cybersecurity concentrates on protection while cyber resilience concentrates on building strategies to flourish when cybersecurity fails because of some reasons. What is their Importance? You see, your entire business operations may come to a total halt without cyber resilience, especially in case of a severe cyberattack. Cybersecurity itself is just good for protection and can’t help you recover from possible attacks. Hence, when your cybersecurity fails, cyber resilience is accountable for bringing operations back to average. It is easy to think that your cybersecurity strategies are foolproof. However, it is better to remain realistic. Accept that the worst thing could happen when you are least expecting it and create resilience strategies to deal with unexpected calamities. That’s the reason why cyber resilience is a big part of any company’s risk management strategy. To sum up, cyber resilience and cybersecurity are always codependent. When implemented together and properly, only you can lower the damages caused by a cyberattack.
Compromised Conversations: The Latest Social Media Data Breaches
Social media has become a hotbed for many cybercriminal activities in recent years. Attackers and hackers are attracted to such platforms as they make finding and engaging targets insignificant, are cheap and simple to use, are easy to make fraudulent accounts, and enable the distribution of malicious content at an unprecedented efficiency and scale. Advanced and big-scale cybercrime on social media platforms has become mainstream, from the Russian operatives using Twitter to spear phish and dispense malware to a Vevo breach attack stemming from a LinkedIn phishing attack. The worst social media data breaches are getting more frequent and more dangerous. This post collected a list of the worst and damaging social media attacks of all time to show the increasing need for protecting these platforms. Vevo hacked through a targeted LinkedIn phishing attack, approximately 3.12TB exfiltrated The streaming platform Vevo encountered a data breach in 2017 when one of its staff was phished through LinkedIn. Fraudsters obtained and publicly released 3.12TB worth of the firm’s sensitive and confidential data. The professional social network enables attackers to quickly determine their target at a certain company and send them a bespoke message, all under the auspices of professional recruitment or networking. Phishing Twitter direct messages sent to customers from a compromised bank account In 2011, an Australian bank encountered the worst-case scenario for an account takeover. Criminals didn’t vandalize the account or post seditious messages. As an alternative, they send direct messages to Twitter followers asking them to disclose sensitive financial institutions. Most account hacks are embarrassing and expensive from a brand and public relations perspective. However, they can also be utilized for big-scale cyber attacks against a brand’s most engaged and loyal followers. LinkedIn breached, exposing 117 million accounts In 2016, the social network itself got breached. The LinkedIn data dump was the seventh biggest in history by a sheer number of compromised items. That data breach that originally happened in 2017 lead to an eventually 117 million exposed email address and password combination. All of these were sold on the dark web for 5 Bitcoin. Financial corruptions run widespread on social media In August 2016, ZeroFOX researchers disclosed the massive underground world of financial misconduct on social media. Scammers always prey on verified banks’ followers with fraudulent financial service offerings like money flipping and card cracking. The issue’s scale is substantial, with at least a quarter-million posts for a single form of scam on a single social network. The issue was discovered on each major social media network and led to hundreds of yearly losses. HAMMERTOSS malware utilizes social media as Command and Control device In July 2015, the Hammertoss malware searched social media networks for commands posted by attacker profiles. This enables fraudsters to control the malware through social media posts. Furthermore, the attacker group behind the malware is accountable for the attacks against the White House, the State Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other nation-state governments like Norway. The approach to weaponizing social media proves the need to assess and investigate social media as a full lifecycle attack vector. Fake social media personal delivers malware to employees through social media In 2017, attackers made a convincing fake persona—a London-based photographer named Mia Ash connected with corporate staff. The attacker distributed a Remote Access Trojan (RAT) known as PupyRAT through the social media honeypot accounts to take over the controls of victims’ devices. The persona obtained accounts across numerous social media networks. Third party app results to hundreds of high-profile account compromises TwitterCounter, a third-party app, allowed Turkish-language attackers to take over controls of high-profile accounts. They posted destructive messages over the Netherlands after a antagonistic week of failing relations between Turkey and the Netherlands and essential elections in both nations. The breached accounts included a series of global brands and well-followed verified accounts such as Amnesty International, UNICEF, the European Parliament, Starbucks, the official Bitcoin Blockchain account, and Forbes. Twitter spear-phishing outbreak nets word leaders In July, the Twitter accounts of some of the most influential individuals in the world like Kanye West, Joe Biden, and Barack Obama all posted malicious tweets requesting Bitcoin. The hack encouraged immediate questions and panic about how numerous high-profile accounts were hijacked. The master turned out to be a 17-year-old guy from Florida who was immediately detained, together with some associates. The fraudsters scammed Twitter users out of a little over $100,000 but caused a massive scandal. Zoom encounters scrutiny after series of attacks Cybersecurity problems of Zoom are numerous stories rolled into one. In April 2020, half a million Zoom passwords were discovered being sold on the dark web. Hijackers gathered such passwords through credential stuffing and packaged the compromised accounts into a new database. Hackers utilized advanced bots to get around Zoom’s instinctive force protections, testing filched data until they discovered matches. Google+ shuttered over data breach risk Most were surprised to find that the social media platform Google+ was shuttering as it had started to take off. Google discovered that a bug in the system unveiled more than 500,000 user’s information. The company was further worried that it had taken them more than two years to see the bug. Google does not think the data breach led to anyone using data to hurt people. However, they decided the risk was too massive. Hence, they shut the entire thing down instead. 87 million Facebook data breach In 2018, Facebook finished its comprehensive investigation into the Cambridge Analytica data breach. It had gone back years when a Cambridge University researcher made a 3rd party personality app. More than 300,000 Facebook users installed it and volunteered their personality data on both themselves and others, which extend the breach’s reach. The app later supposedly sold the results to Cambridge Analytica, an activist group. Social media data breaches are not an unlikely event. While these platforms take them seriously and work to safeguard their users, data breaches are unavoidable.
BIG DATA BREACHES: Why Cybersecurity is the Key to Data Protection
In the modern age of digitalization, data protection is integral for every organization. In 2020, people witnessed that if data protection isn’t done right, companies will experience massive impacts in ransomware, phishing, hacking, and more. Unluckily, this dangerous trend isn’t going to stop but will stay for a longer time. Considering the value of cybersecurity, the good thing is that many organizations have started to take precautionary measures. For instance, they use cybersecurity tools such as VPNs to help them safeguard their customers’ data. That way, they can also protect their employees’ digital footprints working remotely from anywhere. Further, they can avoid different cyber risks proactively. The Importance of Data Protection Whether big or small, organizations and companies can’t flourish without protecting their vital business data these days. The following are the three major reasons why organizations should safeguard their business data accordingly. Protect against data breaches and other problems Did you know that data protection strategies enable companies to protect themselves from different concerns? That includes legal problems related to breaches, damaged brand reputation, loss of public trust, impact on future growth in terms of expansions and profits, and financial costs, among other problems. Avoid unauthorized access Imagine if companies can protect their resources such as laptops, computers, and other smart devices? They can easily keep several notorious elements at bay online. What’s more, they must safeguard their other sensitive assets such as personally identifiable information of their staff, official websites, and more, accordingly. Thus, hackers and other cyber goons can’t access such essential info, and organizations can work based on their long-term vision or goals without any problem. Guarantee business continuity There’s no doubt that business continuity is massively reliant on data protection. Organizations using security measures like advanced security tools like email encryption, update of corporate device security-wise, and data backup allows them to easily secure their core business functions and continue doing their regular operations in the most efficient and right way. In short, data has become a lifeline for companies. Without protecting it properly, they can’t grow in the future efficiently and successfully. Which Information Must be Protected? Organizations typically store various information connected to their customers, such as customer details. These details normally include personal data like contact number, email address, bank account number, and more. They need to safeguard their patrons’ valuable data, so they don’t need to deal with online frauds like identity theft, phishing scams, and more. Below is the list that comprises common data businesses store in their databases: Name Financial data like credit card details, account number, and bank name Email address Residential address Other miscellaneous data What Organizations Can Do to Fulfill their Role with Data Protection? Various data protection laws such as CCPA, LGPD, GDPR, and more have compelled companies and businesses to give utmost importance to their clients’ data a much as they can. Nonetheless, they can still take various cybersecurity measures to safeguard their customers’ data. Some of these steps are as follows: Consider cybersecurity as a long-term activity Businesses must not think of cybersecurity as only a one-time activity. As an alternative, they must ready themselves to come across different cybersecurity problems such as ransomware, phishing attacks, data theft, and so much more. Cyber problems aside, they could lose a substantial amount of money if they keep doing cybersecurity occasionally. Update every official device regularly Keep in mind that there’s no damage if companies update their devices like laptops, desktops, and other smart devices as and when needed. This will help businesses keep their official resources safe and safeguard them from various cyber threats. Enhance endpoint security business-wide In case you didn’t know, endpoint security is a procedure by which organizations can safeguard endpoints of their official devices like tablets, laptops, and desktops from the prying eyes of scammers, hackers, and other cybercriminals. Remember that this activity must be done throughout the company and without any judgment. Offer essential cybersecurity to every employee For employers out there, you are supposed to train your staff when it comes to cybersecurity. You can ask your IT department to play its role diligently. This specific department must help your employees utilize encryption software to prevent their laptops, computers, and other devices from being hacked, malware, privacy invasion, and other risks. How Can Big Data Help? Cybersecurity requires the actionable intelligence and risk management that is common for big data analysis. It’s good to have tools that can assess data. However, the solution is to automate tasks so the data is accessible fast and the analysis is delivered to the right people at the right time. That will enable an analysis to categorize and group cyber threats without the lengthy delays that could make data irrelevant to the cyber threat or attack at hand. You see, big data will help analysts to envisage cyberattacks by taking the complexity from different data sources and streamlining the patterns into visualizations. Using the data in its raw format enables disparate data to be helpful not just with what’s taking place but also with historical data. The historical data enables businesses to make statistical baselines to determine what’s considered normal. They will then identify when the data deviates from the norm. Often, it is simple to miss indicators if they’re given in real-time. Nonetheless, they may have new definitions when they’re viewed over time. That historical data can also produce new opportunities for machine learning, statistical models, and predictive models, enabling the ability to foresee future events. Final Thoughts Data protection is crucial when we talk about expanding businesses online. Business leaders can’t underestimate the importance of cybersecurity at any cost. That’s because consumers prefer to purchase products and services from organizations committed to data protection. In a nutshell, data protection has become the need of the hour. Otherwise, organizations won’t grow or achieve success in the future. What are your thoughts about this post? 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The Importance of Data Encryption in Cybersecurity
Used in different security solutions, data encryption keeps unwelcomed visitors away, so they can’t get into your important data.
