Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash
Hey there,
Looks like i already started to fall behind schedule, Well somethings can’t be changed or controlled. So, how was today? Did you finished all the work you wanted to? I’m guessing probably not. It’s totally okay, just gotta keep the consistency up! We will discuss some topics as always. I won’t be going into much deep since I’m falling behind the schedule and I’ll try to get the right thing into your head. Let’s start.
- Governments being Targets for Hackers
As we had discussed earlier, Governments are a delight for “hackers” the term sounds a bit cringe, let’s change it “attackers”, These attackers focus on governments’ infrastructure and are always on the hunt for any valuable information that they can find. Why!!? We as humans are curious beings, the countries which are not in good-terms with each other do these kind of attacks by creating special covert teams. They do this along with normal spying so that they feel okay and sure that their counter-country doesn’t start bombing them suddenly in one fine morning. So, i can say for sure that playing with governments’ infra is a serious cyber-crime and only those who have the balls to do that, will do.
Photo by Andy Feliciotti on Unsplash
That sums up why they do it. What do they get out of these attacks? Any small information for a particular department in that country is still valuable, in the context of international politics. If suppose i am Country X and I’d like to know the details of the candidates that are electing for a state-level minister in Country Y, the details of this simple issue is crucial in that said state and it’s future. As a Country X i can hire a skilled group of security researchers and make them attack Country Y. Of course without any traces leading back to us.
2. AI in Cybersecurity
Feels as if whenever there is a discussion of AI, there would be one guy saying “ChatGPT”. I won’t lie, chatGPT normalized the usage of AI in our day to day life. But the main issue comes to security integration and incorporation, No matter how good an AI is, still i wouldn’t rest the future of my company to the hands of a machine. After all a machine is still a machine no matter how close it resemble humans. AI can be used to do a lot of repetitive boring tasks with ease, what about security? Security is something that cannot be given to a machine, A security engineer may take the advantage of it’s existence to do the work more efficiently but still he/she may not trust it fully. Because whatever the AI is pouting out, is some data that it was previously trained on(LLMs train on huge sets of data and the companies fine-tune it’s responses according to the need).
Photo by julien Tromeur on Unsplash
AI revolution is bound to be happened, just like how industrial revolution had happened. Today or tomorrow, gradually and eventually it will happen. There are a lot of risks that comes with existence of such powerful beings, Let’s try to discuss on them more deeply in another day!
3. The CIA Triad
CIA triad focuses on three main aspects of information security. Let’s go through them one by one!
Confidentiality: The data should be accessible by those that has the authorization and only them alone. It shall not be accessed by any third party, in this way the data is said to be confidential, secure and away from the perky eyes of attackers.
Integrity: The data should be safe from tampering or by any kind of modifications without the knowledge of the people that has the access. The data should be secured in such a place that the attacking vectors are greatly minimized and made impossible to plan.
Availability: The data should be readily accessible by the people that has the access to them without any unwanted delays or exceptions.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
The CIA triad is almost used in all of the major important organizations, the triad showcases simple yet crucial things to be taken care of. By implementing the triad, the company can have less attacking possibilities and less threats from the outside.
4. Structural Honeypots
It is a method where a company or an organization uses purposefully laid honeypots on their company’s infra to look for attackers trying to gain information from their systems and networks. These honeypots are created with critical care and with details to mimic the real applications, the team can decide that when an attack is happened on one of these honeypots they can further investigate and find the root cause of the issue like from where the threat had came and how their internal systems reacted to it etc.
Photo by Devin Avery on Unsplash
It can do wonders by helping the team to get an overview of how the attackers are attacking their systems and gaining information. Since, the data inside these honeypots are fake, they don’t have to worry about it either. Yes, you might be thinking how far the companies go in the context of security, the efforts the company needs to put are high. Because once the company suffers from a data breach, it might be the end of them. Of course unless they are the big players.
5. Threat Intelligence Platform
Threat intelligence platform is the term used to refer a place for all the plausible and existing threats that happened and will happen in future. Every IT company can be seen equipping themselves with one of these, these platforms are designed internally to keep a lookout on ongoing malware, hardware/software exploits, 0-day vulns etc. It helps by warning any possible attacks that may happen with their existing software versions and devices’ security environments.
Photo by Sofia Sforza on Unsplash
By constantly keep on updating with the latest information and threat details, the companies can keep quite a distance from any big-scale attacks. Of course this requires a lot of effort from the employees’ side as well.
That’s that for today, Same time tomorrow? I’ll see you then!