In 2022, digital information and technology are more highly integrated into our daily activities than it was before! Though it helps in fueling innovation and driving organizational agility, it has also increased our threat landscape to a huge extent.
Organizations across the globe are feeling the toll of cyber-attacks and maintaining business continuity today rests entirely on the ability to protect their network and data. To perform this successfully it’s crucial to understand the different types of cybersecurity and how they help in defending against diverse threats.
Being industry leaders in transforming the security posture of enterprises, here in this blog we have elaborated on the objectives of cybersecurity, the different types of cybersecurity, and ways in which it helps you in protecting your cyber resources.
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Objectives of Cybersecurity
“Today, a threat can be anywhere from a minor bug in a code to a complex vulnerability in the cloud architecture.”
Therefore, risk assessments, data backups, and cost estimation for reconstruction will help your organization to stay prepared and look ahead for potential losses. But apart from all the aforementioned, knowing how to formulate the objectives of cybersecurity will help you safeguard your devices, data, and networks from attacks, destruction, or unauthorized access. The three main objectives of cybersecurity are confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
- Confidentiality of Information – Confidentiality in cybersecurity is ensuring that your data is only accessible to certain authorized persons. It is all about defining who can access the file, document, network, device, or application. Confidentiality best practices pertain to the transport of data, where the data is always encrypted, symmetrically, or asymmetrically.
- Information Integrity – Information integrity refers to assuring the accuracy and completeness of data. It involves maintaining the consistency and trustworthiness of data over its entire life cycle and preventing it from being modified or misused by an unauthorized party. Information integrity is very crucial especially when the data is in transit, you need to ensure that it cannot be altered by unauthorized people.
- Availability of Information – One of the key objectives of cybersecurity is ensuring that the systems and data can be accessed by authorized users whenever they are needed! Just like confidentiality and integrity, availability also holds a greater value as it augments in ensuring the reliability and system uptime which can be impacted by unexpected hardware failures, software downtimes, man-made errors, and malicious insider threats.
You can address your availability concerns and ensure the retrieval of data at the right time by…
Data backups
Disaster recovery
Proper monitoring and environmental controls.
Having discussed the objectives of IT security, let us now explore some of the types of cybersecurity that you should consider!
1. Network Security
Network security is a broad term that encompasses the activities and controls that are designed to protect the integrity of your networking infrastructure. It involves defending your data against threats, unauthorized access, intrusions, misuse, and breaches. The controlling of network security can be categorized as physical, technical, and administrative.
Physical – Prevents unauthorized physical access to the network infrastructure, including data centers, routers, and servers.
Technical – Protects data within the network whether stores or in transit.
Administrative – Includes security processes and policies that control the network access.
Threats to the network can come in the form of…
Malware & Viruses
Malicious Hackers
Denial of Service (DoS) & Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.
Hardware, firmware, or software vulnerabilities and
Insider threats
Network security will ensure the security of the entire underlying network infrastructure, right from the devices and applications to the end users.
Below are some of the common network security solutions…
- Firewalls – Firewalls are network security hardware or software devices that stand as a gatekeeper between your network and the outside world. They monitor the traffic that travels across your network and blocks unwanted traffic based on the rules and policies that you define.
- Intrusion detection systems (IDS) and Intrusion Protection Systems (IPS) – IDS and IPS also perform the same job of firewalls, but the key difference is these systems also help in analyzing the behaviors and activities to identify potential attacks.
- Virtual Private Network (VPNs) – When you are using public networks, VPN will help you establish a protected network. It encrypts your internet traffic and disguises your online identity to ensure that no third parties can track your activities online (traffic eavesdropping) and steal your data.
2. Endpoint Security
With the elevation of trends such as workplace mobility, remote culture, and bring your own devices (BYOD), the network today has become increasingly perimeter-less! As employees are leveraging both their corporate and personal devices to access network assets and resources from anywhere, safeguarding the security of endpoints in the perimeter-less architecture is a mandate!
The endpoints that need to be secured include…
- Desktops and laptops
- Devices such as smartphones and tablets.
- Network devices such as modems and switches
- IoT devices such as printers, smart assistants, and sensors.
All the threats that affect the network can also impact the endpoints. But in addition, endpoints can also be bothered by…
Phishing and social engineering attacks
Credential theft
Cryptojacking.
The best practices that you can follow to ensure endpoint security are…
- Endpoint Protection Platforms (EPP) & Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) – EPP solutions such as antivirus and antimalware will protect your devices against signature-based attacks and stop known threats from intruding your endpoints. EDR, on the other hand, detects threats based on behavior analysis.
- Disk Encryption – Disk encryption should be a key part of your endpoint protection strategy as it leverages encryption algorithms to protect the files stored on an endpoint. Even in the event of a system compromise, disk encryption on a device level will protect the privacy of your data by rendering it useless to attackers.
- Mobile Device Management (MDM) – Your employees today are also using their personal devices to access and alter enterprise data. When this is the case, adopting an MDM strategy will help you protect these endpoints from vulnerabilities, data leaks, and other threats! A combination of MDM and Mobile Identity Management will also yield you benefits such as the implementation of MFA – Multi-factor authentication.
3. Cloud Security
Cloud Security is the need of the hour, especially when organizations are increasingly adopting cloud technologies! Some of the common aspects of cloud security include solutions for…
- IaaS – Covers infrastructure & Workloads.
- PaaS – Secures applications and containers.
- SaaS – Ensures security of cloud-based applications & other information assets in the cloud.
Whether you’re using public, private, or hybrid clouds, this kind of cybersecurity has several unique challenges like less visibility, complex multi-cloud environments, and increased compliance hassles! Since the services are accessed outside the network and are managed by the third-party provider, your IT team will only have limited visibility into the data stored in the cloud. Provided the reliance on an outside provider when you leverage public clouds will add an extra burden to your regulatory compliance management process.
Some of the common cloud security solutions and best practices are…
- Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) – Most of the data breaches and data leaks in the cloud happen because of misconfigurations! A CASB solution will help you identify misconfigurations and provide additional security through access controls and other features.
- Identity and Access Management (IAM) – Following Identity and Access Management best practices is a must if you are trying to get the most out of your cloud infrastructure. By leveraging an IAM framework you can authenticate, authorize access, and prevent unauthorized access across your cloud environment.
- Multi-factor Authentication (MFA)– Compromised credentials are one of the main reasons for data breaches in the cloud. MFA works by authenticating the users multiple times on their personal devices, contact numbers, biometrics, and accounts, apart from their static passwords which can be compromised.
4. Application Security
Applications and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are the areas that exhibit high vulnerability in today’s threat landscape! When there is a presumption that application security is a focus area only for the developers, this is not the case in a modern enterprise setup! Because application security today goes beyond the development and design process! It is no longer an icing that is laid on top of the Infrastructure as a Code, instead, they are also included in CI/CD pipelines as part of Shift Left Security and DevSecOps initiatives!
The security of your applications can be affected by the following factors…
DDoS attacks
SQL & other code injections
Simplifies integration with stakeholders and applications.
Lack of proper encryption
Misconfigurations.
The following cybersecurity best practices must be imparted for ensuring the security of your applications throughout their lifecycle!
- SaaS Management – Your workforce today is signing up for new SaaS applications every single minute and those applications spread throughout your organization with various permission levels and risks. As a central source of truth, SaaS management will simplify the security of your SaaS applications by discovering, managing, and optimizing them.
- Risk Assessment & Patching – Keeping your applications and software up to date can prevent your enterprise from potential data breaches and security vulnerabilities. If you have a very complex cloud infrastructure you can conduct vulnerability risk assessments and prioritize the updates based on the risk level.
- Access Controls – Automating, streamlining, and controlling access to your applications with access management best practices such as Single-Sign-Ons, and MFAs will also significantly elevate the security of your applications.
5. Internet Security
Internet security aims at protecting users and corporate assets from attacks that travel over the internet. It mitigates the risks that are associated with the internet, web browsers, web apps, websites, and applications. Although network and cloud security help in defending against internet threats, the prevalence and amplitude of these threats demand placing internet security into its own category.
“But, as opposed to the common misconception, internet security today is not just about securing the data in transit! It encompasses much more than that!”
Below are the following methods that you can take to protect your organization against internet threats…
- Email Security – The majority of internet-borne attacks happening today are because of phishing emails! Therefore, blocking emails containing malicious links and educating your workforce about phishing attacks is crucial for bolstering the security of your internet.
- URL Filtering – URL filtering works by putting a restriction on the types of websites your employees are accessing. It will also help in blocking risky websites based on their content and other predefined criteria.
6.Identity Security – The future of Cybersecurity!
As your enterprise is progressing in all phases of digital transformation, most of your operations tend to revolve around identities and access to digital information. This is when identity security steps in and renders a significant security advantage to your enterprise by protecting the threats that target your digital identities.
Digital identities are required to enable employees with access to technology. But when they are not managed and governed properly, your digital identities and their associated accesses can pose a huge risk to your enterprise security.
“Identity security will help you protect your digital identities by effectively granting, managing, and securing your access based on least privilege principles.”
No matter whether you are adapting to remote work culture, having a multi-cloud environment, or embracing a BYOD system, identity security will stand as a protective shield to your identities and will secure your enterprise against all identity-based threats!
Wrapping Up!
Wherever your business goes, or whoever it works with, incorporating a comprehensive cyber security strategy is a must in this ever-evolving threat landscape!
Are you curious to revisit and enhance your security posture?
Our cybersecurity experts are adept at providing proactive, focused, and industry-specific solutions that are tailor-made to meet your thriving security needs!
Experience the nooks and corners of digital transformation with the confidence that comes from knowing that your business is secure!
