With the ever-rising need to interact with digital and information systems, companies, nations and individuals are susceptible to the harrowing evil of Cybercriminal activities.
According to the official yearly Cybercrime report, put together by Cyber Security Ventures, an estimated 6 trillion dollars would be lost globally to Cybercriminal activities by 2021 if the menace is not addressed. This doubles the reported 3 trillion dollars lost to Cybercrime in 2015. Since the history of mankind, Cyber Crime has posed the greatest threat to the medium of wealth and economic theft to national economies and companies. In the world of crime, it is far more lucrative than the peddling of hard drugs of all sorts combined. In Nigeria today, the rise of cybercrime has become an endemic issue among the youth. Even hostile nations of the world have sponsored and organized criminal bands of hackers to perpetuate this. Unfortunately, the lurking danger of Cybercrime spells doom for investment and innovation in any country. This calls for the need for information to enlighten the public on the basic elements of Cyber Security to tackle malicious cyberattacks on systems.
SOME ELEMENTS OF CYBERSECURITY
- CONFIDENTIALITY OF DATA – Sensitive data could be thwarted and exposed illegitimately in Cybercrime. This can be curbed by encrypting serious data in the process of transmission in place of weaker channels of communication that are prone to eavesdropping. Visibility of sensitive information in certain places e.g. backup, receipts, database etc. should be checked. This would avoid a breach in security that could have led to the revealing of secretive and sensitive information from a presumed safe system.
- ASSURED DATA INTEGRITY- For Data to remain safe from a hack and other forms of criminal activities it has to be prevented from unauthorized modification of data during transit or while in storage.
- AUTHENTICITY OF SYSTEMS-Information, the transaction of users, documents and all forms of communication must be genuine. It entails the examination of the vital information of proposed users who would transact the given system. Systems can be made authentic by ensuring that proper mitigation steps and other forms of assessment are in place to tackle potential damages on the information systems.
- END USER EDUCATION- Humans would remain vulnerable to attacks if they are uninformed of some procedures, protocols and security policies that entail the interaction with the information systems. End-users must be educated periodically, this would help to point out the lapses of the security systems. Senior management of organizations must leverage in cybersecurity training to learn appropriate and responsible security behaviour and newer techniques to wade Cyber-attacks.
Organizations should learn to invest in building humans on strong cybersecurity programs, it is one thing to create a technological infrastructure and it is another to secure it.
- NETWORK SECURITY- In this case, the administrator of the network adopts security policies and provisions that are comprehensive enough to disrupt all forms of alterations and unauthorized access. Network security ensures that users are granted access to the network’s data by first authenticating their privilege rights and legitimacy of the user by allotting authentication check, user’s ID, password.
- RECOVERY PLAN- When a business information system is faced with a cyber-attack that cripples activities and work productivity a business recovery /continuity plan must be put in place by the management team to address the situation. In developing a business recovery, certain key aspects must be examined. They include a question as to the needed infrastructures and resources needed for an effective IT recovery, the areas of businesses to be focused on first for recovery, what the time frame for recovery of vital information is set.
A good business recovery plan is made up of the management team who enforces risk assessment, create recovery tactics, and document the developed plans.
Summarily, the increase of criminal activities on the Cyber today owes much to the fact that the perpetrators commit themselves by gaining knowledge of their targeted organizations. Training, in this case, remains paramount for the management system.
