Cybersecurity has become important in the digital age because
technology and data are part of almost all of our lives.
Cybersecurity is about protecting your systems, data, personnel, and
assets from cyberattacks. As more organizations and institutions
adopt digital methods to do business, they become more susceptible
to criminal activities on the internet or cybercrime. Data can be
hacked and stolen, and your bank account can be frozen with
ransomware. Cybersecurity is changing fast, and we have to learn and
change with it.
As the digital revolution progresses and everything digital becomes
more permeable, the need for capable cybersecurity grows. With the
addition of billions of internet-connected devices, the advent of
cloud-based technologies, and the emergence of interconnected
networks, the surface area that requires safeguarding from attack
becomes increasingly large. In this blog series, we will look at
cybersecurity challenges in the digital age, how we secure our data,
systems, and infrastructures, and the technological mechanisms best
placed to facilitate and build trust among individuals, companies,
and nations.
Digital transformation is the profound and pervasive integration of
digital technologies into all aspects of a business, resulting in
fundamental changes to how organizations operate and create value,
encompassing parts, processes, culture, and customer interactions.
It’s a profound shift that affects business and society, changing
the way people work, live, socialize, play, govern, and learn. A
tsunami of data, pervasive connectivity, processing, and cognitive
capabilities enables the connected enterprise. At the same time,
society is undergoing radical changes in communication, education,
and governance.
Digital transformation is disruptive to business and society, but in
optimistic camps, its big win is agile business. Digital
transformation creates opportunity, providing new avenues for
innovation and competitiveness. It shortens the time from insight to
action, making businesses faster and more responsive. This changes
the ways companies operate, innovate, deliver information, and
interact with customers. In an uncertain world where change is the
only constant, ‘flexibility’ is the byword. Adaptability is critical
for the survival of firms against emerging competitors. Shortening
bureaucracies, compressing product cycles and communicating with
customers, in other words, accelerating ‘time-to-market’ is
paramount to any innovative strategy.
In the dazzle of promises and perils, digital transformation
provides profound opportunities and challenges to revolutionize
industries, ride the wave of innovation and disruption, and lead the
change. However, they also present profound challenges, from
cybersecurity to data privacy issues, from adaptive organizations to
workforce upskilling. Addressing these opportunities and challenges
involves strategy and proactivity: either we navigate with our eyes
open (and perhaps even hopeful) what lies ahead, or we do not. The
core of our argument has been the need for organizations and
societies to take a more proactive stance toward digital
transformation. We hope we have contributed to this.
The evolution of cyber threats has come at an alarming pace. Cyber
threats are defined as any malicious activity conducted via a
digital system. These threats include malware, a virus or other type
of malicious software that inflicts damage to a digital system, such
as corrupted data or crashes. Cyber threats can also manifest
through phishing attacks, wherein a malicious user disguises
themselves as a legitimate source to trick a user into sharing
confidential information, such as passwords or banking details.
Ransomware is another cyber threat where a user’s computer or
network is compromised, resulting in the data being encrypted and
held hostage until a ransom is paid.
Digital transformation has also changed the cyber threat environment
by expanding the attack surface and introducing new vectors for
vulnerabilities. The growing array of connected devices in the
Internet of Things (IoT), cloud infrastructures, and interconnected
and interdependent networks creates new potential victims,
perpetrators, and exploiters-for-hire organizations that are
difficult to track and hold accountable but no doubt profitable for
their founders. The vulnerability of our critical infrastructures
has substantially increased, as well as the cyber threat to our
national and homeland security, considering the extent to which
these sectors are becoming digitized.
High-profile cyber attacks, such as the WannaCry ransomware attack
that brought operations of key organizations to a halt around the
world, the Equifax data breach that resulted in the personal data of
millions being compromised, and the SolarWinds supply chain attack
that saw international cyber think tanks compromised on a wide scale
clearly demonstrate the scale and sophistication of cyber threats of
today. New tactics are being adopted by all sides, as is evident in
the use of state-sponsored cyber-attacks on a geopolitical scale. As
digital transformation surges forward at lightning speed, it places
greater urgency on building stronger cyber defenses through cyber
cooperation, both on the international and national stage.
Another challenge to effective cybersecurity is the complexity of
interconnected systems. Current efforts to connect everything to the
internet have created an unprecedented attack surface. Just as
important as the technical ability of the attacker is their level of
understanding of how our systems work The sheer number of
interconnected devices and networks, a consequence of the digital
transformation, can impose tremendous costs on organisations.
The privacy of our personal data is at risk: the creation, storage,
use, organization, and dissemination of data are key elements that
drive digital innovation, be it big data analytics or the Internet
of Things (IoT), where billions of connected devices will
continuously generate, exchange and capture various forms of private
information over the next years. The creation of this treasure of
digital data cannot help but attract cybercriminals seeking a
profit, as our personal privacy turns out to be a valuable and
attractive target for financial fraud, international money
laundering and propaganda, and other forms of malicious threats.
It also compounds the people's challenge of having enough skilled
cybersecurity professionals to defend against attacks and
adversaries. The global demand for cybersecurity talent has
skyrocketed, and firms want our help in how to recruit and retain
the cybersecurity talent they need to keep pace with evolving cyber
threats. Moreover, many of them need to continuously upskill and
reskill their cybersecurity talent as rapid technological innovation
drives growing obsolescence.
Proactive risk assessment and management are key elements of
successful and forward-looking cybersecurity strategies in the
digital age. Through thorough cataloging of their digital
architectures, organizations must assess each major asset to
identify possible exposure to risk, loss, and compromise. By
employing systematic and proven frameworks and protocols for
accomplishing these assessments, organizations can prioritize risk
mitigation measures according to the scale of risk exposure.
It is important to have a multi-layered defense strategy that
combines preventative, detective, and responsive security controls
in order to make cybersecurity defenses more robust. A multi-layered
defense strategy includes security controls at multiple places in an
organization’s IT infrastructure. For example, firewalls, intrusion
detection systems, encryption, endpoint security solutions, and
other defense mechanisms can be deployed to increase defense in
depth if attacked. By implementing multiple defenses at different
layers of the IT infrastructure, an organization can not only thwart
cyber attacks but also reduce the damage associated with a security
breach. Using advanced threat intelligence to recognize emerging
threats and leveraging security analytics to detect and respond to
the threats in near real-time could increase the overall cyber
resilience of an organization.
An empowered cybersecurity-aware culture can help us form a broad
base of cybersecurity behaviors and risk reduction strategies. When
we train employees to consider how their behaviors influence cyber
risks, we can enlist them as defenders and sharers of risk
awareness. Suppose we proactively arm our social communities with a
cybersecurity awareness training program and continuous improvement
protocol. In that case, we stand a greater chance of protecting them
from phishing attacks and inadvertent policy violations. A culture
of collective collaboration is exposed to the truth: our collective
fate hinges on security vulnerabilities and powerful humans making
the wrong choices. Promoting a security-focused culture that
recognizes, engages, and debates cybersecurity attacks and solutions
can help mitigate our long-standing aversion to security.
Sharing information and cooperating with other stakeholders is
crucial for security defenses and managing cyber risk. Cooperation
with other industry peers, governmental organizations, cybersecurity
vendors, and others can help organizations identify new threats,
learn about industry best practices, and understand regulatory
requirements. Co-operation also helps organizations learn from the
collective experience and tap into external expertise, resources,
and threat intelligence to regulate situational awareness,
coordinate incident response, and develop cooperative approaches for
managing cyber risk.
With next-generation technologies such as artificial intelligence
(AI) and machine learning (ML), cyber resilience is evolving with
more advanced capabilities to address the ever-changing nature of
cyber threats. Using these technologies to bolster cybersecurity
defense measures improves and increases the preventive detection of
threats and the blocking of potential intrusions and attacks, as
well as enabling an automatic response to cyber incidents, providing
an adaptive and flexible level of security. Over time, AI and ML
compute the multitude of data and learn from the patterns of normal
behavior and anomalies in data features to predict malicious
activity and provide real-time mitigations against potential
security intrusions. By using AI literacy, ML algorithms, advanced
data processing, and predictive analytics, innovative cybersecurity
solutions will be introduced to the digital ecosystem, empowering
organizations with improved cyber defense against cybercrime that
adapts to emerging cyber threats.
Through decentralized, tamper-resistant storage platforms, identity
systems, and transaction verification systems, blockchain technology
can revolutionize cybersecurity by ensuring the integrity,
traceability, and immutability of data. By design, blockchain stores
data in a distributed and verified manner, using cryptographic
principles and distributed consensus mechanisms, which facilitates
fair access to the network and removes single points of failure.
The zero trust security model is a paradigm shift in cybersecurity
strategy based on the premise of conducting ‘never-ending
verification’ of every user, device, and network resource,
regardless of their location or network, perimeter or otherwise. The
core tenets of a zero-trust model minimize insider threat or
malicious lateral movement across a network. It maximizes strict
access controls, such as least privilege and the principle of
encryption, which enforce granular security policy across the entire
organization. As digital ecosystems erupt in complexity and
fluidity, the zero-trust security model provides a holistic
framework to protect digital assets in the age of digital
transformation.
In summary, cybersecurity is a crucial need. One key finding that can be drawn from our research is that cybersecurity will be one of major topics in the future. Cybercrime can threaten the security of individuals, companies, and nations as a whole, so it is very important that companies and people take this issue seriously. The situation requires urgent attention. Cyber security needs to be made a strategic management goal for companies in the online era due to its importance, and the time and money it takes to prevent it.
