In this technology era, we rely more on the internet and software for our payments. We make most of our transaction through credit and debit cards or say by net banking. The easy access and ample amount of information on the internet become the main reason and a juicy bone to attract online hackers, which is known as data breaching and hacking. Our data and personal information are compromised meticulously by online trading portals and private firms to earn money in return on customer’s data. Many financial firms like job portals and college databases earn thousands in return for sharing their users’ data to financial companies like banks and insurance firms. In this article, we will be learning about Data Breach Epidemic and its factors.
With the immense increase in online data management, the severity of data breaching is increasing too. From the recent researches about online data hacking and data breaching every day around 10,000 records are hacked and used globally, and since January 2005 to February 2018 around 8668 data is hacked, which clutched around 1066, 247, 507 records in it. These records are not ended here, but accelerating day by day.
Let’s check few data figures about past and recent Data Breach Epidemic records:
Years – Hacked records
2005 – 157
2006 – 321
2007 – 446
2008 – 656
2009 – 498
2010 – 662
2011 – 421
2012 – 471
2013 – 614
2014 – 783
2015 – 780
2016 – 1091
2017 – 1579
From these figures, one can imagine the risk behind online marketing and trading, presently the majority of our daily tasks falls under the online trading. No one can imagine what the future holds in its palm, but with few changes and security checks one can secure themselves from this vulnerable hacking, so what are the security checks and how one can use them.
Security Checks:
Security implementation, in other words, a security check is quite versatile, they depend upon data type, size of data, type of field like for an individual or an organization, etc,
For individuals like a person who uses their master cards, with a salary account, a regular trader, etc, it is important for them to have a keen eye on their purchase and vulnerability after each transaction as not everyone can afford these expensive security checks for them. If you notice any fraud contact your bank immediately and change your password. Apart from these few checks like SMS alert on the account’s transaction, change pin and password after a certain interval of time, having different passwords for different accounts, can help you out too.
Now, what are the changes and security checks an organization/firm can enforce their data security? Here are numerous ways and methods, which can be implemented and follow for a secure network like network architecture, security hygiene, security tools, etc, and here we will discuss a few.
Mapping of security with Network Architecture:
The network architecture is the initial and crucial stage of network security as the whole further criteria and implementations are structured on the base of its architecture. Initially the design and architecture start off good, but with the increase in network and system, it goes complex. As a result, it makes security checks either lesser effective or more complex.
This makes the security checks convenient for hackers, but this is not the end of the world with including chaining vulnerabilities one can prioritize themselves to check, which vulnerabilities to address first. Here are plenty of frameworks available to guide, such as CIS, Critical Security, ISO, SANS Top 20, and the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, etc,.
Auto thread feeds and implementations:
100+ threats and trends occur perpetually, and it’s not possible to have an eye on all changes manually. Somehow it can be possible to detect and resolve the local level threats, but what about global threats, as hackers can come from any path or through any medium.
Don’t worry, there are a number of threat feeds available online, which keeps updating about trending threats and exploits around the globe. Not only this, one can simulate and make data actionable to cross-correlated with local intelligence like SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) and WAF (Web Application Firewall), it uses data, makes it actionable and applies it for network protection. Tools like SIEM aggregate data from the network, compile it with local and global threat feeds and generate a prescribed detail indicating violations and security policies.
Encryption and Decryption of Data:
Data encryption is one of the oldest and effective ways to protect from breaching. The priority of data encryption is maintaining the confidentiality of data stored digitally. Better than before data encryption standards, nowadays we have encryption algorithms, which function particularly to translate data or code in another form like syntax, key lines etc, and provide access only with secret key or passwords, it takes place with an encryption key. The commonly known ways of data encryption are asymmetric encryption as public-key encryption and symmetric encryption. Data encryption and encoding are one of the renowned and dominant ways of data security and provide 90% security from breaching.
Artificial Intelligence tools:
Artificial Intelligence or we can say AI is the new way of work and anomaly detection. According to the news, even Google is using AI as their risk protection formula and it’s all because of its tremendous success record in past years.
AI is a machine language, which works on some fixed algorithms and set of labeled data. AI parameters are predefined and for any suspicious data they give an alert sign and provide a detail and implement a tailor-made solution for same. These AI solutions are so effective that they can even detect advanced threats and virus in no time, conclusively data breaching lower down to 99%.
What needs to change:
We all are aware of the alarming situation of data breaching, still, most of us depend upon manual methods and suffer from attacks. This needs to change, with all modern systems and assets organizations need to notice their need regarding breaching and network issues. It all requires planning, assets, architecture, processing and regular attention. And if security is compromised on a regular basis, then you can be the next target of these hackers for sure.
