What Is Cybersecurity?

Cybersecurity is mostly around individuals, systems and technology working together to address the entire spectrum of threat management, risk reduction, prevention, international cooperation, response to accidents, protection and recovery strategies and practices including data network activity, information safety, law enforcement, etc.
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Cybersecurity is the defense of devices connecting to the Internet, including hardware, software and cyber attack details. It is composed of two terms, one being cyber and the other being defense. Cyber is the infrastructure that includes structures, networks, services, or records. Whereas security related to the defense that includes security of the infrastructure, security of the network, security of application and security of information.

This is the body of technology, procedures, and activities that serve to secure networks, computers, systems, and data from invasion, infringement, harm, alteration, or unauthorized access. It can also be called defense in the field of information technology.

Cybersecurity may also be characterized as the collection of standards and practices designed to protect our computer infrastructure and electronic information from threats. Cybersecurity is a vital feature and necessary protection in many companies due to the strong reliance on technology in a digital economy that stores and transmits an array in sensitive and essential knowledge about the individuals.

What does cybersecurity matter?

We live in a modern world that knows how insecure our private information is than ever before. We also live in a networked environment, from online banking to government networks, where information is stored on computers and other devices. A part of the data may be proprietary material, be it intellectual property, financial data, confidential information or other data forms for which improper disclosure or distribution may have adverse implications.

Cyber-attack is now an international problem, which has raised many fears that hackers and other security threats could place the global economy in danger. In the context of doing business, companies send confidential data through networks and to other computers, and cybersecurity defines the information and the tools used to manage or archive it for defense.

When the number of cyber-attacks rises, businesses and organisations need to take action to protect their confidential business and personal information, particularly those that deal with information relating to national security, health, or financial data.

Cyber Security History

The birth of cybersecurity began with a research initiative. This came into being only when viruses grew.

When did we get here?

In 1969, UCLA professor Leonard Kleinrock and student Charley Kline sent the first electronic letter from the UCLA SDS Sigma 7 host computer to the Stanford Research Institute programmer, Bill Duvall. This is a familiar story and a moment in a digital world's history. The UCLA's message sent was the word "login." The system crashed after they typed "lo" the first two letters. Since then, this story has been a misconception that the programmers typed "lo and behold" the initial message, while in reality claiming that "login" was the intended message. Those two contact letters have been changed the way we communicate with each other.

In the 1970s, Massachusetts developed the first electronic worm (virus) by Robert (Bob) Thomas who was a researcher for BBN Technology in Cambridge. He realized a computer program could travel through a network, leaving a small trail (series of signs) wherever it was going. He called the program Creeper, and programmed it to fly on the early ARPANET between Tenex terminals, printing the message "I'm THE CREEPER: CATCH ME IF YOU CAN."

Also working for BBN Technologies at the time was an American computer engineer named Ray Tomlinson, the inventor of the fax. He saw, and liked this thought. He tinkered with the program (an act of trying to patch something) and made it self-replicate "the first code worm." He called the program Reaper, the first antivirus device that can locate and remove copies of The Creeper.

Where do we stand now?

Cyber-crimes gathered more strength after Creeper and Reaper. In addition, security breaches increase as computer software and hardware developed. With each new development came a vulnerability aspect, or a way for hackers to work around protective methods. The Russians were the first to implement the cyberpower as a weapon in 1986. German citizen Marcus Hess has hacked into 400 military computers, including Pentagon processors. He intended to sell secrets to the KGB, but before that could happen, an American astronomer, Clifford Stoll, caught him.

In 1988, Robert Morris, an American computer scientist, began to investigate the scale of the Internet. He wrote a program to measure internet capacity. This machine was going through networks, entering Unix terminals and copying itself. The malware was the first known virus of the network and was called Moris worm or internet worm. A device may be corrupted several times with the Morris worm, and each additional cycle would slow down the system, ultimately to the point that it is harmed. Under the Electronic Fraud and Harassment Act Robert Morris was convicted. The act itself has contributed to the creation of the Computer Emergency Response Team.This is an anti-profit research center on problems that could affect the whole internet.

Viruses today is more aggressive, more invasive and more difficult to monitor. We've already seen a large amount of cyber attacks and 2018 isn't even over. The above is to name a few, but such attacks are ample to show cybersecurity is a must for all companies and small businesses.

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