Safeguarding the organizations from data breach and Cyber-Attacks

Data breach is when our confidential information is viewed, stolen or is misused by unauthorized parties.

This can lead to damage of property and also violation of property rights. Data breach can have serious implication on the business which can result in loss of business and trust among the customer and the patrons. One of the major reasons of data theft is hacking or cyber- attack.

A recent study done by a technology magazine provides an insight of the number of increasing cyber-attack that affects the organizations, companies and individuals. The study estimates a total of 80,000 security breaches in more than 60 countries were registered in previous year; this number was higher than the preceding years.

The cyber-crimes are not restricted to one single industry, these crimes have become prevalent and working professionals may have experienced it and this may have resulted in huge material and immaterial damage.  Efforts should be put in to gather the intelligence of network and information security stake holders not to gain accurate and detailed assessment of the crime, also to ensure that the response time is appropriate

Common Types of Cyber-Attacks:

Following are the types of cyber- attacks have mounted for major incidents in recent years:

• Crimeware- occurs mostly in organizations and can compromise the systems
• Misuse of privileges
• Physical theft or loss
• Attack by web applications
• Cyber Espionage
• Human errors

Popular Hacking techniques

The attackers are smart and use the vulnerabilities of the web applications for data theft. Phishing is very popular methods used by the hackers to steal the important data. According to a study it is anticipated for significant phishing campaigns via e-mail 23% of the recipients have read the messages and the 11% have open the attachment in the mail.

E-Crime Offenses

In the last two years companies have reported increase in Cyber-crimes an estimated 40% of the companies have been affected by a cybercrime. The most commonly identified types of crimes are as following:

• Computer Fraud: this is done when the hackers take information from the computer systems via manipulation of data processing systems.
• Spying: unauthorized recording or monitoring of data, this is normally done by the rival companies to gather information.
• Data theft: Illegal procurement of data.
• Violation of copyright:  creating an illegal copy of data or software programs can breach of rights
• Computer sabotage: Disruption of data by damaging or manipulating computer, networks or media.

How to tackle Cyber-crimes

Unlike normal criminals, the cyber criminals work in coordination and cooperate with each other, it’s noted that they work together to improve their skills and share their expertise with one another. The usual methods to nab the criminals cannot be utilized against the cyber criminals. The law enforcement authorities are trying to keep pace with the hackers, this is a strenuous task. This is because the methods used by the cyber criminals keep changing with technology. Hence, business organizations and government agencies need to look at effective methods to safe guard the data.

Organizations should implement strict protocol’s to ensure the exchange of information follows the said practice. The companies should have a unified system involving hardware and software that validates the transfer or/ and access of information across all the platforms. This makes information transfer seamless with a specific security parameter.

Forensic Data Recovery

In case of data theft, forensic data recovery is done. The only difference between data recovery and forensics data recovery is the projected purpose of the recovery and how the data is going to be used. Forensics is process of finding the data on computer or hardware for in use of law enforcement or crime investigation. While data recovery tends to finding lost or damaged data and recovering it for the user.

Forensic data recovery is an aspect of law enforcement to gain evidence by extracting data from the computer system or the server.  The data may be deleted or encoded or destroyed to keep it secure. Data recovery usually deals how to regain loss of data or encryption.  Data being crucial piece of evidence on must seek expert opinions for Forensic data recovery.

Conclusion

Companies are well aware of the effects of Data breach and e- crime. Majority of the organizations are not sufficient enough to handle these issues.  There are uncertainties about the legal changes, cost and compliance in the IT Security area.

The business organizations should contemplate data theft as an issue that could be solved with combined efforts of controlled mechanisms, qualified information security specialists and awareness of the employees. Employees need to be more careful in safeguarding the vital information of their organizations and keep themselves aware about the contemporary issues that pose a threat. Business organizations and government organizations should pay attention to security education, which can change the employees from being the fragile link in security to the biggest defense for security.