Cyber security is known as the protection of computer systems from theft or damage to their hardware. It was developed in 1971 by a man named Bob Thomas. Cyberattacks happen daily, and they’re constantly evolving. The common cyberattacks that we hear about on the news are usually major data breaches or information leaks about our government. Simple viruses that started from high school teenagers have turned into a full-scale cyberwar between nations. Cyber security is an essential tool that every company and the nation should utilize.
One of the most common hacks is called ‘phishing’. An example of phishing is when you receive an email that looks like it’s from a legitimate company but then links you to a fake webpage. These emails are designed to trick you into giving away your personal information like passwords, and credit card numbers. Another common hack is known as cramming. Cramming is where you find charges on your phone bill for services you didn’t order. This is a fraudulent practice that is used by adding unauthorized charges to a customer's phone bill. A good example of cramming is usually on applications that sell ringtones, or an application that has a lot of advertisements that pop up. This is an extremely common hack, and I’ve been a victim of cramming on more than one occasion. Sometimes you can’t prevent these types of attacks. The best way to prevent this is to only download applications with good ratings. Read the ratings before you download. Most of the time someone will mention a negative comment saying that they got charged for something he or she didn’t approve. “The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) estimates that as many as 20 million people are crammed annually” (‘TOP 10 of the World's Largest Cyberattacks’). With that said, always check your phone bill, and check your bank statements daily to catch this attack right away. These are just two of the most common hacks, but there are many more.
The tool cyber security is used to prevent you from outside attacks. Everyone that owns a computer today or any smart device should have some type of virus protection to prevent you from losing any of their information. Most of us today have all our passwords saved to our computers, and some of us even use a simple application to save that information. Any of these applications could be breached and you could easily lose your sensitive information from your computer or smart device. There are some simple steps that you can take to help prevent you from losing your information. All computers today come with a built-in firewall and some type of trail virus protection. You should utilize virus protection or find a free virus protection application online. Just to make this clear though, anyone can be hacked, even if your firewall is on, and your virus protection is up to date. With these applications though, you’re making it a lot harder for hackers to get your information. Without protecting yourself, you’re making it extremely simple for hackers to steal everything off your device with little to no effort.
Every major company or even a small business should use a cyber security policy to help avoid them from an expensive attack. Anything can be hacked; we have seen it so much in the past. A major attack that affects all of us is when a bank, or credit card company is hacked because then they lose all our sensitive information. An example of a major cyberattack is when the store known as Target was breached by hackers. Target lost data from 110 million customers including banking data of 40 million customers (Carroll and Rigden). Companies that we chose to do business with should upgrade their cyber security policy to help prevent them from losing our important information. We put our trust and our information in their hands, and it should be protected.
Cyber security should be a major concern for every nation around the world. Cyberwarfare from the dictionary means “the use of computer technology to disrupt the activities of a state or organization, especially the deliberate attacking of information systems for strategic or military purposes” (‘7 Shocking Cyber Scams of 2017’). February 2015, Iran spoke to the press about the Russian report on a new family of malicious programs and worms that is infecting computers all around the world. The worm is known as Stuxnet worm. The New York Times and Washington Post have said the worm was “developed by the US and Israeli governments to disrupt Iranian nuclear facilities” (Iran, 2015, Associated Press). This is a great example of cyberwarfare. What I also read in this article which I thought was very interesting was “signs of malware-infected computers in more than 30 countries, with the heaviest concentrations in Iran, Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and China” (China, 2015, Associated Press). The second article I found was also from February 2015. In this article, China stated that “US intelligence agency was hiding spying software within the hard drives of computers made by manufacturers such as Toshiba and Seagate” (China, 2015, Associated Press). This proves how big of a threat cyberwarfare is. Countries are finding new ways to harm other countries without even putting boots on the ground, this is truly a new age war. As stated above, you can see how important it is for every country to have a cyber security policy to help protect them from future attacks.
In the end, there can be no doubt that cyber security has developed over the last few years to become one of the major concerns of most modern developed societies. In fact, common cyberattacks that happen every single day. It is relatively easy for individuals to protect themselves from these attacks with just a few simple steps. Furthermore, companies and other agencies should constantly be evolving to protect their information and, perhaps more importantly protect their customer's information. There can be no doubt that every nation should have a strict cyber security policy. That protects them from today’s new age war know as cyberwarfare. There is no question how important cyber security is today, and we should all be aware of all the common and possible attacks while keeping up to date with this information from here on out because it is constantly changing and evolving.