what is cyber security?
What is Cyber Security? (Definition & Importance)
Cybersecurity is all about protecting your computer, phone, or any digital device from hackers and online threats. It keeps your personal information, bank details, files, and online activity safe from being stolen, damaged, or misused. By acquiring knowledge of cyber-attacks and cyber security we can secure and defend ourselves from various cyber-attacks like phishing and DDoS attacks.
Cybersecurity challenges
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Apart from the sheer volume of cyberattacks, one of the biggest challenges for cybersecurity professionals is the ever-evolving nature of the information technology (IT) landscape, and the way threats evolve with it. Many emerging technologies that offer tremendous new advantages for businesses and individuals also present new opportunities for threat actors and cybercriminals to launch increasingly sophisticated attacks. For example:
- The pervasive adoption of cloud computing can increase network management complexity and raise the risk of cloud misconfigurations, improperly secured APIs and other avenues hackers can exploit.
- More remote work, hybrid work and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies mean more connections, devices, applications and data for security teams to protect.
- Proliferating Internet of Things (IoT) and connected devices, many of which are unsecured or improperly secured by default, can be easily hijacked by bad actors.
- The rise of artificial intelligence (AI), and of generative AI in particular, presents an entirely new threat landscape that hackers are already exploiting through prompt injection and other techniques.
As the worldwide attack surface expands, the cybersecurity workforce is struggling to keep pace. A World Economic Forum study found that the global cybersecurity worker gap between cybersecurity workers and jobs that need to be filled, might reach 85 million workers by 2030.4
Closing this skills gap can have an impact. According to the Cost of a Data Breach 2024 Report, organizations suffering from a high-level shortage of security skills saw an average cost per breach of USD 5.74 million, compared to USD 3.98 million for organizations with lower-level skills shortages.
Resource-strained security teams will increasingly turn to security technologies featuring advanced analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and automation to strengthen their cyber defences and minimize the impact of successful attacks.
Types of cybersecurity
Comprehensive cybersecurity strategies protect all of an organization’s IT infrastructure layers against cyberthreats and cybercrime. Some of the most important cybersecurity domains include:
- - AI security
- - Critical infrastructure security
- - Network security
- - Endpoint security
- - Application security
- - Cloud security
- - Information security
- - Mobile security
AI security
AI security refers to measures and technology aimed at preventing or mitigating cyberthreats and cyberattacks that target AI applications or systems or that use AI in malicious ways.
Generative AI offers threat actors new attack vectors to exploit. Hackers can use malicious prompts to manipulate AI apps, poison data sources to distort AI outputs and even trick AI tools into sharing sensitive information. They can also use (and have already used) generative AI to create malicious code and phishing emails.
AI security uses specialized risk management frameworks and increasingly, AI-enabled cybersecurity tools to protect the AI attack surface. According to the Cost of a Data Breach 2024 Report, organizations that deployed AI-enabled security tools and automation extensively for cyberthreat prevention saw a USD 2.2 million lower average cost per breach compared to organizations with no AI deployed.
Critical infrastructure security
Critical infrastructure security protects the computer systems, applications, networks, data and digital assets that a society depends on for national security, economic health and public safety.
In the United States, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) offers a cybersecurity framework to help IT providers and stakeholders secure critical infrastructure. The US Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) also provides guidance.
Network security
Network security focuses on preventing unauthorized access to networks and network resources. It also helps ensure that authorized users have secure and reliable access to the resources and assets they need to do their jobs.
Application security
Application security helps prevent unauthorized access to and use of apps and related data. It also helps identify and mitigate flaws or vulnerabilities in application design. Modern application development methods such as DevOps and DevOps build security and security testing into the development process.
Cloud security
Cloud security secures an organization’s cloud-based services and assets, including applications, data, virtual servers and other infrastructure.
Generally speaking, cloud security operates on the shared responsibility model. The cloud provider is responsible for securing the services that they deliver and the infrastructure that delivers them. The customer is responsible for protecting their data, code and other assets they store or run in the cloud.
Information security and data security
Information security (InfoSec) protects an organization's important information digital files and data, paper documents, physical media against unauthorized access, use or alteration.
Data security, the protection of digital information, is a subset of information security and the focus of most cybersecurity-related InfoSec measures.
Mobile security
Mobile security encompasses cybersecurity tools and practices specific to smartphones and other mobile devices, including mobile application management (MAM) and enterprise mobility management (EMM).
More recently, organizations are adopting unified endpoint management (UEM) solutions that allow them to protect, configure and manage all endpoint devices, including mobile devices, from a single console.
Common cybersecurity threats
Some of the most common types of cyberthreats include
- Malware
- Ransomware
- Phishing
- Credential theft and abuse
- Insider threats
- AI attacks
- Cryptojacking
- Distributed denial of service (DDoS)
Malware
Malware, short for "malicious software", is any software code or computer program that is intentionally written to harm a computer system or its users. Almost every modern cyberattack involves some type of malware.
Hackers and cybercriminals create and use malware to gain unauthorized access to computer systems and sensitive data, hijack computer systems and operate them remotely, disrupt or damage computer systems, or hold data or systems hostage for large sums of money (see "Ransomware").
Ransomware
Ransomware is a type of malware that encrypts a victim’s data or device and threatens to keep it encrypted or worse, unless the victim pays a ransom to the attacker.
The earliest ransomware attacks demanded a ransom in exchange for the encryption key required to unlock the victim’s data. Starting around 2019, almost all ransomware attacks were double extortion attacks that also threatened to publicly share victims’ data; some triple extortion attacks added the threat of a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.
Phishing
Phishing attacks are email, text or voice messages that trick users into downloading malware, sharing sensitive information or sending funds to the wrong people.
Most users are familiar with bulk phishing scams, mass-mailed fraudulent messages that appear to be from a large and trusted brand, asking recipients to reset their passwords or renter credit card information. More sophisticated phishing scams, such as spear phishing and business email compromise (BEC), target specific individuals or groups to steal especially valuable data or large sums of money.
Phishing is just one type of social engineering, a class of “human hacking” tactics and interactive attacks that use psychological manipulation to pressure people into taking unwise actions.
Credential theft and account abuse
The X-Force Threat Intelligence Index found that identity-based attacks, which hijack legitimate user accounts and abuse their privileges, account for 30% of attacks. This makes identity-based attacks the most common entry point into corporate networks.
Hackers have many techniques for stealing credentials and taking over accounts. For example, Kerb roasting attacks manipulate the Kerberos authentication protocol commonly used in Microsoft Active Directory to seize privileged service accounts. In 2023, the IBM X-Force team experienced a 100% increase in Kerberoasting incidents.
Similarly, the X-Force team saw a 266% increase in the use of infostealer malware that secretly records user credentials and other sensitive data.
Insider threats
Insider threats are threats that originate with authorized users, employees, contractors, business partners, who intentionally or accidentally misuse their legitimate access or have their accounts hijacked by cybercriminals.
Insider threats can be harder to detect than external threats because they have the earmarks of authorized activity and are invisible to antivirus software, firewalls and other security solutions that block external attacks.
AI attacks
Much like cybersecurity professionals are using AI to strengthen their defenses, cybercriminals are using AI to conduct advanced attacks.
In generative AI fraud, scammers use generative AI to produce fake emails, applications and other business documents to fool people into sharing sensitive data or sending money.
The X-Force Threat Intelligence Index reports that scammers can use open-source generative AI tools to craft convincing phishing emails in as little as five minutes. For comparison, it takes scammers 16 hours to come up with the same message manually.
Hackers are also using organizations’ AI tools as attack vectors. For example, in prompt injection attacks, threat actors use malicious inputs to manipulate generative AI systems into leaking sensitive data, spreading misinformation or worse.
Cryptojacking
Cryptojacking happens when hackers gain access to an endpoint device and secretly use its computing resources to mine cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, ether or Monero.
Security analysts identified cryptojacking as a cyberthreat around 2011, shortly after the introduction of cryptocurrency. According to the IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index, cryptojacking is now among the top three areas of operations for cybercriminals.
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