Keep Cyber Crooks at Bay

Cybercrime is a serious global problem that needs strong technical and legal responses. The information is exposed to continuous and virulent attacks conducted by cybercrime groups and significant harm is made to financial and human wellness. Lots of personal information is getting stored on social media sites and victimisation is becoming more prevalent as cybercriminals are anonymous online.
Cybercriminals are more sophisticated than companies and they are developing new and ingenious methods to hack into the systems, so it’s imperative that the IT security specialists should probe more proactive and have a preventive approach in increasing the security level of their systems. The success factor is to increase the financial effort in establishing the latest security solutions.

Social engineering attacks like Phishing, Fishing, Smishing, malware and other include hacking, loss of mobile devices, insider theft, SQL injections, watering hole, a man in the middle attack. Many of the attacks are very diverse/different in approach and this makes them getting detected more difficult. Nowadays the most critical security issue is attack detection and based on the studies on past attacks there is a high delay between time to compromise and time to discover the attack. This shows the and knowledge in systems penetration and hiding the penetration traces by the cyber criminals.

Politically motivated Cybercriminals, who are hungry for recognition.
Cybercriminals who are psychological perverts, financially motivated hackers, or organised criminals which includes terrorists.
Disgruntled or former employees or ex-friend who has been rejected, trying to seeking an act of revenge.

Internet Gambling and Digital Piracy
Sexual Addiction on the Internet and Child Pornography
Online Exploitation of Children and Women
Terrorist use of the Internet
Cyber Stalking and Cyberbullying
Victimisation of Women on Social Networking Websites
Malware, Hacking, and Ransomware
The Religious and Political wings in Cyberspace and their Propagation of Ideologies via the Internet

The Internet has no governance in either technological implementation or policies. Internet has no geographical or political boundaries and it can be accessed from anywhere in the world from a billions of smart devices interconnected. We are the world’s largest democratic country, We MUST have a proper “Data Privacy Law”, “Intermediary Law” and we have a half-baked cake i.e. IT Act, which needs to be amended as per the current technological scenarios.

Planning alone is not enough, you should have the security staff and tools in place to execute it and some of the suggestions could be (a) Having proper security policy and identifying critical security incidents, and having a team with proper plan, role, and communication system. (b) Use security tools detect anomalous behaviour in network traffic, endpoints, applications and user accounts (c) Isolate the affected systems and clean them and reconnect (d) Identify the root causes (e) Having production systems back up and testing them frequently.

Presently cybercriminals are using basic social engineering tactics and do credit card thefts, financial frauds, shopping, matrimony, romance, jobs frauds, harassment, and defamation through social media. It is due to a lack of cyber safety awareness and It is imperative that we have to educate ourselves not only about Cyber Crimes but also about Internet Ethics and Digital Wellness. The utmost important tip for any individual is to have the CONSENT same way both on offline and online modes.