Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity is the practice of protecting systems, networks, and data from cyber attacks and unauthorized access. This discipline helps organizations shield sensitive information like customer and employee data and financial records, prevent business disruptions, and safeguard against potential financial losses resulting from data breaches.

From safeguarding personal data on individual devices to defending large enterprise networks against sophisticated global threats, cybersecurity’s scope is broad and continually growing. Many organizations’ IT departments focus their cybersecurity efforts on:

• Network security — protecting the underlying infrastructure from intrusions.
• Application security — keeping the data or code within apps free of threats.
• Information security — preserving the integrity and privacy of data both stored and in transit across on-prem, cloud, and SaaS systems.
  

Modern cybersecurity strategies rely on a “defense in depth” approach that advocates for multiple layers of defensive mechanisms to protect data and systems. This ensures that if one layer fails, another will mitigate the threat, providing multiple opportunities to detect and respond to potential attacks. To this end, organizations are now incorporating AI and machine learning (ML) to identify and analyze threats more efficiently than traditional methods do. Regular vulnerability assessments and penetration testing are also vital in uncovering potential weaknesses that could be exploited by cyber attackers. Ongoing training programs help employees understand and avoid common threats, such as phishing scams, making them an indispensable part of an organization’s cyber defense strategy.

Strong threat detection and incident response plans are critical as cyber attackers (also called threat actors) deploy more sophisticated tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) to breach cyber defenses. These plans should detail procedures for detecting attacks, assessing their impact, containing them, and recovering from any damage.

Effective cybersecurity requires collaboration across all departments — from IT to human resources — to ensure that every facet of an organization promotes a secure environment.