We live in an age of technological wonders, and believe in developing software, applications, and electronic chips so that we need not do any tedious task. There is no denying the fact that these inventions have made our life easier, but every now and then we pay a heavy price of relying too much on these software. Our data is more vulnerable than ever! The matter of fact is technology has no morals and people with evil intentions can hack and use it. The more we rely on digital equipment’s and various technologies, more profitable and destructive hacking becomes! But have you given it a thought that even though so many technological advancements are being made, why do we still struggle to keep our data secure? How do hackers cope with the latest technologies and are successful in making us vulnerable? Well, it is because hackers these days are no longer attention seekers trying to make a statement! They are individuals who have adequate knowledge and are looking for vulnerabilities in the information laden marketplace.
Yes, we are focusing on security more than ever, but still we are constantly failing to secure our information! But how is that even possible? Because, nowadays the hackers are part of distributed criminal circle that is highly specialized. Moreover, instead of using a vulnerability all by themselves, they often sell or share their discoveries to other groups so that a huge amount of data breach is made even before the victims realize. And, even though there are technological advancements, we still fail to get over a few things such as the ones mentioned below:
Also Read: Nine Ways to Improve Cyber Security
Human Errors
The primary cause of some major attacks is still social engineering or an internal glitch created by the humans unintentionally. Social engineering is difficult to identify and serves the hackers properly to gain access or control of a confidential information. Falling in the trap of social engineering can be prevented by training all the employees. They should be aware of the ways in which they can be tricked and highly sophisticated methods that are being used by the hackers.
Vague Policies
Good IT practices can do a lot of work on your behalf. However, you need to make sure that they are clear and have been approved from the professionals. To inculcate accountability, these policies have to be enforced by all levels of management. But most of the time, firms are following some of the “best” practices which are either outdated or are becoming cause of the data breaches. To make sure we are spared up to some extent, the policies should be upgraded at regular intervals.
Covering Data Breaches
Whenever there is a major attack on any organization, the professionals try to cover it instead of sharing the vulnerabilities because of which they were targeted. On the flip side, the hackers have a huge ecosystem in which they believe in sharing the vulnerabilities so that they can exploit the masses. This has eventually given them access to enormous amount of information which guides them what to do and what not to! This is something where we lack, we hide things from media and others so that we can maintain our reputation, but because of our regular practices, others also go through the same that we did. It is recommended that if we share the information with others instead of silently fixing our problems, huge data breaches can be avoided.
Also Read: Is Windows Defender Good Enough for Your PC?
Negligence
This is a broad term that covers unawareness, improper handling of sensitive data, ignoring alerts, accidently deleting data, and many others. We cannot prevent a phishing attack that was initiated because of an unaware employee, and thus it is advised to stay vigilant and keep a check on our actions.
These are a few things that can be taken care of by us, but we cannot deny that hackers are persistent. In any of the cases, the hackers don’t just invade in and cause large-scale breach; it is seen that they are in the network for months and have enough information to identify and access a loophole.
Also, with an active involvement of AI in all sectors, things have become even creepier! We have still not been able to detect what AI bots are capable of doing if they stop behaving the way we want! For instance, if a bad bot enters your email, it can lay its hands on your searches, calendar, Facebook posts, and what not! Now imagine, what if it learns to mimic you and start conversing with your boss or wife. We cannot even account the damage it is capable of causing.
Individuals and organizations are taking necessary steps so that they can avoid the attacks or reduce the intensity. However, it never seems enough! And the attackers are always one step ahead of us. One needs to understand two attacks are never same, even if you have measures to avoid the attacks, you can be a target. Hackers tailor their code or practice of targeting, and thus the detection systems are not enough to find them!
As there is no silver bullet designed to stop the attacks, we need to come up and develop new approaches to secure our data. We got to admit that we too have data that can be hacked and our systems are either compromised or at the verge of getting compromised. And, if we concentrate on avoiding the attacks rather than cleaning our systems later, we can be at a better state!
Also Read: What’s More Dangerous- Spoofing or Sniffing?
Note that no business is clean and resistant to malware or virus attacks, subsequently something or other will penetrate your network! It is unlikely that our systems will be cent percent reliable ever! Software, Applications, extensions, and all others will have vulnerabilities and we’ll need a group of experts who surpass the intelligence of hackers to add protection layers, avoid attacks and recover our data. Simply put, as the technology has evolved, our practices should also catch the pace. This way we’ll surely have a better future!
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