Abstract
Primary requirement for every organization is to keep their networks secured and prevent intruders from attacks. Advancements in technology also making intruders creative and perform attacks in sophisticated way. Till now many new attacks are being discovered and some of them are not known to organizations, still institutions try very hard to keep their network secure. Although we have numerous mechanisms and techniques to avoid, detect and counter action various types of attacks but we cannot really acknowledge that our network is safe. Planning, training, development and executing right measures ensure safety from hackers. The aim of the paper is to cover type of threats we are facing today and how to deal with them, different mechanisms and concepts and at the end conclude with next generation approach.
Introduction
Cyber security for the organization is very important, securing data, preventing intruders to attack on the network and providing services to people. In the present era of modern world we are surrounded by digitalization and people are glued to electronic devices and became a necessity for daily functions. As necessity of general population services related to web, ecommerce and many more products integrated with internet have come up to take advantage. For this type of organizations the security is main concern and they spend a lot of finance on it. Data breach can cause company to collapse, example you can see Facebook, recently misused public data which made loss in revenue to the organization. Also we have upgraded to cloud services which generally stores all the data related to organization on cloud/ servers which are accessed from anywhere with web browser, which raises many security questions to the customers. However, presence of vulnerabilities and errors makes easy for intruders to attack. The cyber-attacks use malicious code to alter computer code, logic or data resulting in destructive consequences that can compromise information security. They are many types of attacks which have been recognized and have major role in intruding the organization, of these Denial-of-service (DOS) attack, password attack, man-in-the middle attack, SQL injection, cross scripting (XSS) , worm attack and many more have declared as standard. This paper describes how a defense-in-depth and awareness technique plays an important role in helping protect our organizations.
Countermeasure Mechanisms
Detection and prevention of attack is important than actions after the attacks. Many Products, software’s and techniques are developed and being used by organizations to detect and prevent threats. This paper discusses about defense-in-depth and awareness techniques, and how they plays a major role in protecting environment.
Defense-in-Depth Strategy
Single defense layer for protection is always not safe. People always cannot rely only on a single technical means to fight against network attackers. In order to use a balance strategy between reducing the risk and supporting for security, a multi-layer defense in-depth strategy is proposed, namely it can set more barrier layers (Shengjian, Zhang, & Sun, 2012). By adding multiple layers, if a defense layer is penetrated other layers can protect the assets. Multiple layers with different functions and configurations with diversity can advance the model. Examples of this can be firewalls, anti-virus software’s, intrusion detection packages authentication to name a few. Early warning system can also be implemented with this using data gathering and analysis which in turn make use of information for detection. Dynamic reconfiguration can also be executed using multiple layered security system.
Awareness
There is a constant redesign and remodeling has to be done on existing mechanisms to fill the gaps and following latest trends.
Conclusion
Threats are advancing in the modern world; consistently organizations have to update themselves to secure the system. Countermeasure mechanisms are to be redesigned regularly to avoid latest attacks. This paper described the attacks that can occur and also discussed some of the main countermeasures techniques to safeguard our environment. Further study need to be done to explore and design more rigid techniques, in future AI with machine and deep learning can be examined which can make decisions faster in time of attack and also data analysis for quick response.
References
- Shengjian, L., Zhang, P., & Sun, H. (2012). Research on defense in-depth model of informationnetwork confrontation. 2012 Fourth International Conference on Computational and
- Information Sciences, 267-270. DOI: 10.1109/ICCIS.2012.239
- Shengjian,L.,Haiyan,Y., & Fengni,W. (2013). Design of network security early-warning system based on network defense in depth model. Proceedings of 2013 2nd International Conference on Measurement, Information and Control, 01, 355-399. DOI: 10.1109/MIC.2013.6757982
