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Top 8 Cyber Security Trends to Follow for 2022

sampatellive — Tue, 24 Aug 2021 05:37:57 +0000

Here's Emerging Cyber Security Trends That You Should Watch Out & Get Familiar With to Improve Your Internet Privacy & IT Security

In today's technology-driven world, cyberattacks are becoming quite a norm. From your personal information getting exposed by hackers to impacting your business through shutting down entirely from hours to days, your company can be vulnerable to numerous cyber-attacks. Furthermore, according to Statista, an average cost of a data breach is around the US $ 3.86 million.

However, professionals that have advanced cybersecurity degree are capable of assisting organizations in preventing such attacks. For instance, such cybersecurity professionals have the technical skills and knowledge required to build cybersecurity strategies to protect organizations from becoming victims of cyberattacks.

Likewise, if you're a cybersecurity professional then, it's recommended that you stay updated with the latest cyber security trends that can help you upgrade yourself and stay up in the technology-driven world.

Emerging Trends Every Cybersecurity Professional Should Be Aware of

Due to cyber attacks that happen daily, cybersecurity is among the high-demand field, and professionals who choose to make their careers within cybersecurity tend to have a brighter future.

Likewise, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the cybersecurity industry will grow around 31% by 2029, compared to other industries. Therefore, to make sure you make best of it, here are some of the emerging trends in cyber security that we recommend you should stay aware of and take advantage of it:

AI Integration Smaller companies that don't have separate cyber security departments may start implementing AI (Artificial Intelligence) strategies. Likewise, AI is also useful for analyzing the massive amount of data for identifying threats. However, on the flip side, cybercriminals may use artificial intelligence to find vulnerabilities within an organization's technological infrastructure.

Therefore, it's quite evident that it'll become one of the emerging trends in cyber security that you should keep a tab on and learn about AI security as a cyber security professional.

Remote Work COVID-19 pandemic has bought a lot of change, and working from home is one of the vital differences everyone witnessed. According to the report of Upwork, 36+ million Americans will be working by 2025, which means around an 87% increase rate compared to pre-pandemic stats. However, attacks on organizations have increased due to remote work, as employees often use their devices that may not be as secure as they should be. Furthermore, cybercriminals often get benefitted from misconfigured cloud security, insecure devices of home and networks.

And, because of such attacks, there's an increased demand for cybersecurity professionals, and it'll remain one of the trending topics in cyber security as well. Therefore, it's recommended that as a cybersecurity professional, you stay aware of its growth and keep yourself updated on how to keep an organization safe from attacks that occur because of remote work.

ZTNA (Zero Trust Network Access) Organizations are shifting towards ZTNA (Zero Trust Network Access) from VPNs (Virtual Private Network) as it offers enhanced security because individuals have to log in using multifactor authentication. Likewise, according to the "Zero Trust Architecture and Solutions," – a recent study by Gartner, organizations will see a boost of around 60% in the usage of ZTNA compared to relying upon VPN like earlier. In addition, it provides security by limiting employees' access to data while giving access to only those data that are required to complete their assigned work.

Therefore, as a security developer, you should be aware of ZTNA and how to optimally use it, as it'll become one of the trending topics in cyber security.

Insider Threats Insider threats are an attack or a threat that comes from within the organization that's targeted. It usually involves someone like the present or former business associate or employee who has access to the company's critical information or any admin type account and misuses it.

And there have been multiple cases where such threats have taken place. For example, an insider threat occurred earlier in summer 2019 when one of the former employees of AWS (Amazon Web Services), Paige Thompson, accessed the personal information of Capital One credit card customers and applicants from Amazon Web Services along with 30 other companies.

Likewise, the firewall was misconfigured. As a result, it became possible for Thompson to get buckets of data and access those important folders in the AWS storage space of Capital One. And, later in July 2019, Capital One even admitted that Thompson had got access to critical information of 106 million customers and credit card applicants in Canada and the United States.

And, predictably, an insider threat is something that will continue to emerge even in the coming time. Therefore, it's recommended that cybersecurity professionals be aware of this danger as it's a trending topic in cybersecurity that shouldn't be taken for granted.

Supply Chain Attacks A supply chain attack is a cyberattack where an attacker goes for a company by finding weaker links within an organization's supply chain. Likewise, the supply chain is called the network of organizations, people, events, resources, and technology that are involved in developing and selling a particular product.

Furthermore, the supply chain consists of everything, such as delivering materials from supplier to manufacturer and delivering the finished product to end-users. Therefore, the supply chain attack is among the weak points, and targeting cyber attackers can take advantage of it successfully. Lastly, a supply chain attack is possible within all industry types that have a contract with third-party vendors like government and financial sectors.

Henceforth, it's recommended that cybersecurity professionals get aware of it and learn how to keep the supply chain safe and secure from attackers, as it's among emerging trends in cyber security.

IoT Security
The IoT (Internet of Things) is among the versatile technology that exists today. And, the presence of the internet and various other connected devices make the IoT scalable and adaptable. From food production, finance, healthcare, manufacturing to energy, limitless industries have adopted IoT. Likewise, it has even revolutionized the IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things), buildings, smart homes, cities, and more.
However, such advancement in IoT is also becoming the prime target for a cyber attacker, and it's among the trending topics in cyber security that no one should not ignore. Therefore, if you're a cybersecurity professional looking to enhance your skills, IoT security can benefit your career growth.
Automation
Put simply, automation is one of the technology terms where human interaction is minimal. It includes IT automation, personal application like home automation, BPA (Business Process Automation), and more.
Various types of automation tools are available like machine learning, AI (Artificial Intelligence), RPA (Robotic Process Automation). Therefore, it's recommended that you focus on learning how to keep your organization secure from automated attacks because it's used widely and is one of the emerging trends in cybersecurity.
Cloud Services
In recent times cloud services have seen dramatic growth. As a result, many small to big companies have adopted cloud services. It allows users to access data storage, software applications, and other services directly through an internet connection instead of installing and relying on physical infrastructure.

Using such technology comes with the benefits like increased performance and reduced operation cost. Unfortunately, though it's beneficial for the company, it also garners the attention of cybercriminals and often becomes the target of cyberattacks.

For instance, if the systems aren't configured or maintained correctly, it's likely attackers will be able to exploit vulnerabilities of the system's security and get access to the company's critical data.

Therefore, as a cybersecurity professional, we recommend that you stay aware of keeping cloud services secure. In addition, it'll help boost your career because many organizations even offer jobs for securing their cloud infrastructure.

Wrapping Up
The company must maintain the balance between user experience,
privacy, and security. Because, in this technologically driven world, businesses getting attacked and becoming the victim of cyberattacks is quite common.

Nonetheless, here we've our recommendation regarding emerging trends in cyber security and how you as a cybersecurity professional can have your edge on it to improve Internet privacy and IT security.

Email Encryption: What it is, How Does It Work, and How to Encrypt an Email

sampatellive — Tue, 09 Mar 2021 10:57:08 +0000

How can you be sure your email contents are safe, and no one is eavesdropping on them? Let's find out how to secure the communication using email encryption

"What if someone reads my emails?", "What if someone steals that information and blackmails me?", "What if hackers alter the information in my emails or insert the malware in the attachments?" Let's be honest; at some point in our lives, these types of questions do haunt us all. Email confidentiality has been a talk-of-the-town as we hear data breach incidents so frequently. To tackle these issues, email providers and some independent third parties have come up with the idea of email encryption. In this article, we will talk about how email encryption works and what are some of the latest encryption tools and technologies available in the cybersecurity industry.

What is Email Encryption?

Before moving forward, let’s quickly cover what encryption is. Encryption means scrambling plaintext data and make it incomprehensible by applying mathematical algorithms. So, for example, if you encrypt the line “Angry-birds is my favorite game”, it will look something like this “ZJSwbngQXQvvkDPO5qCF0eyUoojqeOcXC0lIncuECKY=”. That means, even if someone gets access to your data, they won’t be able to read it. To decrypt and interpret the encrypted data, one needs to have an authentication key, and it is assumed that (ideality) the only authorized person has this key. Popular authentication keys are passwords, private keys (stored in digital certificates), OTP, passcodes, biometrics, etc.
Encryption is used to protect many types of data such as data stored on cloud platforms, files and folders, data traveling between the website and its users, data stored on hardware devices, etc. And it is used to protect email communication as well.

Historically, emails used to be in plaintext when they were in-transit and at-rest. That means, if an intruder hacks the email client or breaks-into an internet connection, they can read, steal, and modify the email content. But then, the transport layer security (TLS) technology got invented which facilitated data encryption between two end-points. It got popular for all types of websites and email clients. Most email clients use it to provide email encryption facilities to their users. That means, when you send an email, it automatically gets encrypted until it reaches the intended recipients. Even if a hacker tries to access the email content, all they would get is a ciphertext that looks gibberish and doesn't make any sense! Later on, end-to-end encryption got invented, which provides even tighter security than the TLS. In the next section, we have covered both of these technologies in detail.

How Does Email Encryption Work and How to Send Encrypted Emails?

In this section, we have covered email encryption’s practical utility. As we mentioned earlier, there are basically main two types of email encryption. One is transport layer security (TLS) encryption, and another is end-to-end encryption (E2E).

1) Transport Layer Email Encryption
In this type of email encryption, when you send an email, it reaches the email client's server first and then goes to the intended recipient. In easy words, when Bob sends an email to Alice using Gmail, it reaches Gmail's server first, and then (from that Gmail's server) it is pushed forward to Alice's email client.

How can I send an encrypted email using transport layer email encryption?

The good news is you don’t have to anything to encrypt the email with TLS technology! All the email clients use SSL/TLS certificates. This certificate facilitates email encryption for all outgoing and incoming emails. Whenever you send an email, it automatically gets encrypted, and you don’t need to take any extra steps to encrypt or decrypt the email.
If you open an email client, check the address bar. Can you see a padlock sign in front of the domain name? It is the sign that your email client is using an SSL/TLS certificate and is already providing you the email encryption facility.

The biggest disadvantage of transport layer email encryption is that the email client stores the cryptographical keys on its server. If their employees want, they can read all of your email contents (although there are legal regulations for this). If a hacker breaks into the email client's server or accesses their database, they can also access all the email communication. Plus, TLS technology encrypts the emails only when they are in transit. But when they are at-rest i.e., stored on the email client, they remain in the plain text. That means, although hackers can’t read the emails while they are in transit, as soon as the email reaches the recipient and is stored on their email client, it becomes vulnerable for hackers to attack.

Of course, all email clients have a strong security posture to prevent such cyberattacks. But the question is, can you take a proactive step to protect your email communication instead of just relying upon the email clients? This question is leading to our second type of email encryption, i.e., end-to-end encryption.

2) End-to-End Email Encryption
Unlike TLS encryption, in which there is the email client’s server works as the mediator, end-to-end encryption has a direct path of communication. When you send an email, it directly reaches the recipient without any intermediaries. That means, chances of email getting compromised, and corrupted get reduced dramatically.

How can I send encrypted email with end-to-end email encryption?

There are some third-party certificates, browser extensions, and email clients which you can utilize to enable E2E encryption.

Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME) Certificates

The organization needs to buy these certificates from the third-party certificate authorities (CAs). S/MIME certificates are also known as email signing certificates and email encryption certificates. The CAs vet the buying organization’s credentials to make sure it is issuing the certificate to the legit business. Once the S/MIME certificate is issued, you (as an organization) need to install it on your employees’ email clients. Please note that these certificates are available at the enterprise level only. So, if you are an individual, you can’t enable E2E encryption using S/MIME certificates unless your organization facilitates it.

These certificates offer not only end-to-end encryption service but also identity authentication facilities and email tampering alerts. That means, the sender can insert the digital signature on the email so that the recipients can make sure the email is coming from the same source as it claims to be. No one can remove, copy, or modify this digital signature. It also uses hashing technology. So, if an intruder tries to modify the email content, the recipients are immediately notified that the email is compromised and not to trust its content and download anything from it. These facilities are some of the best weapons to protect recipients from phishing emails. Plus, emails stay encrypted when they are at-rest (stored on the email clients), too.

These are some of the resources with detailed steps on how to send encrypted email using S/MIME. You can follow these steps only after your organization has bought the email signing certificate.

How to enable S/MIME on

Gmail
Outlook
Yahoo Mail (S/MIME protocol is not built-in in Yahoo. But you can install them using third-party applications).
iPhone
Mac Devices

Web clients that facilitate end-to-end encryption

There are some email clients like ProtonMail, Tuanota, Mailfence, PreVeil, Virtru, etc, that have in-built E2E encryption facilities, without the need for a certificate.

Browser extensions for end-to-end email encryption

You simply need to add extensions to your browsers and enable them on your regular email clients. Some of the popular extensions are Mailvelope, SendSafely, End-To-End, Lockmagic, and FlowCrypt.