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DA1. Cybersecurity and Cyber-attacks

Conduct online research on cyber-attacks in recent times, give a summary and a link to the article you chose, and describe the following:

  • The primary motivation of hackers in the current world.
  • Response measures taken by the hackers.
  • Lessons you learned from this online research and reading.

Solution

We started this exercise by searching for the most recent cyber-attacks, and we read through a few articles suggested by the search engine. And we found some interesting statistics and facts:

  • Over 400 healthcare facilities have experienced cyber attacks in the US since 2020 (BCS, 2023).
  • Number of data breaches sofar in 2023: 953, with over 5 billion records compromised (Ford, 2023).

While scanning through the article, we were able to identify some motivations behind cyber-attacks:

  • Financial gain: Ransomware is still the principal moneymaking activity for cyber criminals (BCS, 2023).
  • Political gain: The state-aligned cyber attacks have risen in recent years, especially for targeting critical infrastructure (NCSC, 2023).

As technology advances, so is the hackers; we also identified some response measures taken by the hackers:

  • Hackers started using AI to plan and execute attacks (BCS, 2023).
  • Hackers took advantage of the political instability after the pandemic to gain more state support (NCSC, 2023).
  • Hackers started using some tools characterized by ransomware-as-a-service, that is, hackers will build ransomware and sell for clients who may not be hackers themselves (BCS, 2023).

The topic is very broad, and it is expanding every day as technology advances, the discussion above in no way covers significant aspects of the topic. However, we learned a few valuable lessons from this exercise:

  • Cyber attacks are becoming a big problem that threatens the existence of some businesses.
  • Companies are welling to pay more for cybersecurity, as the cost of cyber attacks is much higher than amount spent on cybersecurity.
  • The domain of cybersecurity seems a promising career path.
  • More and more companies are making business selling security tools as services.
  • Data breaches are so common, it is just that we do not hear about them often.

As a closing remark, we believe that choosing cybersecurity as a career path is a wise decision; but with current landscape, most attacks are internet-based, thus increasing the security awareness among web developers, software engineers, and general public is a good way to overcome the problem.

References