Recently reported cybersecurity incidents:
- New York City firm violation exposes sensitive data of 3.5M individuals.
- One of the most popular and largest mortgage lenders in the Southeast U.S. was exposed to a cybersecurity incident that revealed a stockpile of customers’ confidential information.
- In a cyberattack on an edtech giant in the U.S., hackers accessed the historical data of students and teachers stored in their student information system.
- A Spanish multinational telecommunications company suffered a data breach in an internal ticketing system.
- Cyberattack puts the service on hold even after 2 weeks with no information on the restoration.
Source:https://cybersecurityventures.com/intrusion-daily-cyber-threat-alert/
The cyberattacks mentioned above grabbed the world’s attention at the beginning of 2025.
Purpose of cyberattack
The primary purpose of cybersecurity is to safeguard systems and services from malicious cyber attacks like phishing schemes, ransomware attacks, identity swiping, financial scams, and data violations commenced by cyber offenders. What can be the purpose behind such attacks?
- Unauthorized access to data:
- The common purpose of cyber attacks is to gain unauthorized access to data.
- The intention to gain unauthorized access can be either data manipulation or destruction. This can be a strategic gain to exploit the vulnerability.
- Shakedown or Extortion:
- Extortion tactics are employed to obtain a user’s sensitive information and use it to threaten them. These threats can be stealing and exposing information, data manipulation, or exchanging harmful malware.
- If the individual belongs to some organization having the company’s confidential data, then these attacks place the entire organization in danger.
- Hit the competition:
- Hackers seek access to trade secrets and/or intellectual property. They target to hamper competitors’ businesses with substantial damage by stealing and exposing their valuable proprietary assets.
- Losing trade secrets leads to company failure on a competitive edge, negatively impacting profitability and position in the market.
- Disrupt the Business:
- Some strategic moves, like Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, aim to disrupt business operations by flooding the network and reducing its performance.
- The goal is to create a mess, hamper business activities, and cause potential financial loss.
- Deterioration of reputation:
- Organizations facing cyberattacks lose the trust of their customer base. The world is interconnected through technology; a single security breach can bring severe consequences regarding financial loss and a spoiled reputation.
What is cyber hygiene?
Cyber hygiene is a set of methods performed by organizations and individuals to maintain user safety and network security. The goal of cyber hygiene is to safeguard sensitive data and build a system to recover from cyber attacks whenever they occur.
Cyber hygiene can be retained through the collective efforts of the end users and cybersecurity specialists.
Importance of Cybersecurity:
In the vast world of technology, few things may go wrong. The sensitive data stored on the devices can face unauthorized exposure and may have an extended negative impact. Cyber attacks are now a global concern that can endanger the global economy.
Cybersecurity is important for organizations that manage and handle health and national security-related and/or financial records. Furthermore, cybersecurity has the following advantages:
- Safeguards confidential data: Cybersecurity protects confidential data against all external threats, helping people access the internet without fear of cyber attacks.
- Fosters productivity: Automated backup and a robust firewall system can benefit organizations in terms of network safety and enhanced productivity.
- Protects brand reputation: Network and cloud security can strengthen authentication and retain brand identity along with the customer base.
- Supports a remote workspace: Cybersecurity brings up the solution as a secure center to store data and protects the home network from tracking users’ data.
- Supports data management: Consistent data monitoring can be useful to implement data security regulations.
- Real-time mitigation: Sophisticated cybersecurity infrastructure helps monitor real-time issues through a unified dashboard. This strategy helps businesses mitigate security as soon as possible by enabling the measures to handle and recover from cyberattacks effectively with smoother operations.
- Optimized access control: Streamlining access to systems and resources reduces the risk of cybercrime.
The importance of global industrial cybersecurity professionals:
With the rise and growth rate of cyberattacks, businesses have started leveraging preventive measures to protect their digital assets. Global industrial cybersecurity professionals play a crucial role here. Their expertise and knowledge in the field provide essential criteria for shielding businesses from emerging cyber threats.
Global industrial cybersecurity professionals check for threats and vulnerabilities in software, networks, and data centers. They design strategies against cyber attacks by monitoring, detecting, investigating, and analyzing security events and conducting risk assessments.
Global industrial cybersecurity professionals work with a team that is dedicated to protecting data integrity and the network of the business. The success of the business relies on the capability of its network; hence, the role of cybersecurity specialists has become essential.
In the event of a cyber attack, global industrial cybersecurity professionals provide immediate assistance and minimize the negative impact on businesses. These professionals use their expertise to perform quick actions to speed up the system’s recovery from the cyber attack, reduce network downtime, and alleviate financial loss.
The role and responsibilities of a cybersecurity specialist
Cybersecurity specialists are qualified professionals who detect potential threats to hack or diminish sensitive information of the organization by implementing security measures. These professionals are also responsible for overseeing data security operations and keeping the whole IT infrastructure secure. The roles and responsibilities of cybersecurity specialists also include:
- Risk analysis.
- Designing and installing a robust firewall system.
- Analyzing existing and new technologies for their impact.
- Conducting vulnerability assessments.
- Configuring audits for operating systems and databases.
- Detecting patterns and unsafe segments in the system.
- Running diagnostics on the network infrastructure for malicious activities.
- Researching, developing, testing, and deploying security measures.
- Fostering network security by executing security standards.
- Enforcing counteractive protocols and configuring antivirus.
- Controlling user access and blocking unauthorized user access.
Recruiting cybersecurity professionals
When it comes to recruiting cybersecurity professionals, recruiters may look for the IT security roles as follows:
- Information security analyst/specialist
- Security manager/officer
- Security system administrator
- Security Engineer
- Penetration tester
- Operations Specialist
The key skills the recruiters seek while recruiting cybersecurity professionals are knowledge of cybersecurity and trends, IT security and infrastructure, and security policy and procedures, with additional skills as follows:
- Knowledge of programming language and operating system
- Ethical hacking: It is a practice of using the same technique as hackers but with prior permissions from owners to test system vulnerability and improve security.
- Penetration testing : A process of conducting security tests that simulate cyber attacks to identify system vulnerabilities.
- Risk analysis and mitigation
- Security analysis
- Networking
- Blockchain security: Risk management system that uses security frameworks to protect blockchain networks from cyberattacks and fraud.
- Machine learning
- Knowledge in Artificial Intelligence
- Cloud Security : A set of policies and technologies to protect cloud-based data.
- Malware analysis and mitigation
- Incident tracking : The process of handling unexpected events that impact business operations or IT services
Recruiting cybersecurity professionals can be challenging due to:
- Finding the right talent for such a critical job is a tough task.
- In addition to the talent shortage, IT giants offer attractive compensation packages to the available candidates, creating huge competition in the market.
- The noticeable resources in the cybersecurity world are already employed; hence, obtaining and retaining new candidates is a challenge.
Critical skills cybersecurity professionals/specialists must have:
- Strategies:
- Considering the consequences of any action, cybersecurity professionals/specialists should be proactive enough to implement security measures.
- Tactical and strategic evaluations of workflows, dependencies, budgets, and resources should be utilized for advanced security protocols.
- Cybersecurity professionals/specialists always need to be one step ahead of the hackers, as new methods to hack information are continually evolving.
- Communications: Communication skills ensure effective interaction with the team to train and empower employees to protect the system.
- Lifelong learning: Technical competence needs to be practiced by cybersecurity professionals/specialists to be up-to-date with new advanced technology skills to handle complex security threats efficiently.
FAQs
Q1: What are the main purposes of cyberattacks?
The major purposes of the cyberattacks are
- Unauthorized access to data: Acquiring access to sensitive information to manipulate or destroy.
- Shakedown: Gaining confidential information to jeopardize individuals or organizations.
- Targeting competitors: Stealing the trade secrets of competitors to gain a competitive advantage.
- Hampering business operations: Hampering day-to-day normal business functions through a DDoS attack.
- Destructive reputation: Deteriorating customer trust and damaging brand reputation.
Q2: What are the possible consequences of inadequate cybersecurity?
- Loss of sensitive/confidential information
- Data manipulation
- Financial losses due to disrupted business operations
- Damaged reputation
- Legal and regulatory liabilities
Q3: What are the key skills required for cybersecurity professionals?
- Strong technical skills such as networking and programming
- Risk analysis and mitigation
- Ethical hacking
- Malware analysis
- Security analysis
- Knowledge of cloud security
- Incident tracking
Q4: What are the most significant challenges in recruiting cybersecurity professionals?
- Locating eligible fit in a competitive market
- Attracting and retaining top talent due to high demand
- Fetching and recruiting passive candidates with the essential expertise
Q5: What are the critical strategies a cybersecurity professional should practice?
- Proactive implementation of security actions
- Strategic estimation of budget, resources, and workflows
- Staying ahead and adapting according to evolving threats
- Getting familiar with the new advanced technologies
To explore more on cybersecurity specialist roles and responsibilities and support, please reach out to us.
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