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Proactive Efforts to Decrease Risk and Improve Security
Cyber security is one of the biggest challenges in the current society due to the
sophisticated tools that cybercriminals use daily to commit crimes. Organizations and firms
ought to implement both proactive and reactive measures to limit the spread of this vice and
protect themselves from the risk that is caused by cyber-attacks. Several proactive efforts can be
used to decrease risk and improve security, including creating employee awareness and training
them, MFA, regular software patching and updates, encryption and network segmentation.
Employee training and awareness are among the best proactive measures that firms
should employ to protect themselves from cyber security-related attacks. Various cyber-attacks
like social engineering are enabled by the fact that the key stakeholders lack awareness of social
engineering techniques, and thus, they fall for these attacks. Educating the employees is
important in creating awareness and thus reducing cyber-attacks. Training employees can be
done through simulated phishing exercises, workshops and regular training sessions. Encryption
is a proactive method that is used to secure firms and organizations. Encryption is the process of
converting human-readable text to cipher text. Encryption enhances security by converting
sensitive data like passwords to cipher text. Many companies have employed encryption to
protect their sensitive data and information being shared online. Network segmentation is also
one of the best proactive methods to secure a network from cyber security-related attacks.
Network segmentation entails dividing the network into smaller segments to reduce the risk of
data breaches that could compromise the whole network. Regular updates are also key in
ensuring that systems are up to date and thus minimizing cyber-attack vulnerabilities.
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Reactive Threats Detection Efforts
Reactive threat detection efforts are measures employed to detect and respond to cyber
attacks immediately after they have occurred. Their main objective is to contain and identify
security breaches, reduce the damages caused by cyber-attacks and recover them as quickly as
possible. Examples of reactive threat detection efforts include IDS, SIEM, EDR, vulnerability
scanning and IRP (Wong et al., 2022). Vulnerability scanning entails scanning applications and
systems for security and vulnerability weaknesses. A tool like Nmap is used to scan the
vulnerability and thus create awareness of the gaps that attackers can use to perform cyber
attacks and thus give recommendations that can be used to remediate the attacks.
EDR is one of the best reactive measures that can be used to protect organizations from
the risk of cyber-attacks (Park et al., 2022). EDR plays a key role in monitoring endpoints of
mobile devices, network infrastructure and laptops vulnerable to malware. They offer real-time
detection and response and thus provide information to the security team. Using an Incident
Response Plan is also an example of a reactive measure. IRP is a well-organized, documented
plan with steps to respond to a security incident. IRP consists of steps included in detection,
investigation, containment and recovery. A properly defined IRP enables organizations to
respond effectively and quickly to security incidents. Proper use of Security Information and
Event Management is also an example of a reactive technique used in cyber security. SIEM is a
centralized system that analyzes and aggregates security events from sources like applications,
servers and network devices. SIEM plays an important role in identifying anomalies and patterns
in event data and thus enables the security team to respond quickly to security incidents. IDS
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plays a significant role in monitoring systems and network traffic, thus detecting intrusion and
anomalies. They alert the security team in control when they detect intrusions and anomalies.
Details To Analyze Intrusion in Your Environment
Several ways are used to analyze intrusion, including identifying the type of intrusion, the
timeline of attacks, scope, impact, and the cause of attacks. Identifying the type of attack, be it
phishing, ransomware, or malware, plays an important role in enabling one to understand the
scope of the attack and the data and information that are compromised. The timeline of the attack
is also used in analyzing intrusion. Timeline entails the time that an attack has occurred and the
time it has lasted. This helps identify and determine data and information that could have been
affected and how the attack was performed. The main cause of an attack also plays an important
role in identifying how the attacker or, rather, the penetrator gained access to the system, thus
determining the systems that were stolen or compromised during the attack. The impact of the
attack also plays an important role in analyzing intrusion. The impact caused by cyber attacks
can be severe, moderate or extreme. Assessment of the impacts of attacks on an organization,
such as tarnishing reputation and financial loss, determines how urgent response efforts need to
be employed. The extent of damages caused by the intrusion, like systems downtime, corrupted
files and compromise, can be used in the remediation efforts.
Summary Of Other Aspects of Intrusion Detection and Analysis That Were Not Covered
Several aspects are also used in intrusion detection and analysis, including threat
intelligence, machine learning, behavioural analysis, incident management and Extended
Detection and Response. Machine learning is one of the best intrusion detection and analysis
techniques. They can analyze big data and identify patterns and anomalies. Machine learning
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improves the speed and accuracy of IDR. Behaviour analysis is another key aspect used in
intrusion detection and analysis, and it involves monitoring the systems and the user’s behaviour
to identify irregular patterns and anomalies. The monitoring includes the assessment of unusual
network traffic and access to file patterns.
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Reference
Park, S. H., Yun, S. W., Jeon, S. E., Park, N. E., Shim, H. Y., Lee, Y. R., ... & Lee, I. G. (2022).
Performance evaluation of open-source endpoint detection and response combining
google rapid response and osquery for threat detection.?IEEE Access,?10, 20259-20269.
Wong, L. W., Lee, V. H., Tan, G. W. H., Ooi, K. B., & Sohal, A. (2022). The role of
cybersecurity and policy awareness in shifting employee compliance attitudes: Building
supply chain capabilities.?International Journal of Information Management,?66, 102520