essay about cyber threats

Presentations made painless

• Get Premium

127 Cyber Security Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

Inside This Article

With the increasing reliance on technology, cyber security has become a critical concern for individuals, organizations, and governments worldwide. As cyber threats continue to evolve and become more sophisticated, it is essential to stay informed about the latest trends and issues in this field. If you are tasked with writing an essay on cyber security, here are 127 topic ideas and examples to get your creative juices flowing.

The role of artificial intelligence in enhancing cyber security.

The impact of cyber attacks on critical infrastructure.

The ethical considerations of cyber warfare.

The legal frameworks governing cyber security.

The challenges of securing the Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

The role of encryption in protecting sensitive information.

The effectiveness of password policies in preventing cyber attacks.

The psychology behind social engineering attacks.

The impact of cyber attacks on the global economy.

The future of biometrics in cyber security.

The role of cyber insurance in mitigating cyber risks.

The ethics of hacking for the greater good.

The impact of cyber attacks on healthcare systems.

The role of education in raising cyber security awareness.

The challenges of securing cloud computing environments.

The implications of quantum computing on cyber security.

The importance of international cooperation in combating cyber crime.

The role of cyber security in protecting intellectual property.

The impact of cyber attacks on national security.

The challenges of securing critical data in the cloud.

The role of cybersecurity audits in identifying vulnerabilities.

The impact of cyber attacks on the banking and financial sector.

The ethical implications of government surveillance for cyber security purposes.

The role of cybersecurity professionals in addressing the skills gap.

The challenges of securing personal information in the digital age.

The impact of cyber attacks on elections and democratic processes.

The role of user awareness training in preventing cyber attacks.

The implications of data breaches for consumer trust.

The challenges of securing mobile devices in the workplace.

The role of cyber security in protecting personal privacy.

The impact of cyber attacks on small businesses.

The role of cyber security in safeguarding intellectual property in academia.

The challenges of securing critical infrastructure in developing countries.

The ethical considerations of vulnerability disclosure.

The impact of cyber attacks on the transportation sector.

The role of cyber security in protecting children online.

The challenges of securing Internet of Things (IoT) in smart homes.

The implications of cyber attacks on the aviation industry.

The role of cyber security in protecting against ransomware attacks.

The impact of cyber attacks on the entertainment industry.

The challenges of securing e-commerce platforms.

The role of cyber security in preventing identity theft.

The implications of cyber attacks on the energy sector.

The ethical considerations of government backdoor access to encrypted data.

The impact of cyber attacks on the hospitality and tourism industry.

The role of cyber security in protecting sensitive government information.

The challenges of securing online gaming platforms.

The implications of cyber attacks on the media and journalism.

The role of cyber security in protecting against social media threats.

The impact of cyber attacks on the transportation and logistics industry.

The challenges of securing online banking and financial transactions.

The role of cyber security in protecting against insider threats.

The implications of cyber attacks on the education sector.

The ethical considerations of using cyber weapons in warfare.

The impact of cyber attacks on the retail industry.

The role of cyber security in protecting against insider trading.

The challenges of securing online voting systems.

The implications of cyber attacks on the gaming industry.

The role of cyber security in protecting against intellectual property theft.

The impact of cyber attacks on the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry.

The challenges of securing social media platforms.

The ethical considerations of cyber security in autonomous vehicles.

The implications of cyber attacks on the hospitality industry.

The role of cyber security in protecting against credit card fraud.

The impact of cyber attacks on the manufacturing industry.

The challenges of securing online dating platforms.

The implications of cyber attacks on the insurance industry.

The role of cyber security in protecting against corporate espionage.

The impact of cyber attacks on the food and beverage industry.

The challenges of securing online marketplaces.

The implications of cyber attacks on the pharmaceutical industry.

The role of cyber security in protecting against intellectual property infringement.

The impact of cyber attacks on the nonprofit sector.

The challenges of securing online streaming platforms.

The ethical considerations of cyber security in wearable technology.

The implications of cyber attacks on the real estate industry.

The role of cyber security in protecting against medical identity theft.

The impact of cyber attacks on the telecommunications industry.

The challenges of securing online job portals.

The implications of cyber attacks on the automotive industry.

The role of cyber security in protecting against data breaches in the legal sector.

The impact of cyber attacks on the music industry.

The challenges of securing online auction platforms.

The implications of cyber attacks on the construction industry.

The role of cyber security in protecting against online harassment.

The impact of cyber attacks on the advertising and marketing industry.

The challenges of securing online learning platforms.

The implications of cyber attacks on the fashion industry.

The role of cyber security in protecting against online stalking.

The impact of cyber attacks on the sports industry.

The challenges of securing online travel booking platforms.

The implications of cyber attacks on the beauty and cosmetics industry.

The role of cyber security in protecting against online scams.

The impact of cyber attacks on the hospitality and catering industry.

The challenges of securing online dating applications.

The implications of cyber attacks on the healthcare and wellness industry.

The role of cyber security in protecting against online bullying.

The impact of cyber attacks on the entertainment and events industry.

The challenges of securing online food delivery platforms.

The implications of cyber attacks on the fitness and wellness industry.

The role of cyber security in protecting against online fraud.

The impact of cyber attacks on the home services industry.

The challenges of securing online social networking platforms.

The implications of cyber attacks on the pet care industry.

The role of cyber security in protecting against online piracy.

The impact of cyber attacks on the restaurant industry.

The challenges of securing online fashion retail platforms.

The implications of cyber attacks on the healthcare and fitness industry.

The role of cyber security in protecting against online hate speech.

The impact of cyber attacks on the wedding and event planning industry.

The challenges of securing online grocery delivery platforms.

The implications of cyber attacks on the gaming and entertainment industry.

The impact of cyber attacks on the music and entertainment industry.

The challenges of securing online travel and tourism platforms.

The implications of cyber attacks on the beauty and wellness industry.

The role of cyber security in protecting against online identity theft.

The impact of cyber attacks on the fashion and retail industry.

The challenges of securing online health and wellness platforms.

The implications of cyber attacks on the food and beverage industry.

These essay topic ideas cover a broad range of industries and sectors, highlighting the pervasive nature of cyber security threats. Whether you choose to explore the implications of cyber attacks on a specific industry, examine the challenges of securing a particular platform, or discuss the ethical considerations of cyber security, there are endless possibilities for research and analysis in this field. Remember to choose a topic that interests you and aligns with your objectives, ensuring a rewarding and engaging essay-writing experience.

Want to create a presentation now?

Instantly Create A Deck

Let PitchGrade do this for me

Hassle Free

We will create your text and designs for you. Sit back and relax while we do the work.

Explore More Content

• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service

© 2023 Pitchgrade

• Search Menu
• Editor's Choice
• Author Guidelines
• Submission Site
• Open Access
• About Journal of Cybersecurity
• Editorial Board
• Advertising and Corporate Services
• Journals Career Network
• Self-Archiving Policy
• Journals on Oxford Academic
• Books on Oxford Academic

Article Contents

Exposure to cyberattacks and policy attitudes, the mediating role of threat perceptions, experimental method.

• < Previous

Cyberattacks, cyber threats, and attitudes toward cybersecurity policies

• Article contents
• Figures & tables
• Supplementary Data

Keren L G Snider, Ryan Shandler, Shay Zandani, Daphna Canetti, Cyberattacks, cyber threats, and attitudes toward cybersecurity policies, Journal of Cybersecurity , Volume 7, Issue 1, 2021, tyab019, https://doi.org/10.1093/cybsec/tyab019

• Permissions Icon Permissions

Does exposure to cyberattacks influence public support for intrusive cybersecurity policies? How do perceptions of cyber threats mediate this relationship? While past research has demonstrated how exposure to cyberattacks affects political attitudes, the mediating role played by threat perception has been overlooked. This study employs a controlled randomized survey experiment design to test the effect of exposure to lethal and nonlethal cyberattacks on support for different types of cybersecurity policies. One thousand twenty-two Israeli participants are exposed to scripted and simulated television reports of lethal or nonlethal cyberattacks against national infrastructure. Findings suggest that exposure to cyberattacks leads to greater support for stringent cybersecurity regulations, through a mechanism of threat perception. Results also indicate that different types of exposure relate to heightened support for different types of regulatory policies. People exposed to lethal cyberattacks tend to support cybersecurity policies that compel the government to alert citizens about cyberattacks. People who were exposed to nonlethal attacks, on the other hand, tend to support oversight policies at higher levels. More broadly, our research suggests that peoples’ willingness to accept government cybersecurity policies that limit personal civil liberties and privacy depends on the type of cyberattacks to which they were exposed and the perceptions associated with such exposure.

In recent years, the increase in civilian exposure to cyberattacks has been accompanied by heightened demands for governments to introduce comprehensive cybersecurity policies. These demands peaked in the aftermath of the 2021 Colonial Pipeline and SolarWinds cyberattacks, where the US government's lack of access to cybersecurity information in critical industries wrought havoc on the country's national and economic security. In the aftermath of these attacks, lawmakers and the public exhibited newfound enthusiasm for legislation that would mandate cyberattack reporting by private enterprises—accelerating a regulatory trend that has existed for several years [ 1 ]. In 2020, for example, 40 US states and territories introduced more than 280 cybersecurity related bills and resolutions [ 2 , 3 ]. A similar process has taken place in Europe [ 4 ] and in Israel [ 5 , 6 ].

The public willingness to accept government policies and regulations that limit personal civil liberties and privacy is part of a delicate tradeoff between security and privacy. In some ways, privacy is seen as an adequate cost of enhanced personal and societal security in the face of novel threats. However, the public has grown increasingly sensitive to the importance of online privacy, and is keenly aware of the ethical, political, legal, and rights-based dilemmas that revolve around government monitoring of online activity and communications [ 7 , 8 ].

The debate on digital surveillance centers on how and whether authorities should gain access to encrypted materials, and raise key questions concerning the extent of state interference in civic life, and the protection of civil rights in the context of security. Yet what lies at the heart of this willingness to accept government policies and regulations that limit personal civil liberties and privacy via increasing public demand for government intervention in cybersecurity? Does exposure to different types of cyberattacks lead to heightened support for different types of regulatory policies? And does the public differentiate between interventionist and regulatory forms of cybersecurity policies?

To test these questions, we ran a controlled randomized survey experiment that exposed 1022 Israeli participants to simulated video news reports of lethal and nonlethal cyberattacks. We argue that public support for governmental cybersecurity measures rises as a result of exposure to different forms of cyberattacks, and that perceived threat plays a mediating role in this relationship. More specifically, we propose that exposure to initial media reports about cyberattacks is a key to the exposure effect, since at this time the threat is magnified and the public has minimal information about the identity of the attacker and the type of cyberattack that was conducted. Past events show that in many cases, the public internalizes the details of an attack in its immediate aftermath when media reports are heaviest. While later reports in the days and weeks following an attack will include far more detailed information, the damage by this time has already been done and the public is already scared and alert.

Further to this, we suggest that the literature has erroneously pooled together all cyber regulatory policies under a single banner of cybersecurity. We propose that civilian exposure to different types of cyberattacks leads to increased support for different and specific cybersecurity policies. We therefore differentiate between support for policies that focus on alerting the public in cases of cyberattacks and others that call for oversight of cybersecurity. In examining how exposure to cyberattacks influences support for these specific policy positions, we distinguish between the outcome of cyberattacks—lethal attacks that cause lethal consequences as a first- or second-degree outcome of the attack, versus nonlethal attacks that merely involve financial consequences. This more nuanced breakdown of exposure types and policy options can help officials contend with certain policy debates without the need for a one-size-fits-all policy. For example, reservations expressed by conservative/libertarian scholars who are concerned about government intervention in the commercial marketplace need not disqualify all forms of cybersecurity policy [ 9 ]. Likewise, the reservations of those concerned with individual privacy violations need not lead to the denunciation of all policies [ 10 ].

To ground this analysis of how the public responds following exposure to both lethal and nonlethal cyberattacks, we apply theories associated with the literature on terrorism and political violence. These theories offer sophisticated mechanisms that explain how individual exposure to violence translates into political outcomes—including demands for government intervention and policymaking. This approach is especially applicable in the digital realm as cyberattacks track a middle ground between technological breakthroughs that constitute tactical developments and new strategic weapons [ 11 ]. The consequence of such ambiguity is that civilians who are exposed to digital political threats can only identify the outcomes of the attack—i.e. whether it is a lethal or nonlethal cyberattack—while the motivations and identities of attackers often remain veiled, or at least unsettled. In light of these attributional challenges, and reflecting the fact that the public typically operates in a low-information environment, we refrain from declaring that the cyberattacks that appear in our experimental manipulations are cybercrime, cyberterrorism, cyber-vandalism, or any other type of attack. Rather, we refer to all attacks under the general heading of "cyberattacks," leaving all respondents to react to the attacks in a way that they see as appropriate in light of the severity of the reported outcome.

The most common form of cyberattack is cybercrime. Reports of data breaches resulting from cyberattacks by criminal organizations show a growth of more than threefold between 2011 and 2018 [ 12 ]. In the first half of 2019 alone, the United States Treasury Department announced that there had been 3494 successful cyberattacks against financial institutions resulting in colossal financial losses and the capture of personal information relating to hundreds of millions of people [ 13 ]. Cyberattacks executed by terror organizations are a newer phenomenon, albeit one that has captured the popular imagination. While terror organizations predominantly make use of cyberspace for fundraising, propaganda, and recruitment [ 14 , 15 ], a recent development has been the next-generation capacity of cyber strikes to trigger lethal consequences, be it through first- or second-order effects. 1 We acknowledge that scholars have expressed some skepticism about the likelihood of impending destructive cyberterror incidents [ 16–18 ], yet national security officials have regularly predicted that lethal cyberattacks pose a "critical threat" [ 19 ]. In the last decade, the nature of this threat has evolved from the earlier depictions of an apocalyptic cyber "pearl harbor" that would ravage modern society from the shadows [ 20 ], to a more nuanced understanding that cyberattacks, while still posing a threat to critical infrastructure, are more likely to manifest through targeted strikes. For example, in April 2020, Israel narrowly averted a cyberattack targeting civilian water networks that would have killed scores of civilians by adding chlorine to the water supply [ 19 ]. Other physically destructive cyberattacks have caused explosive damage to critical infrastructure [ 21 ], while researchers have experimentally verified the ability of malicious digital actors to hack pacemakers and insulin pumps [ 22 ]. While the lethal stature of cyberattacks is still developing, these incidents establish the bona fides of this impending threat and the importance of understanding how the public responds to this type of event.

The discussion that follows has four parts. We begin by examining the theory of how exposure to violence translates into policy preferences, with a particular focus on the mediating role of threat perception. Second, we discuss the design of our controlled, randomized experiment that exposes participants to television news reports of lethal and nonlethal cyberattacks. Third, we present our main results and consider various mediation models that pertain to the different regulatory subsets. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for the study of cybersecurity and cyber threats more generally.

Civilians who are exposed to political violence often suffer from feelings of trauma, anxiety, and helplessness in the face of threatening external forces [ 23–25 ]. These emotional responses—whether caused by acts of cyber or conventional violence—are known to cause shifts in political attitudes. Research has shown how exposure to conventional terrorism, which targets civilians and disrupts their daily routines, has an impact on individuals’ support for attitudes toward peace and compromise with the other [ 26 ], political conservatism [ 27 ], exclusionism [ 28 ] and intragroup relations [ 29 ].

Despite the sizeable literature dealing with the effects of exposure to violence, few studies directly investigate the effects of exposure to destructive cyberattacks. This is despite the growing recognition that these threats have become a very tangible part of modern life. In a complex scenario described in the Tallinn Manual 2.0 on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare, the authors contemplated how new forms of cyberattacks could be used to “acquire the credentials necessary to access the industrial control system of a nuclear power plant… with the intent of threatening to conduct cyber operations against the system in a manner that will cause significant damage or death…” [ 30 ]. Even more recently, reports have acknowledged how cyberterror attacks could immobilize a country's or region's electrical infrastructure [ 31 ], disable military defense systems [ 32 ], and even imperil nuclear stability [ 33 ]. While there is a difference between capability and intent, and we acknowledge that physically destructive cyber threats have remained scarce until now, understanding how civilians respond to such digital cyberattacks will become particularly important as the threat matures.

Studies that directly investigated exposure to digital political violence found that exposure had significant effects on political behavior and attitudes, akin to exposure to conventional political violence [ 34 , 35 ]. In a series of exploratory studies regarding the phenomena of cyberterrorism, Gross et al . [ 34 , 36 ] sought to empirically measure the effects of exposure to cyberterrorism under controlled experimental conditions. Their key finding was that exposure to cyberterrorism was severe enough to generate significant negative emotions and cognitive reactions (threat perceptions) at equivalent levels to those of conventional terror acts. Canetti et al . [ 37 ] found that victims of cyberattacks react by demanding government protection, with psychological distress explaining the relationship between exposure and the demand for government intervention. In a subsequent biologically focused experiment, Canetti et al . measured cortisol levels to show how participants who are exposed to cyberterror attacks and experience higher levels of stress are more likely to support hardline retaliatory policies [ 38 ].

Building on this foundation, other research has sought to refine a more precise psycho-political mechanism that understands how cyberattacks trigger shifts in political attitudes. Research by Shandler et al . [ 39 , 40 ], e.g. found that only lethal cyberattacks cause political consequences akin to conventional political violence, and that only the emotion of anger explained these shifts.

In the current paper, we aim to add to this emerging body of research by examining the topic of cybersecurity preferences in the aftermath of lethal and nonlethal cyberattacks. While one past study by Cheung-Blunden et al . [ 41 ] examined how emotional responses to cyber incidents sway cybersecurity preferences, no research has yet attempted to analyze how different types of cyberattacks affect different kinds of cybersecurity policies. As such, we add much needed nuance to the literature.

For the purpose of considering the effects of exposure to cyberattacks, this research focuses on the "outcome" of a cyberattack rather than the "identity" of the perpetrator or the "classification" of the attack. This is necessary for several reasons that relate to the specific characteristics of cyberspace. First, as introduced above, a new class of cyberattack exemplified by the ransomware epidemic has exhibited characteristics of both cybercrime and cyberterror operations, impeding the classification of cyber incidents into simple categories. Second, attribution in cyberspace is fraught with difficulty, and an age of manipulated information complicates the determination of provenance [ 42–44 ]. Sophisticated cyber operatives working from anywhere in the world can exploit the principle of anonymity that underlies the Internet infrastructure to hide their identity. Though authorities would be able to quickly identify the identity of an attacker behind any major cyberattack [ 42 ], this is essentially impossible for members of the public who are confronted with both structural and technical obstacles that prevent them from rendering an objective judgement about the attack source. This reality of publicly obscured cyber antagonists can be viewed in the timelines of several famous cyber incidents. It took between six months and three years for authorities and private actors to publicly reveal the actors behind the 2017 WannaCry attacks, the 2016 cyber intrusion into the Democratic National Committee's networks, and the 2016 cyberattack against the Bowman Dam in New York [ 45–47 ]. While each of these incidents were eventually attributed to an attack source, and the authorities may well have known the identity of the attacker from an early date, we can see that from the perspective of the public, there was a time lag of several months or years before a name was attached to any attack. Third, state involvement in cyberattacks—either as a direct attacker or via proxies—can add substantial background noise to the perception of an attack, raising the specter of interstate war. There is an interesting debate in the literature about whether states may be deemed capable of conducting cyberterrorism—or whether this is a label that can only be applied to nonstate actors. While the literature is still unsettled on this point, Macdonald, Jarvis and Nouri [ 48 ] found considerable expert support for the proposition that states can engage in cyberterrorism.

It is for these reasons that we choose to follow the lead of the scholars who are beginning to evaluate responses to cyber threats through the prism that is most readily available for the public—specifically, the outcome variable, or in other words, the lethality of the attack [ 33 ]. This focus on outcome rather than attacker is necessary in order to understand the factors that prompt emotional and political responses in the public. While these information asymmetries explain our focus on the outcome of the attack rather than the identity of the attacker, we acknowledge that the people draw inferences about the identity and motivations of attackers based on prior experiences and political orientation [ 49 ]. Liberman and Skitka's vicarious retribution theory [ 50 , 51 ] demonstrates how the public may impute responsibility to unrelated or symbolically related offenders when the identity of an attacker is unclear. Nonetheless, maintaining the highest standards of ecological validity demands that attribution and attack categorization is absent in initial public reports of cyber incidents.

Under this framework, we hypothesize that:

Hypothesis 1: Exposure to (i) lethal or (ii) nonlethal cyberattacks will lead to greater support for adopting cybersecurity policies compared with people who were not exposed to any cyberattack. In other words, exposure to cyberattacks—lethal (LC) or nonlethal (NLC)—will increase support for adopting cybersecurity policies, as compared with a control group.

Hypothesis 2: People who are exposed to lethal cyberattacks (LC) will exhibit to higher support for adopting cybersecurity policies than people who are exposed to nonlethal cyberattacks (NLC).

Civilians are notoriously weak at accurately assessing security threats—a fact that is amplified in the cyber realm due to low cybersecurity knowledge, general cognitive biases in calculating risk, and the distortion of cyber risks by the media, which focuses predominantly on spectacular yet low-likelihood attacks [ 52–54 ]. Perceived risk is partly reliant on the scope of the attack to which people are exposed. Victims of cybercrimes (identity theft and cyber bullying) report moderate or severe emotional distress such as anger, fear, anxiety, mistrust, and loss of confidence [ 55 ]. The effects of conventional terrorism include post-traumatic stress, depression, and anticipatory anxiety [ 56 , 29 ]. In both of these cases, threat perception is a common predictor of political attitudes and behavior. Indeed, the best predictor of hostile out-group attitudes is the perceived threat that out-group members will harm members of the in-group, whether physically, economically or symbolically [ 28 , 57 , 58 ]. In many of the studies cited above, threat perception was found to mediate the relationship between exposure to violence and support for harsh or restrictive policies, especially in conflict-related contexts [ 27 ]. Extending this empirical and theoretical evidence to digital political violence suggests that individuals are likely to respond similarly to cyber threats by supporting strong cybersecurity policies through the interceding influence of heightened threat perception.

A set of early studies compared the level of threat evoked by exposure to different forms of cyber threats, identifying key differences in the how cybercrime and cyberterrorism influenced attitudes toward government policy [ 34 , 36 ]. These studies concluded that direct exposure to cyberterrorism had no effect on support for hardline cybersecurity policies (increased digital surveillance, the introduction of intrusive new regulations), but threat perceptions relating to cyberterrorism successfully predicted support for these policies. Recognizing therefore that threat perception plays a central role in understanding the response to cyberattacks, we predict that

Hypothesis 3: Cyber threat perception will mediate the relationship between individual exposure to cyberattacks and support for cybersecurity policies.

To test our hypotheses, we conducted a controlled survey experiment that exposed respondents to simulated news reports about major cyberattacks. The experimental manipulation relied on professionally produced original video clips that broadcast feature news reports. The lethal treatment group viewed a feature report discussing several lethal cyberattacks that had taken place against Israeli targets, while the nonlethal treatment group broadcast a collection of stories pertaining to nonlethal cyber incidents (see below for additional details about each manipulation). The control group did not watch any news report.

We utilized the medium of video news reports for our experimental manipulation since experiments in recent years have shown how broadcast videos and media reports of major attacks arouse strong emotions among viewers, which in turn trigger reevaluations of policy positions and political attitudes related to issues of security [ 35 , 59 , 60 ]. The rationale behind these finding can be partly explained by Terror Management Theory, which explains how even indirect exposure to violent acts triggers potent emotional reactions as people confront threats to their mortality [ 61 , 62 ]. Just as importantly, news reports are a key avenue by which the public learns about major security incidents, and so this method maintains its ecological validity. Each of the groups completed a pre- and post-survey, answering a series of questions about their attitudes to cybersecurity along with relevant sociodemographic information.

Each of the television news reports was presented as an authentic feature story that appeared on Israeli channel 1 television station. The news reports described the global scale of cyber threats facing the public (i.e. two million malicious web sites launch each month and 60 000 new malware programs appear every day at an annual cost to the global economy of 500 billion dollars). The clips were screened in a feature format using on-camera interviews, voiceover and film footage to describe various cyberattacks. To increase the authenticity of the experience, the reports included interviews with well-known Israeli security experts. To mimic the challenges of cyber attribution, the perpetrators of the attacks described in the videos were not identified and were neutrally referred to as cyber operatives. Each video lasted approximately 3 min.

Lethal Cyber Condition—The television news report described various cyberattacks with lethal consequences that had targeted Israel during the previous years. For example, in one of the featured stories, an attack was revealed to have targeted the servers controlling Israel's electric power grid, cutting off electricity to a hospital and causing deaths. In another story, cyber operatives were said to have attacked a military navigation system, altering the course of a missile so that it killed three Israeli soldiers. A third story concerned the use of malware to infect the pacemaker of the Israeli Defense Minister, and a fourth involved the failure of an emergency call to 10 000 military reserve soldiers due to a cyberattack in which foreign agents changed the last digit of the soldiers’ telephone numbers in the military database. The video's interviews with well-known figures from Israel's security sector emphasized the life-threatening danger posed by cyberattacks.

Nonlethal Cyber Condition—The television news report revealed various nonlethal cyberattacks that had targeted Israel during recent years. For example, the broadcast explained how mobile phone users are made vulnerable to attackers by installing new games and applications, potentially introducing malware that can later access data like personal messages or financial details. Another example concerned the dangers posed by the Internet of Things and featured a story in which all the major credit cards companies suspended their customer support after hundreds of thousands of citizens were fraudulently charged for food purchases by their smart refrigerators. The Israeli experts in this video emphasized the potential financial damage from cyberattacks.

Participants

The online survey experiment was administered in Israel during September 2015 via the Midgam Survey Panel. One thousand twenty-two participants were randomly assigned to the three groups (lethal condition: N  = 387; nonlethal condition: N  = 374; control group: N  = 361). The experimental sample represents a random cross-section of the Jewish Israeli population. The sample is largely representative of the wider population, and balance checks reveal that the treatment distribution is acceptable. We note that due to data collection constraints, the sample does not include ultra-orthodox (religious) respondents due to difficulties in accessing this subgroup through online methods. The mean age of the participants was 41 (SD = 14.81), and gender distribution of 49.96% male and 50.04% female. With respect to political orientation, 44.35% of the sample define themself as right-wing ( N  = 452), 38.28% themselves as centrist ( N  = 390), and 17.37% as left-wing ( N  = 177) (this reflects the right-wing slant of the Israeli population that has been apparent in recent elections). The distribution of education and income levels was similar across the three groups (Education: F(2, 1120) = 0.20, P  < 0.82; Income: F(2, 1045) = 0.63, P  < 0.53). Sociodemographic characteristics of the participants are presented in Appendix A (Supporting Information), together with experimental balance checks.

The experiment incorporated three primary variables: the predictor variable (exposure to cyberattacks), the dependent variable (support for cybersecurity policies), and the mediator variable (threat perception). Sociodemographic measures were also collected.

Predictor variable—exposure to cyberattacks

Exposure to cyberattacks was operationalized by random assignment to one of the three experimental treatments described above—lethal cyberattacks/nonlethal cyberattacks/control condition.

Dependent variable: support for cybersecurity policies

Support for cybersecurity policies was examined using twelve questions taken from two scales developed by McCallister and Graves [ 63 , 64 ]. After separating out one item that reflected a unique form of cybersecurity policy, the remaining items were subjected to a principal component analysis (PCA), which highlighted different aspects of cybersecurity policy. Our criteria for the factor dimension extraction was an eigenvalue greater than one for number of dimensions, and factor loading greater than 0.35, for dimension assignment. We applied the PCA extraction method with the Varimax rotation to construct orthogonal factors [ 65 ]. This procedure gave rise to two clearly distinguishable cyber policy dimensions. Following this process, we combined the two remaining items that were excluded due to poor loadings (loading < 0.35) to create a third policy dimension with a high correlation between the items ( r  = 0.617, P  < 0.001) (see Appendix B in the Supporting Information for the PCA and complete list of the items used to construct each scale). The final three measures of cybersecurity policies reflected the breadth of available policy options, which emphasized different levels of government intervention and oversight strategies. The first of these is cybersecurity prevention policy (CPP); the second is cybersecurity alert policy (CAP); and the third is cybersecurity oversight policy (COP).

The cybersecurity prevention policy dimension (CPP) captures the idea that the state should mandate commercial companies to implement minimum levels of cybersecurity to prevent damage. Respondents were asked questions such as: “should the state compel business owners to protect themselves against cyberattacks?” Cronbach's α was within an acceptable range at 0.720.

The cybersecurity oversight policy dimension (COP) refers to the notion that the state should directly intervene to offer cyber protection to its citizens and businesses. Relevant questions for this dimension included “should the state protect its citizens from cyberattacks?” Cronbach's α was within an acceptable range at 0.737.

The cybersecurity alert policy dimension (CAP) relates to the state's presumed responsibility to ensure citizens are alerted when a hack of a cyberattack is discovered. For example, a related question would ask: “should the state alert citizens after a successful attack on critical infrastructure?” As opposed to the prevention policy dimension that relates to measures that must be taken before a cyberattack, the alert policy focuses on the measures to be taken after an attack. Cronbach's α was slightly below acceptable range at 0.632. All questions were measured on a scale ranging from 1 (“completely disagree”) to 6 (“completely agree”).

Mediator: perceptions of cybersecurity threats

Threat perception pertaining to cyber threats was gauged using a five-item scale based on studies conducted in the United States [ 66 ]. Respondents were asked how concerned they feel about the possibility of an actual threat to their security. Respondents answered questions including: “To what extent does the idea of a cyberattack on Israel affect your sense of personal security?” and “To what extent does a cyberattack on Israel threaten the country's critical infrastructure?,” and the answers ranged from 1 (“not at all”) to 6 (“to a very great degree”). The internal consistency of this measure was very high (Alpha = 0.913).

Control variables

Control variables collected included political ideology (assessed through a self-reported five-point scale ranging from 1 [very conservative] to 5 [very liberal]), age, gender, marital status, religiosity, education, and income.

We also measured and controlled for participants’ past exposure to cyberattacks. To measure this variable, we adapted a four-item scale used to measure exposure to terrorism and political violence [ 67 , 35 ]. Items included questions that asked the extent to which the respondents, their friends and their family had ever suffered harm or loss from a cyberattack. Similarly to past studies, we did not calculate the internal reliability for past exposure, given that one type of exposure does not necessarily portend another type.

Preliminary analyses

We begin our analysis by testing the variance between the treatment groups regarding attitudes toward cybersecurity policies, to establish that the experimental conditions produce at least minimal levels of differences in the dependent variables. Hence, we conducted a one-way univariate analysis of variance (ANOVA), in which the different cyber policies were the dependent variables. The results indicated differences between the three groups in support for policies regarding cybersecurity alerts (CAP: F(2, 1020) = 4.61, P  < 0.010). No differences between groups were found in support for cybersecurity prevention policy or cybersecurity oversight policy (CPP: F(2, 1020) = 1.35, P  < 0.259; COP: F(2, 1020) = 0.94, P  < 0.39). We followed the CAP ANOVA analysis with pairwise comparisons using Bonferroni corrections, which revealed that the highest level of support for cybersecurity alerts was expressed by the group exposed to lethal cyberattacks on average, while the other two groups showed lower levels of support for this policy. These results support the conclusion that the differences in cybersecurity policy preferences between the three groups derive from the video stimulus, and not from differences in participants’ sociodemographic characteristics (see Appendix C in the Supporting Information for means and standard deviations of study variables, in all three manipulation groups).

In addition, we tested group differences regarding threat perceptions and found significant differences in threat perceptions between the three groups (F(2, 1020) = 21.68, P  < 0.001). The follow up pairwise comparisons with Bonferroni corrections, revealed that participants in both experimental groups (LC and NLC) expressed higher levels of threat perceptions in comparison to participants in the control group. These analyses provide sufficient preliminary support to conduct more complex analyses that integrate multiple effects in this triangle of exposure to cyberattacks, cyber threat perception, and support for cybersecurity policies.

Mediation analysis

To test hypothesis 3, we ran a path analysis model, i.e. a structural equation modeling with observed indicators only. In this model, the exposure was divided into lethal vs control and nonlethal vs control. More specifically, with regard to the mediation effect, the model structure included two pathways from the experimental conditions to support for cybersecurity policies: From the lethal vs control, and from nonlethal vs control through threat perceptions. The latter variable was expected to mediate the effect condition effects on cyber policy positions as proposed in the theory section.

In order to further investigate the mediation mechanism, we constructed an integrative path analysis model [ 53 ]. Running this model enables us to identify direct and indirect effects among all the study variables. We provide modeling results in the following Table 1 and an illustration of the path analysis model in Fig. 1 .

Empirical model results—direct effects of exposure to lethal and nonlethal attack groups vs control group. * P  < 0.05, ** P  < 0.01, *** P  < 0.001.

Path: analysis direct effects, standardized estimates

Standard error in parentheses; * P  < 0.05, ** P  < 0.01, *** P  < 0.001. NLC = non-ethal cyberattack; LC = lethal cyberattack.

Direct effects

Table 1 presents the results of the standardized estimates (beta coefficients) of each experimental group vis-à-vis the control group (i.e. NLC vs control, and LC vs control), perceptions of threat, past exposure to cyberattacks and socio demographic variables—gender, religiosity, education and political ideology—with the three dimensions of cybersecurity policies as the dependent variables. In the pairwise comparison of the experimental groups, which compares the lethal and nonlethal conditions to the control group, we find a larger direct effect in the LC (lethal) group compared with the NLC (nonlethal) group in predicting support for CAP.

A follow-up that compared the two regression weights further confirmed the stronger relative effect of the lethal exposure over the nonlethal exposure (H 2 : NLC-LC = −0.21 (0.10), P  = 0.047). This demonstrates support for our second hypothesis. People who were exposed to lethal cyberattacks tended to support cybersecurity policies that compel the government and security forces to alert citizens if they have evidence of citizens’ computers being hacked or if an act cyberattack is discovered (CAP) at higher levels than people who were exposed to nonlethal/economic cyberattacks compared with people in the control group.

Interestingly, this trend was reversed for the oversight policies (COP) form of cybersecurity regulation. Here, we identified a significant direct effect wherein exposure to nonlethal cyberattacks led to support for oversight policies (COP) at higher levels than respondents who were exposed to the lethal cyberattacks manipulation or the control group. However, the difference between the two treatment conditions was not significant (NLC-LC = 0.11(0.08), P  = 0.16). This indicates that exposure to any kind of cyberattack, lethal or nonlethal, predicts greater support for oversight regulation policies (COP) to the same extent. No direct effect was found between exposure to cyberattacks and support for prevention regulation policies (CPP). By breaking apart this analysis into different dimensions of cybersecurity polices our results reveal how exposure to different forms of cyberattacks contribute to support for distinct types of policy that emphasize oversight or intervention.

Most importantly, results indicate a significant direct effect of threat perceptions on all three dimensions of cybersecurity policy and higher levels of threat perception in the lethal cyber manipulation group compared with the nonlethal cyber manipulation group and the control group.

Mediating effects

Table 2 presents the indirect effects of each of the two treatment conditions in comparison to the control group for the three dimensions of cybersecurity policies—with threat perception as a mediator. The indirect effects are pathways from the independent variable to the policy variables through threat perceptions. In the path analysis model, each dependent variable, i.e. support for particular cybersecurity policies, could have two potential paths, one from the nonlethal condition and the one from the lethal condition. Altogether, six mediation pathways were tested. These indirect outcomes are illustrated in Fig. 1 . In the LC group we see a complete mediation effect of threat perceptions and no significant direct effect of exposure on COP support. This means that for those participants who were exposed to the lethal condition, the actual exposure was not as strong a predictor of policy support as the threat perception associated with the attacks.

Path: analysis mediation effects, standardized estimates

Standard error in parentheses; * P  < 0.05, ** P  < 0.01, *** P  < 0.001. In squared brackets 95% confidence interval with bias correction bootstrapping ( n  = 2000).

In our models predicting CAP, we see a partial mediation effect for both treatment groups, in addition to the direct effect that we described above. We see a larger indirect effect in the LC group than in the NLC group and this was confirmed by a test of difference. This indicates that people who were exposed to lethal cyberattacks reported higher levels of cyber threat perception as compared with people who were exposed to the nonlethal condition, and this heightened threat perception in turn led to more support for various cybersecurity polices.

Support for CAP (i.e. cybersecurity policies whereby the government or relevant organizations are expected to alert citizens if they have evidence of citizens’ computers being hacked or an act of cyberattack being detected) was predicted both by a direct effect of level of exposure to cyberattacks (NLC, LC) and by the mediation of threat perceptions.

Yet our models predicting support for oversight polices (COP) showed a different picture. In the NLC group we see a partial mediation of threat perceptions in addition to the direct effect that we found in the models shown in Table 2 . Support for COP (i.e. cybersecurity policies whereby the state should protect the country, organizations, and citizens from cyberattacks through direct government action) was predicted by a direct effect of NLC exposure and by the mediation of threat perceptions in both LC and NLC groups. In the LC group versus the control group, support of COP was predicted only through the mediation perceptions of threat. These results support our third hypothesis regarding the mediating role played by threat perception in predicting COP.

Our models predicting support for prevention policies (CPP) showed a complete mediation effect of threat perception in both experimental treatment groups. No direct effect of exposure on CPP was found, indicating that the mediating mechanism is the best predictor for CPP. Support for CPP (i.e. cybersecurity policies whereby the state compels commercial enterprises to install minimum thresholds of cybersecurity) was predicted by the indirect effect of threat perception.

These results emphasize the central role played by threat perception in predicting support for adopting stringent cybersecurity policies. What is especially noteworthy is that threat perception overrides past experience as the full mediation models indicate. For example, we found that when people are exposed to destructive cyberattacks, the level of perceived threat predicted support for adopting cybersecurity policies that required the state to protect citizens and organizations (COP). Similarly, we found that when it comes to predicting support for prevention policies—threat is the driving force.

In order to complement the indirect effect analyses and test the relative strength of the mediation pathways, we contrasted the indirect effects of the various groups on each policy option. According to the outcome estimates in Table 2 , model 3 has a significantly larger mediation effect compared with model 1 (difference = –0.014; 0.024 P  < 0.001) 2 , which indicates that within the NLC group, the mediation model is a stronger predictor of support for COP than CAP. In other words, participants who were exposed to the nonlethal condition were more likely to support oversight polices than alert policies.

Our findings draw on an experimental design that suggests that exposure to different types of cyberattacks intensifies perceptions of cyber threats and shifts political attitudes in support of stringent cybersecurity policies. We find that exposure to lethal cyberattacks affects individual-level political behavior in a manner akin to conventional terrorism [ 68–71 ]. This research was motivated by a desire to better understand what drives individuals to support strong or hardline cybersecurity policies, using Israel as a case study. The findings contribute to this research direction in a number of important ways.

First, exposure to lethal cyberattacks heightens perceptions of cyber threat to a greater degree than nonlethal/economic cyberattacks. Second, as a result of exposure to cyberattacks, respondents were willing to forfeit civil liberties and privacy in exchange for more security. Like conventional terrorism, cyberattacks with lethal consequences harden political attitudes, as individuals tend to support more government oversight, greater regulation of cybersecurity among commercial businesses, and the implementation of strategies to increase public awareness following cyberattacks. Third, our data suggest that in some cases the mere exposure to cyberattack, either lethal or nonlethal, affects the level of support for specific types of cybersecurity polices (stronger support of cybersecurity alert policies among participants in the lethal cyberattack manipulation, and stronger support of cybersecurity oversight policy among participants in the nonlethal cyberattack treatment group). In other cases, threat perception, rather than the exposure to the cyber-events themselves, drive the cognitive effects of cyberattacks on attitudes toward policy (A strong support for COP among the LC group was predicted only through the mediating role of threat perception, and support of CPP, in both manipulation groups was predicted only through a mediated pathway). Finally, we observed differences in the way our mediation model works in relation to different cybersecurity policies. The mediation model for the nonlethal condition group participants predicted greater support for cybersecurity policies focusing on oversight rather than policies focusing on alerting the public.

Our study examined public support for three distinct types of cybersecurity policies that we described as prevention policies, alert policies, and oversight policies. Each of these play a role in securing cyberspace, where the uncertainty regarding the form and nature of potential threats calls for a varied array of preventive actions [ 36 , 37 ]. Each of these policies raises questions about the delicate balancing act between privacy and security demands. In reality, policy approaches are likely to combine several of these elements—yet it behooves us to first consider each of them independently since very little is known about the public knowledge and familiarity with different cybersecurity policies. While preliminary research has looked at public support for cybersecurity preferences in general [ 41 ], these have yet to consider the varied approaches to cybersecurity. To that end, in the current paper we tried to simplify the different cybersecurity polices as much as possible based on real-world policies.

Overall, the study provides evidence that exposure to cyberattacks predicts support for cybersecurity policies through the mediating effect of threat perception. Yet our discovery of differential effects depending on the type of cybersecurity policy being proposed adds a new level of nuance that should be probed further in subsequent studies. More so, results indicate that the public worry and concern in the aftermath of cyberattacks leads directly to calls for governmental intervention. This information sheds light on public opinion processes and helps inform our understanding how individuals will likely respond to new cyber threats. It may also help policymakers understand the complex emotions and cognitions evoked by attacks, which can improve policy formulations that respond to the needs of the public.

Future studies should also investigate how fear appeals intervene in this mechanism, and how to motivate people to take cyber threats more seriously in a way that leads to positive behavioral change.

Participants who were exposed to the lethal manipulation supported cybersecurity policies that focus on alerting the public in cases of cyberattacks more than participants in the two other groups. On the other hand, participants who were exposed to the nonlethal manipulation tended to support cybersecurity policies that call for state oversight of cybersecurity. We found no evidence that any type of exposure has a direct effect on support for polices mandating minimum thresholds of cybersecurity in the commercial arena.

One possible explanation for these results is that thus far, cyberattacks have caused economic damage, but lethal cyberattacks that vividly resemble terrorism are a significantly rarer phenomenon. Hence, participants who were exposed to lethal terror cyberattacks supported cybersecurity policies that would alert them and keep them informed about impending cyber threats. Policies that focus on oversight are perceived as less important during violent terror attacks. On the other hand, exposure to nonlethal cyberattacks, which are typically focused on economic gain, is more common. The economic damage caused by cyberattacks is estimated to reach $6 trillion by 2021 [ 72 ]. As such, participants in the nonlethal manipulation may have regarded cyberattacks causing economic damage as more likely and therefore supported polices that will bolster digital protections.

We note a key condition about the temporal nature of these findings. In analyzing the effect of exposure to cyberattacks, this study focuses on people's immediate response following exposure to cyber threats. Assessing people's short-term responses is valuable as the responses speak to the direction of the political and psychological effects. Yet what is missing from this picture (and beyond the scope of our research design), is the longevity of the response, which speaks to the strength of the effect. If the measured distress and political outcomes swiftly dissipate, then the policy relevance of our findings comes into question.

The literature is split on the question of the temporal durability of attitudinal shifts in the aftermath of major attacks. There is one school of thought that holds that most political effects stemming from political violence or terrorism are fleeting, and that the public is broadly desensitized to political violence [ 73–75 ]. Yet a second school of thought suggests that exposure to attacks can trigger prolonged effects and lasting shifts in political and psychological attitudes. Brandon & Silke [ 76 ] assert that while the distress triggered by exposure dissipates over time, this is not an instantaneous process. Several longitudinal studies following the Oklahama bombing and 9/11 found lingering harms, with exposed individuals reporting elevated levels of psychological distress and altered political attitudes for months or years following the event [ 77–79 ].

In applying this to the case of cyberattacks, there is insufficient evidence to positively determine the longevity of the political and psychological effects that we identified in our study. We anticipate that the effects will be more than fleeting, since the novelty of cyber threats means that people have yet to undergo any cognitive or emotional desensitization to cyberattacks [ 80 ]. However, we acknowledge that this this position requires further empirical substantiation in future research.

A central conclusion of this study is that the implementation of cybersecurity regulations should take account of public perception of cyber threats and public exposure to cyberattacks. This position challenges two unspoken yet ubiquitous notions in the field of cybersecurity. First, the formulation of cybersecurity policies—in a manner akin to national security and espionage discussions—has typically taken place without public input due to the perception that it is a question best left to experts with engineering or national security expertise [ 81 ]. Scholars argue that this complete abdication of cybersecurity policy to specialists is a profound mistake, since excluding “the general public from any meaningful voice in cyber policymaking removes citizens from democratic governance in an area where our welfare is deeply implicated” [ 82 ]. Functional cybersecurity relies on good practices by the ordinary public, and the failure of cybersecurity awareness campaigns to effectively change behavior may well be linked to the lack of public input in its regulation [ 81 ]. Our findings indicate that growing civilian exposure to cyberattacks leads to more defined attitudes toward specific cybersecurity regulations through the mechanism of heightened threat perception. Governments will increasingly need to engage the public as one of the stakeholders in effecting new cyber regulations.

A second conceptual dilemma about the role of public exposure and opinion has to do with the question of whether cybersecurity is a public good deserving of government investment and regulation at all. Much of the field of cybersecurity is dominated by private enterprise, with government involvement taking place in limited ways. Support for government intervention in the realm of cybersecurity is premised on the astronomical public costs of cybercrime, the threat of cyberterror attacks, and the claim of a market failure in the provision of cybersecurity whose negative externalities in the absence of government involvement would cause substantial national damage [ 83 ]. A prominent counter-school of thought, resting on a belief that the private market is the most efficient system of allocating economic resources, claims that there is no need for government intervention in the cybersecurity market [ 84 ]. These proponents of private sector cybersecurity suggest that the private sector can more effectively achieve cybersecurity outcomes, an assertion that is backed up by the fact that private spending on cybersecurity in 2018 reached USD $96 billion [ 85 ]. This raises the question of how civilian exposure to cyberattacks and the subsequent support for cybersecurity regulation can translate to real outcomes if the market responds to both public and private interests, which take account of public opinion and civilian threat perception in different ways.

Seeing that cyber threats are continuously evolving, there are opportunities to expand and consolidate this research in future studies. In the current article, we focus on the effect of exposure to lethal and nonlethal cyberattacks on support for different types of cybersecurity policies among Israeli participants. Yet despite this singular geographic focus, the results offer lessons that can be applied widely. Like several other Western countries, Israel has been repeatedly exposed to publicly reported cyberattacks on critical infrastructure. And, similarly to American and some European countries, Israel has high levels of Internet penetration and publicly renowned levels of cybersecurity readiness to deal with such attacks. Past studies that examined public perceptions of cyber threats have replicated the findings across multiple countries. Shandler et al . [ 80 ] found that psychological responses to internalized reports of cyberattacks explains support for military retaliation, and that this mechanism applies similarly in Israel, the United States, and England. Though requiring additional research, the evidence suggests that cyber threats operate via an underlying psycho-political mechanism that transcends national borders. In fact, the effects of cyberattacks may prove weaker in Israel than elsewhere as the constant exposure among Israelis to political violence places digital violence in the context of a political struggle that has, in many ways, fixed and acceptable costs [ 34 ]. Therefore, we believe that an Israeli sample offers major advantages in understanding the effects of cyberattacks among other Western nations. Nonetheless, we encourage future studies to corroborate these findings in different settings.

A second area where our findings could benefit from additional research relates to the nature of the media exposure. In this study, we exposed respondents to "initial" media reports about major cyberattacks where there is minimal information pertaining to the identity of the attacker and the type of attack that was conducted. While this in many ways reflects the reality of media reports about cyberattacks, it does not discount that journalists will sometimes make inferences about the details of an attack, and that later reports in the days and weeks following an attack will include far more detailed information. More so, this article bears implications for a wide literature beyond the political violence discipline. The public discussion regarding digital privacy and surveillance has spurred crucial new research on the dynamics of digital insecurity. In communications and media studies, for example, scientists are focusing on information-age warfare via different social media platforms, and early results show that citizens are as active in correcting disinformation online as they are in spreading disinformation [ 86 , 87 ]. The debate in the field of business management is also developing as it focuses on consumer expectations surrounding information technology and big data, as well as on the roles and responsibilities of public and private actors in securing personal data [ 88 , 89 ].

Cyber threats are a critical and growing component of national security. As this threat continues to grow all over the world, both in its public perception and in the true scope of the threat, the need to implement strong cybersecurity regulations will grow as well. Our findings indicate that particular forms of exposure to cyberattacks can contribute to support for various types of cybersecurity legislation and contribute to their public legitimacy. This is especially important since the introduction of these regulations constitutes a sacrifice of civil liberties, a sacrifice that citizens are prone to support only under particular conditions.

Though a DDoS attack, e.g. may not trigger physical casualties, its crippling of emergency services and telecommunications could catastrophically amplify the second- and third-order damage during a physical attack; for more, see Catherine A. Theohary and John W. Rollins,   Cyberwarfare and cyberterrorism: In brief (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2015).

We also see a marginal significant effect between mediation 1 and 5 and 2 and 6. The differences between mediation 1 and mediation 5 show mediation 5 (NLC/control-threat-CPP) has a marginal significant larger mediation effect compared with mediation 1 (NLC/control-threat-CAP) (difference = –0.035; 0.035 P  = 0.073). This means that within the NLC group the mediation model predicts stronger predicting CPP than CAP. In other words, participants who were exposed to the nonlethal (NLC) condition were more likely to support CPP than CAP. We saw that the CAP is stronger in the LC group. Another marginal significant effect was found between mediation 2 and mediation 6. The differences between mediation 2 and mediation 6 show mediation 6 (LC/control-threat-CPP) has a marginal significant larger mediation effect compared with mediation 2 (LC/control-threat-CAP) (difference = −0.044; 0.024 P  = 0.062). This means that within the LC group the mediation model predicts stronger predicting CPP than CAP. In other words, participants who were exposed to the lethal (LC) condition were more likely to support CPP than CAP. We saw a direct effect of LC on CAP.

Geller E , Matishak M . A federal government left ‘completely blind’ on cyberattacks looks to force reporting . Politico . 2021 . https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/15/congress-colonial-pipeline-disclosure-488406 (10 August, 2021, date last accessed) .

Google Scholar

Cybersecurity legislation 2020. NCSL . https://www.ncsl.org/research/telecommunications-and-information-technology/cybersecurity-legislation-2020.aspx (17 October 2020, date last accessed).

US state cybersecurity regulation more than doubled in 2017, while federal regulation waned. BusinessWire . https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180129005238/en/State-Cybersecurity-Regulation-Doubled-2017-Federal-Regulation (29 January 2018, last accessed) .

Kasper A . EU cybersecurity governance: stakeholders and normative intentions towards integration . In: Harwood M , Moncada S , Pace R (eds). The Future of the European Union: Demisting the Debate . Msida : Institute for European Studies , 2020 , 166 – 85 .

Google Preview

Israel National Cyber Directorate (INCD) . https://www.gov.il/en/departments/about/newabout (1 February 2021, date last accessed) .

Ochoa CS , Gadinger F , Yildiz T . Surveillance under dispute: conceptualizing narrative legitimation politics . Eur J Int Secur . 2021 ; 6 : 210 – 32 ..‏

Flyverbom M , Deibert R , Matten D . The governance of digital technology, big data, and the internet: new roles and responsibilities for business . Bus Soc . 2019 ; 58 : 3 – 19 ..‏

Rosenzweig P . The alarming trend of cybersecurity breaches and failures in the U.S. government . The Heritage Foundation. https://www.heritage.org/defense/report/the-alarming-trend-cybersecurity-breaches-and-failures-the-us-government-continues (17 April 2020, last accessed) .

Lee JK , Chang Y , Kwon HY et al.  Reconciliation of privacy with preventive cybersecurity: the bright internet approach . Inf Syst Front . 2020 ; 22 : 45 – 57 .

Nye JS . Nuclear lessons for cyber security? . Strateg Stud Q . 2011 ; 5 : 18 – 38 .

Annual number of data breaches and exposed records in the United States from 2005 to 2018 (in millions) . Statista . https://www.statista.com/statistics/273550/data-breaches-recorded-in-the-united-states-by-number-of-breaches-and-records-exposed (26 February 2019, last accessed) .

For big banks, it's an endless fight with hackers The Business Times , 30 July 2019 . https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/banking-finance/for-big-banks-it%E2%80%99s-an-endless-fight-with-hackers

Nye JS Jr . Cyber Power . Cambridge : Harvard Kennedy School, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs , 2010 .

Stohl M . Cyber terrorism: a clear and present danger, the sum of all fears, breaking point or patriot games? . Crime Law Soc Change . 2006 ; 46 : 223 – 38 .

Lawson ST . Cybersecurity Discourse in the United States: Cyber-Doom Rhetoric and Beyond . New York : Routledge , 2019 .

Valeriano B , Maness RC . Cyber War Versus Cyber Realities: Cyber Conflict in the International System . New York : Oxford University Press , 2015 .

Lawson S . Beyond cyber-doom: Assessing the limits of hypothetical scenarios in the framing of cyber-threats . J Inf Technol Polit . 2013 ; 10 : 86 – 103 .

Israeli cyber chief: Major attack on water systems thwarted. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/israeli-cyber-chief-major-attack-on-water-systems-thwarted/2020/05/28/5a923fa0-a0b5-11ea-be06-af5514ee0385_story.html (28 May 2020, last accessed) .

Panetta warns of dire threat of cyberattack on U.S. New York Times. (October 11, 2012). https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/12/world/panetta-warns-of-dire-threat-of-cyberattack.html

Choi SJ , Johnson ME , Lehmann CU . Data breach remediation efforts and their implications for hospital quality . Health Serv Res . 2019 ; 54 : 971 – 80 .

Zetter K . A cyber attack has caused confirmed physical damage for the second time ever . Wired . 2015 . http://www.wired.com/2015/01/german-steel-mill-hack-destruction . (April 2020, date last accessed) .

Hobfoll SE , Canetti-Nisim D , Johnson RJ . Exposure to terrorism, stress-related mental health symptoms, and defensive coping among Jews and Arabs in Israel . J Consult Clin Psychol . 2006 ; 74 : 207 – 18 .

Halperin E , Canetti-Nisim D , Hirsch-Hoefler S . The central role of group-based hatred as an emotional antecedent of political intolerance: Evidence from Israel . Polit Psychol . 2009 ; 30 : 93 – 123 .

Bar-Tal D , Halperin E , de Rivera J . Collective emotions in conflict situations: societal implications . J Soc Issues . 2007 ; 63 : 441 – 60 .

Hirsch-Hoefler S , Canetti D , Rapaport C et al.  Conflict will harden your heart: exposure to violence, psychological distress, and peace barriers in Israel and Palestine . Br J Polit Sci . 2016 ; 46 : 845 – 59 .

Bonanno GA , Jost JT . Conservative shift among high-exposure survivors of the September 11th terrorist attacks . Basic Appl Soc Psychol . 2006 ; 28 : 311 – 23 .

Canetti-Nisim D , Ariely G , Halperin E . Life, pocketbook, or culture: the role of perceived security threats in promoting exclusionist political attitudes toward minorities in Israel . Polit Res Q . 2008 ; 61 : 90 – 103 .

Zeitzoff T . Anger, exposure to violence, and intragroup conflict: a “lab in the field” experiment in southern Israel . Polit Psychol . 2014 ; 35 : 309 – 35 .

Schmitt N . Tallinn Manual 2.0 on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Operations . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 2017 .

Russian hackers appear to shift focus to U.S. power grid. The New York Times, 27 July 2018 . 2018 ;

Aucsmith D . Disintermediation, Counterinsurgency, and Cyber Defense . 2016 , Available at SSRN 2836100 . doi: 10.1093/cybsec/tyw018 , (10 August, 2021 last accessed) .

Gartzke E , Lindsay JR . Thermonuclear cyberwar . J Cybersecur . 2017 ; 3 : 37 – 48 .

Gross ML , Canetti D , Vashdi DR . Cyberterrorism: its effects on psychological well-being, public confidence and political attitudes . J Cybersecur . 2017 ; 3 : 49 – 58 .

Backhaus S , Gross ML , Waismel-Manor I et al.  A cyberterrorism effect? Emotional reactions to lethal attacks on critical infrastructure . Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw . 2020 ; 23 : 595 – 603 ..‏

Gross ML , Canetti D , Vashdi DR . The psychological effects of cyber-terrorism . Bull At Sci . 2016 ; 72 : 284 – 91 .

Canetti D , Gross ML , Waismel-Manor I . Immune from cyber-fire? The psychological & physiological effects of cyberwar . In: Allhoff F , Henschke A , Strawser BJ (eds). Binary Bullets: The Ethics of Cyberwarfare . Oxford : Oxford University Press , 2016 , 157 – 76 .

Canetti D , Gross ML , Waismel-Manor I et al.  How cyberattacks terrorize: Cortisol and personal insecurity jump in the wake of cyberattacks . Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw . 2017 ; 20 : 72 – 7 .

Shandler R , Gross MG , Backhaus S et al.  Cyber terrorism and public support for retaliation: a multi-country survey experiment . Br J Polit Sci . 1 – 19 ., 2021 . DOI: 10.1017/S0007123420000812 .

Rosenzweig P . Cybersecurity and public goods, The public/private ‘partnership’ . In: Berkowitz P (ed). Emerging Threats in National Security and Law . Stanford : Hoover Institution, Stanford University , 2011 , 1 – 36 .

Cheung-Blunden V , Cropper K , Panis A et al.  Functional divergence of two threat-induced emotions: fear-based versus anxiety-based cybersecurity preferences . Emotion . 2017 ; 19 : 1353 – 65 .

Jardine E , Porter N . Pick your poison: the attribution paradox in cyberwar. 2020 , https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/etb72/ .

Rid T , Buchanan B . Attributing cyber attacks . J Strateg Stud . 2015 ; 38 : 4 – 37 .

Clark DD , Landau S . Untangling attribution . Harvard National Secur J . 2011 ; 2 : 323 – 52 .

Alraddadi W , Sarvotham H . A comprehensive analysis of WannaCry: technical analysis, reverse engineering, and motivation . https://docplayer.net/130787668-A-comprehensive-analysis-of-wannacry-technical-analysis-reverse-engineering-and-motivation.html , (17 April 2020, last accessed).

Romanosky S , Boudreaux B . Private-sector attribution of cyber incidents: benefits and risks to the US government . Int J Intell CounterIntelligence . 2020 ; 0 : 1 – 31 .

Baezner M . Iranian cyber-activities in the context of regional rivalries and international tensions . ETH Zurich . 2019 : 1 – 37 .

Macdonald S , Jarvis L , Nouri L . State cyberterrorism: a contradiction in terms? . J Terrorism Res . 2015 ; 6 : 62 – 75 .

Canetti D , Gubler J , Zeitzoff T . Motives don't matter? Motive attribution and counterterrorism policy . Polit Psychol . 2021 ; 42 : 483 – 99 .

Liberman P , Skitka LJ . Revenge in US public support for war against Iraq . Public Opin Q . 2017 ; 81 : 636 – 60 .

Liberman P , Skitka LJ . Vicarious retribution in US public support for war against Iraq . Secur Stud . 2019 ; 28 : 189 – 215 .

Kostyuk N , Wayne C . The microfoundations of state cybersecurity: cyber risk perceptions and the mass public . J Glob Secur Stud . 2021 ; 6 : ogz077 .

Gomez MA . Past behavior and future judgements: seizing and freezing in response to cyber operations . J Cybersecur . 2019 ; 5 : 1 – 19 .

Gomez MA , Villar EB . Fear, uncertainty, and dread: cognitive heuristics and cyber threats . Polit Gov . 2018 ; 6 : 61 – 72 .

Harrell E , Langton L . The Victims of Identity Theft, 2012 . US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics , 2013 . https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/vit12.pdf

Sinclair SJ , Antonius D . The Psychology of Terrorism Fears . Oxford : Oxford University Press , 2012 .

Quillian L . Prejudice as a response to perceived group threat: population composition and anti-immigrant and racial prejudice in Europe . Am Sociol Rev . 1995 ; 60 : 586 – 611 .

Ben-Nun Bloom P , Arikan G , Lahav G . The effect of perceived cultural and material threats on ethnic preferences in immigration attitudes . Ethn Racial Stud . 2015 ; 38 : 1760 – 78 .

Shoshani A , Slone M . The drama of media coverage of terrorism: emotional and attitudinal impact on the audience . Stud Confl Terror . 2008 ; 31 : 627 – 40 ..‏

Huddy L , Smirnov O , Snider KL et al.  Anger, anxiety, and selective exposure to terrorist violence . J Confl Resolut . 2021 : 00220027211014937 .‏

Greenberg J , Pyszczynski T , Solomon S . The causes and consequences of a need for self-esteem: a terror management theory . In: Public Self and Private Self . New York, NY : Springer , 1986 , ‏ 212 – 189 .

Hall BJ , Hobfoll SE , Canetti D et al.  The defensive nature of benefit finding during ongoing terrorism: an examination of a national sample of Israeli Jews . J Soc Clin Psychol . 2009 ; 28 : 993 – 1021 ..‏

Canetti D , Hall BJ , Rapaport C et al.  Exposure to political violence and political extremism . Eur Psychol . 2013 ; 18 : 263 – 72 .

McCallister E . Guide to Protecting the Confidentiality of Personally Identifiable Information . Darby : Diane Publishing , 2010 .

Graves J , Acquisti A , Anderson R . Experimental measurement of attitudes regarding cybercrime . In: 13th Annual Workshop on the Economics of Information Security . 2014 ; Pennsylvania State University.‏

Huddy L , Feldman S , Capelos T et al.  The consequences of terrorism: disentangling the effects of personal and national threat . Polit Psychol . 2002 ; 23 : 485 – 509 .

Hefetz A , Liberman G . The factor analysis procedure for exploration: a short guide with examples . Cult Educ . 2017 ; 29 : 526 – 62 .

Muthén LK , Muthén BO . MPlus: Statistical Analysis with Latent Variables: User's Guide . Muthén & Muthén , Los Angeles, CA , 2012 .

Galea S , Ahern J , Resnick H et al.  Psychological sequelae of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York City . N Engl J Med . 2002 ; 346 : 982 – 7 .

Canetti-Nisim D , Halperin E , Sharvit K et al.  A new stress-based model of political extremism: personal exposure to terrorism, psychological distress, and exclusionist political attitudes . J Confl Res . 2009 ; 53 : 363 – 89 .

Canetti D , Snider KLG , Pedersen A et al.  Threatened or threatening? How ideology shapes asylum seekers’ immigration policy attitudes in Israel and Australia . J Refug Stud . 2016 ; 29 : 583 – 606 .

Morgan S . Cybersecurity Ventures predicts cybercrime will cost the world in excess of $6 trillion annually by 2021. Cybercrime Magazine . 2017 ; https://cybersecurityventures.com/hackerpocalypse-cybercrime-report-2016/ (11 May 2020, date last accessed) .

Yakter A , Harsgor L . Long-term change in conflict attitudes: a dynamic approach . ‏ 2021 . http://liran.harsgor.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/YakterHarsgor_2021_Long-term-conflict.pdf

Brouard S , Vasilopoulos P , Foucault M . How terrorism affects political attitudes: France in the aftermath of the 2015–2016 attacks . West Eur Polit . 2018 ; 41 : 1073 – 99 .

Castanho Silva B . The (non)impact of the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks on political attitudes . Pers Soc Psychol Bull . 2018 ; 44 : 838 – 50 .

Brandon SE , Silke AP . Near- and long-term psychological effects of exposure to terrorist attacks .‏ In: Bongar B , Brown LM , Beutler LE , al. et (eds). Psychology of Terrorism . Oxford: Oxford University Press 2007 , 175 – 93 .

Pfefferbaum B , Nixon SJ , Krug RS et al.  Clinical needs assessment of middle and high school students following the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing . Am J Psychiatry . 1999 ; 156 : 1069 – 74 ..‏

Galea S , Vlahov D , Resnick H et al.  Trends of probable post-traumatic stress disorder in New York City after the September 11 terrorist attacks . Am J Epidemiol . 2003 ; 158 : 514 – 24 ..‏

Landau MJ , Solomon S , Greenberg J et al.  Deliver us from evil: the effects of mortality salience and reminders of 9/11 on support for President George W. Bush . Pers Soc Psychol Bull . 2004 ; 30 : 1136 – 50 ..‏

Nussio E . Attitudinal and emotional consequences of Islamist terrorism. Evidence from the Berlin attack . Polit Psychol . 2020 ; 41 : 1151 – 71 ..‏

Bada M , Sasse AM , Nurse JRC . Cyber security awareness campaigns: why do they fail to change behaviour? In: International Conference on Cyber Security for Sustainable Society , Global Cyber Security Capacity Centre. 2015 , 1 – 11 .

Shane PM . Cybersecurity policy as if ‘ordinary citizens’ mattered: the case for public participation in cyber policy making . SSRN Electron J . 2012 ; 8 : 433 – 62 .

Shandler R . White paper: Israel as a cyber power . 2019 , DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.15936.07681 .

Gartner forecasts worldwide security spending will reach $96 billion in 2018, up 8 percent from 2017. Gartner. https://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3836563 (1 August 2019, date last accessed) .

Shandler R , Gross ML , Canetti D . A fragile public preference for using cyber strikes: evidence from survey experiments in the United States, United Kingdom and Israel . Contemp Secur Policy . 2021 ; 42 : 135 – 62 .

Prier J . Commanding the trend: social media as information warfare . Strateg Stud Q . 2017 ; 11 : 50 – 85 ..‏

Golovchenko Y , Hartmann M , Adler-Nissen R . State, media and civil society in the information warfare over Ukraine: citizen curators of digital disinformation . Int Aff . 2018 ; 94 : 975 – 94 ..‏

Belk RW . Extended self in a digital world . J Consum Res . 2013 ; 40 : 477 – 500 .

West SM . Data capitalism: redefining the logics of surveillance and privacy . Bus Soc . 2019 ; 58 : 20 – 41 .

Cahane A . The new Israeli cyber draft bill: a preliminary overview . CSRCL . 2018 . https://csrcl.huji.ac.il/news/new-israeli-cyber-law-draft-bill . (10 August, 2021, date last accessed) .

Supplementary data

Email alerts, citing articles via, affiliations.

• Online ISSN 2057-2093
• Print ISSN 2057-2085
• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Institutional account management
• Rights and permissions
• Get help with access
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Cyber Security - List of Essay Samples And Topic Ideas

Cybersecurity, a critical concern in our digitally connected world, encompasses practices, technologies, and policies to protect networks, devices, programs, and data from attack or unauthorized access. Essays could delve into the myriad types of cyber threats like malware, phishing, and ransomware, exploring their evolution and impact on individuals and organizations. They might also discuss the measures individuals and enterprises can adopt to mitigate cyber risks, the challenges of staying ahead of cyber adversaries, and the role of governmental and international regulation in promoting cybersecurity. Discussions could extend to the implications of cybersecurity on national security, privacy, and the digital economy, and how the burgeoning field of cybersecurity is evolving to meet the complex challenges of the modern digital landscape. A substantial compilation of free essay instances related to Cyber Security you can find at Papersowl. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

Cyber Security and how to Prevent Cyber Crime

Cybercrimes are interrupting normal computer functions and has brought many known companies and personal entities to their knees. Over the last decade, crime has entered into the world of information. Crime is developing gradually since the days when merchandise was transported by stagecoach, theft or extortion has changed to keep up, even to our modern-day equivalent-credit and debit cards. Stealing credit card number has become well known danger. In the present, internet has become a playing field for computer attackers. […]

Cyber Security Threats in Healthcare

Cyberattacks have been targeting the healthcare industry, among the biggest industries in the US, in the 2018 period. The implication is that it has come time to improve the protection of institutional and patient information with a more tailored approach to this threat. In comparison with other industries, many health organizations have engaged in inadequate investment in cybersecurity while spending approximately as much money as other industries. It is quite worrying when phishing cyberattacks, as well as breaches of patient […]

Impact of Technology on Privacy

The 21st Century is characterized by the heavy impact technology has on us as a society while it continues to develop new devices and modernize technology. Millions of individuals around the world are now connected digitally, in other words, people globally rely heavily on smartphones tablets, and/ or computers that store or save a majority of their personal information. Critical and extremely personal data is available and collected in these smart technology such as credit card details, fingerprint layout, and […]

We will write an essay sample crafted to your needs.

Cyber Security Threats on the State Level

This paper examines two notable events of cyber warfare and security in our current age (the Stuxnet attack on centrifuges, and the Petya ransomware affecting citizens and governmental agencies), as well as examines how these attacks shape foreign and domestic policies and procedures. By examining the extent of the damage of these two attacks, I will argue that cyber warfare events will not just affect governmental systems, but would ultimately cause destruction to the layman's infrastructure, further crippling any state […]

Essay of Cyber Security Education

The experts and professionals of matters related to cyber security should assign the participant puzzles whereby they should divide themselves into various teams as indicated in the framework of NICE, and each group should specialize in a specific area. There is a wide range of ideas on the cyber security where the riddles may come from the fields like Wireshark, protection of website application, analysis of digital systems, and social engineering. There should be a task force created to conduct […]

Constant the Rise of Technologies and Cyber Threats

There is a wide range of cyber threats that happen every day, it is important that we follow all of the necessary precaution's in order to ensure the safety of our private information including but not limited to passwords, network credentials, banking or credit card information. Malicious attacks occur more frequently than one would expect, their purpose is to damage a device. Most of us are unaware of the weaknesses we have within our smartphone's security settings. With that being […]

Cyber Security for the Average American

According to statistics, the average American spends 10 hours per day using technology. Whether it be a cellphone, tablet or laptop, that's more than 40 hours a week online. We think that we're safe, but part of living in this 21st century is understanding that our so-called private information can easily accessed by the wrong person and made public. I am sure you have heard, at some point, news pertaining to identity theft or data breaches, with the effects being […]

Cyber Security for our Generation

Some of the biggest threats to our national security often go unnoticed. These threats are generally not publicized, and no emphasis is placed on them. They represent some of the most significant challenges our generation faces. It's shocking is that these threats are often covered up or are attempted to be. For instance, one of the key issues that arose in 2018 was the Facebook data scandal. This scandal was not a cyber-attack per se, yet it highlighted that most […]

How Pervasive is the Internet in your Life?

Q.1 How pervasive is the internet in your life? How much do you think society has come to depend on the Internet? Answer: When it comes to how pervasive the internet is in current life, my answer is that the internet has almost influenced each event of our daily life every day. Of course, we can't deny that there may be some people, around our side, who never heard about the internet, for example, those elder people who has less […]

The E-Commerce and Cyber Security

The wish is the online e-commerce company that will provide the opportunity for all shoppers to find their favourite wordrobe online in all of the world. Their wardrobe could be included dresses, skirts, jeans and etc.... This company was founded in 2010 and also have the App for their over 100 million users on the iOS and android platform. The E-Commerce servers for this company is located in four cites internationally, two are in the USA, the headquarter in Alexandria […]

Advanced Cyber Security and its Methodologies

Digital Civilization has turned into a critical wellspring of data sharing and proficient exercises like business, saving money exchanges, shopping, and administrations and With the expansion in utilization of the internet, cybercriminal exercises are additionally expanding exponentially. The fundamental reasons is that with the commencement of internet, the web applications were likewise getting prevalence for information putting away and information sharing, regardless of the client. With the progression of time, web applications were getting more intricate with quick increment in […]

Defining Cybersecurity Law

INTRODUCTION In "Defining Cybersecurity Law," Jeff Kosseff, the author, appears to be more concerned with improving cybersecurity law than defining it. In this paper, I will provide a brief summary and critique of the four substantive sections of this article. I will conclude with a mention of the aspects of cybersecurity law the author missed. My main issues with this article are the author's (1) preoccupation with the prevention of cybersecurity breaches instead of balancing security against values, (2) definition […]

Why do you Want to Study Cyber Security

In today's hyper-connected era, we're more online than offline. Our digital identities intertwine with the real, making the boundary blurry. But as we gleefully navigate this digital frontier, shadows lurk in the form of cyber threats, reminding us that our brave new world isn't without its pitfalls. So, why venture into the challenging world of cybersecurity? Why choose a path that constantly grapples with these shadows? Spoiler alert: It's more than just a career choice. Real-world Superheroes In comic books […]

Health Care Cyber Security

Healthcare is an industry sector that has become unstable and crucial in this expanding digital landscape. This necessitates an organization's data security program to be properly structured, as there is no room for error, which could easily translate into a life-and-death situation. This article presents both fundamental technical and business issues that often elude the healthcare data security program. On the technical side, extensive proliferation of data and systems into the cloud, a continuous increase in connected medical devices, and […]

Substations: Smart Grid & Cyber Security Threats

Transferring from old energy network to a new technology such as smart grids. It changes the energy industry worldwide to better quality, manageability and performance. It gives us the ability to operate it by communications, monitor and control it. However, using communications in smart grid increase connectivity causing our security to be exposed and make it more challenge to protected. It can be a target for hackers, and cyber terrorism. Thus, it got governments, consumer and industry attention to increase […]

Cybersecurity: Protecting the Fragile Web of Global Connectivity

I believe everything that is created by man can also be destroyed by it. Humans have proved to be the most intelligent species in this world. We have created the technology that appears to be smarter than the human brain but if it overpowers the human intelligence it can be destroyed as well. Internet works in the same manner. It has created dependencies that have led to millions of people relying on this technology in getting every task done no […]

Cybersecurity Issues in Societal Perspective

E-governance and Cybersecurity Documents issued by a country's government provide a personal identity to an individual. Driver's licenses, social security numbers, tax identification numbers, and various other entitlement documents are used on a regular basis by people to demonstrate their identity and authorization for various opportunities. Because these documents form the basis for all subsequent documents, their integrity is of high importance to stakeholders. Therefore, these crucial documents are targets for criminals and further cyberattacks (Conklin, A., & White, G. […]

The Real Issue Behind Cyber-Security

The steady trend towards digitalization has been occurring for a long time, and as of lately, a new type of crime market has risen alongside digitalization. In recent years, companies all over the world have been affected by some form of cybersecurity issue whether that be attacks to infrastructure or momentary paralyzation of the company itself through the exploitation of security measures. Over the years the number of attacks all around the world has increased exponentially with many more cyber-attacks […]

Cybersecurity Today

Networks (internet) are not secure enough due to the lack of efficient cybersecurity. As a result, ransomware attacks are increasing, affecting most businesses and individuals today. Enacting measures to detect cyberattacks and ransomware attacks can be helpful in preventing unforeseen repercussions from the attacker in the corporate network. Cybersecurity needs to implement new policies and recommendations so that ransomware attacks can be reduced. This report will first discuss some ransomware attacks that have happened before. Next, the report will discuss […]

Cybersecurity as a Form of Digital Protection

Cybersecurity is an ever-growing form of digital protection, created and used for the sole purpose of protecting confidential information against hard drive malfunctions, power outages, and adversaries. In healthcare, it is crucial for hospitals and health providers to keep up with the security of digital health data through cybersecurity in order to comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and avoid potentially devastating consequences. Insider threats, access control breaches, and network breaches are some of the main […]

Virtual Reality: Game Transfer Phenomena

Imagine if you were you were floating through space, watching a horror film,s or perhaps playing a video game, and it seemed like you were actually there. With the invention of virtual reality (VR), people are able to explore the illusion of this reality. Virtual reality is computer-generated technology used to create a manufactured environment. There is a range of systems that are used for this purpose such as special headsets and fiber optic gloves. The term virtual reality means […]

Cybersecurity Paper

With cybersecurity attacks on the rise, the ability of an organization to ensure uninterrupted operations is an imperative. No longer can an organization solely rely upon software applications to identify and mitigate cyber risks. It takes a skilled team led by an experienced manager to holistically address an organization's technology risks. The National Infrastructure Advisory Council's (NIAC's) definition of infrastructure resilience is "the ability to reduce the magnitude and/or duration of disruptive events. The effectiveness of a resilient infrastructure or […]

Cybercrimes: an Unprecedented Threat to the Society

What is a Cybercrime? Cybercrime, or computer-oriented crime, is the crime that involves computer and its network. The computer may have been used in the commission of a crime, or it may be the target. Cybercrimes can be defined as: "Offences that are committed against individuals or groups of individuals with a criminal motive to intentionally harm the reputation of the victim or cause physical or mental harm, or loss, to the victim directly or indirectly, using modern telecommunication networks […]

Cybersecurity for a Successful Acquisition Report

The act of conducting a policy gap analysis is crucial in determining any missing overlap or technical deficiencies when planning to join the IT architecture and network topologies of two or more companies. During the acquisition process, the policies of either party will be examined in order to confirm current software updates and patches, proper configuration of tools, and employee protocol during the transition. Once the initial merger is complete, it'll be important to compare the outcome with each company's […]

Reasons of Cyber Attacks

1. Substandard User ID and Password Every individual need to have their own password secure and stronger. For an instance strong password can be obtained by latest maintaining minimum of having15-character length with an least one special character, number, capital and small alphabet. Most importantly choosing password like own name, date of birth, phone number may become hacker to simply figure out easy to break through your personal account security. In the same way User ID should not be shared […]

Laws of Cybercrimes

Abstract This paper examines the cyber security and its challenges in current temperamental circumstance of security in present world. These day's innovation of technology persistently developing more quickly than expected. As a public that runs on latest innovation technologies, we are likewise therefore reliant on it. Where similarly as innovation of technology brings ever more noteworthy advantages, it likewise brings ever more prominent threats. We should look some significant concerns confronting that incorporate threats, information theft, identity theft, cyber war, […]

Developing and Testing Photorealistic Avatar with Body Motions and Facial Expressions for Communication in Social Virtual Reality Applications

Developing and Testing Photorealistic Avatar with Body Motions and Facial Expressions for Communication in Social Virtual Reality Applications Abstract Providing effective communication in social virtual reality (VR) applications requires a high level of avatar representation realism and body movement to convey users’ thoughts and behaviours. In this research, we investigate the influence of avatar representation and behaviour on communication in an immersive virtual environment (IVE) by comparing video-based versus model-based avatar representations. Additionally, we introduce a novel VR communication system […]

Advantages of Cybersecurity in a Digital World

Ever stopped to think about how much of your life plays out in the digital realm? Our lives are undeniably intertwined with technology, from morning alarms on our smartphones to evening Netflix binges. Yet, while we eagerly embrace the latest app or gadget, there's an unsung hero behind the scenes, ensuring our digital escapades are safe and sound: cybersecurity. It's easy to dismiss it as mere technical jargon or something only businesses need to worry about. But, truth be told, […]

Featured Categories

Related topic, additional example essays.

• Positive Effects of Social Media
• Appropriate Age for Social Media
• Instagram and body dysmorphia
• Is Social Media Bad for Relationships Argumentative Essay
• The Negative Effects of Social Media On Mental Health
• Leadership and the Army Profession
• Why College Should Not Be Free
• Shakespeare's Hamlet Character Analysis
• A Raisin in the Sun Theme
• Why Abortion Should be Illegal
• The Devil And Tom Walker: Romanticism
• Does Arrest Reduce Domestic Violence

How To Write an Essay About Cyber Security

Understanding cyber security.

Before writing an essay about cyber security, it is essential to understand what it encompasses. Cyber security refers to the practice of protecting systems, networks, and programs from digital attacks. These cyber attacks are usually aimed at accessing, changing, or destroying sensitive information; extorting money from users; or interrupting normal business processes. Begin your essay by defining cyber security and discussing its importance in the contemporary digital world. Explore the different types of cyber threats, such as malware, phishing, ransomware, and denial-of-service attacks. It’s also crucial to understand the impact of these threats on individuals, businesses, and governments.

Developing a Thesis Statement

A strong essay on cyber security should be anchored by a clear, focused thesis statement. This statement should present a specific viewpoint or argument about cyber security. For instance, you might discuss the evolving nature of cyber threats, the challenges of cyber security in a particular sector (like finance or healthcare), or analyze the effectiveness of current cyber security measures. Your thesis will guide the direction of your essay and provide a structured approach to your analysis.

Gathering Supporting Evidence

To support your thesis, gather evidence from credible sources. This might include recent studies on cyber security, statistics about cyber attacks, examples of significant security breaches, or expert opinions. Use this evidence to support your thesis and build a persuasive argument. Remember to consider different perspectives, including technological, ethical, and legal viewpoints.

Analyzing Cyber Security Strategies and Challenges

Dedicate a section of your essay to analyzing cyber security strategies and the challenges faced in implementing them. Discuss various approaches to cyber security, such as technological solutions, policy measures, and user education. Explore the challenges in keeping up with constantly evolving cyber threats and the balance between security and privacy. For example, consider how advancements in areas like artificial intelligence and machine learning are influencing cyber security practices.

Concluding the Essay

Conclude your essay by summarizing the main points of your discussion and restating your thesis in light of the evidence provided. Your conclusion should tie together your analysis and emphasize the significance of cyber security in the digital age. You might also want to reflect on future trends in cyber security or suggest areas where further research or policy development is needed.

Reviewing and Refining Your Essay

After completing your essay, review and edit it for clarity and coherence. Ensure that your arguments are well-structured and supported by evidence. Check for grammatical accuracy and ensure that your essay flows logically from one point to the next. Consider seeking feedback from peers or experts in the field to refine your essay further. A well-written essay on cyber security will not only demonstrate your understanding of the topic but also your ability to engage with complex technological and societal issues.

1. Tell Us Your Requirements

2. Pick your perfect writer

3. Get Your Paper and Pay

Hi! I'm Amy, your personal assistant!

Don't know where to start? Give me your paper requirements and I connect you to an academic expert.

short deadlines

100% Plagiarism-Free

Certified writers

Essay on Cyber Security

Students are often asked to write an essay on Cyber Security in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Cyber Security

Understanding cyber security.

Cyber security is about protecting computers, servers, mobile devices, electronic systems, networks, and data from digital attacks. It’s a critical area as our daily life, economic vitality, and national security rely on a stable, safe, and resilient cyberspace.

The Importance of Cyber Security

Cyber security is important because it helps protect sensitive information, like our personal data and banking details, from being stolen by hackers. It also safeguards against harmful viruses that can damage our devices.

Types of Cyber Threats

Common threats include malware, phishing, and ransomware. Malware is harmful software, phishing tricks people into revealing sensitive information, and ransomware locks users out until they pay a ransom.

Cyber Security Practices

Good practices include using strong passwords, regularly updating software, and not clicking on suspicious links. These can help protect us from cyber threats.

Also check:

• Paragraph on Cyber Security
• Speech on Cyber Security

250 Words Essay on Cyber Security

Introduction to cyber security.

Cybersecurity, a term that has gained paramount importance in the digital age, refers to the practice of protecting internet-connected systems, including hardware, software, and data, from digital attacks. Its significance is amplified by the increasing reliance on technology, which, while offering numerous benefits, also opens up new avenues for potential threats.

The digital landscape is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it facilitates communication, commerce, and innovation. On the other, it provides a fertile ground for cybercriminals to exploit vulnerabilities. Cybersecurity thus becomes crucial in safeguarding sensitive information, preventing unauthorized access, and maintaining system integrity.

Challenges in Cyber Security

However, the complexity and sophistication of cyber threats are growing at an alarming pace. Cybercriminals are using advanced techniques, such as AI and machine learning, to bypass traditional security measures. This necessitates the development of more robust, adaptive cybersecurity strategies.

The Future of Cyber Security

The future of cybersecurity lies in proactive defense mechanisms. By leveraging technologies like AI, predictive analytics, and blockchain, we can anticipate and neutralize threats before they cause harm. Furthermore, fostering a culture of cybersecurity awareness is equally important to empower individuals and organizations against cyber threats.

In conclusion, cybersecurity is a vital aspect of our digital existence. Its importance, challenges, and future prospects underline the need for continuous research, development, and education in this field. As the digital landscape evolves, so too must our approach to cybersecurity.

500 Words Essay on Cyber Security

Cyber security, also known as information technology security, focuses on protecting computers, networks, programs, and data from unintended or unauthorized access, damage, or destruction. In the digital era, the importance of cyber security is growing exponentially due to the increasing reliance on computer systems, the internet, and wireless network standards such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, and due to the growth of smart devices like smartphones and televisions.

The significance of robust cyber security measures cannot be understated. Cyber attacks can lead to serious consequences like identity theft, extortion attempts, deletion of important data, and even the disruption of normal business operations. In more extreme cases, they can lead to the compromise of national security. Hence, cyber security is not just a concern for businesses or governments, but it is a potential threat to all internet users.

Cyber threats can be broadly divided into three categories: Cybercrime includes single actors or groups targeting systems for financial gain or to cause disruption; Cyber-attack often involves politically motivated information gathering; and Cyberterrorism is intended to undermine electronic systems to cause panic or fear. Examples of these threats are malware, phishing, ransomware, and social engineering.

Cyber Security Measures

In response to these threats, several cyber security measures are being employed. These include firewalls, intrusion detection systems, anti-virus software, and encryption. Furthermore, organizations are increasingly recognizing the importance of information assurance, where data integrity, confidentiality, and availability are assured.

As technology evolves, so does the complexity and sophistication of cyber threats. Hence, the future of cyber security lies in constant evolution and adaptation. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are becoming integral in combating cyber threats. These technologies can learn and adapt to new threats, making them more efficient than traditional security measures.

In conclusion, cyber security is a crucial aspect of our digital lives, and its importance will only increase with time. To ensure a secure digital environment, individuals, organizations, and governments must understand the potential threats and employ robust security measures to counter them. The future of cyber security is promising, with the advent of AI and ML, but the road ahead is challenging, requiring constant vigilance and adaptation to new threats.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Cyber Bullying
• Essay on Customer Service
• Essay on Tourism in Kerala

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Why Exabeam

• Security Leaders
• Security Engineers
• Security Analysts

Analyst Corner

r-tec entscheidet sich für die Exabeam Security Operations Platform zur Unterstützung seiner SOC-, MDR- und Vorfallsreaktions-Services

• Exabeam Security Log Management
• Exabeam SIEM

Exabeam Fusion

• Exabeam Security Analytics
• Exabeam Security Investigation
• Cloud-scale Security Log Management
• Powerful Behavioral Analytics
• Automated Investigation Experience
• Exabeam Security Operations Platform

Featured Data Sheet

AI-driven Exabeam Fusion: Bring an end to your SIEM nightmares. It’s time for faster, easier, and more accurate threat detection, investigation, and response (TDIR). Exabeam Fusion applies AI and automation to security operations workflows for a holistic approach to combating cyberthreats, delivering the most effective TDIR. AI-driven detections pinpoint high-risk threats by learning normal behavior ... Read more »

• By Industry
• Financial Services
• Higher Education
• Manufacturing
• By Use Case
• Compromised Insider
• Malicious Insider
• External Threats

Featured Solution Brief

Exabeam Fusion on Google Cloud

As cyberattacks become increasingly frequent, sophisticated, and hard to detect, security operationsteams are struggling with the limitations of legacy security information and event management (SIEM) and traditional perimeter security. Traditional platforms haven’t kept pace with the growth of data, the sophistication of attacks, or the shift to the cloud. Nor can it handle the increasing ... Read more »

• Content Library
• The New CISO Podcast
• Exabeam CTF
• TEN18 by Exabeam
• InfoSec Trends
• Security Operations Center
• Incident Response
• SIEM Trends
• Company News
• New-Scale SIEM
• SIEM Security
• Information Security
• Event Logging
• Log Management
• Insider Threats
• MITRE ATT&CK
• Cloud Security
• GDPR Compliance
• PCI Compliance
• HIPAA Compliance

Featured Resource

Solution Briefs

Find a Partner

• Solution Providers
• Global Service Partners
• Tech Alliances
• MSSP & MDR Partners
• Become a Partner
• About the Partner Program
• Partner Portal
• Exabeam for Good
• Diversity and Inclusion

News and Events

• Press Releases
• Documentation
• GitHub Content Library
• Sales Inquiries
• General Inquiries
• Office Locations

Press Enter to search

• Gartner Magic Quadrant
• Product Portfolio
• Industry Solutions and Use Cases
• Product Features
• Exabeam Blog

InfoSec Trends › Cybersecurity Threats: Everything you Need to Know

Cybersecurity Threats: Everything you Need to Know

Published February 01, 2023

Author --> Orion Cassetto

Reading time 28 mins

Cybersecurity threats continue to grow and evolve in frequency, vector, and complexity. Get a quick, up-to-date review of 21 cybersecurity threats and how to gain the information you need to prevent data breaches and bolster your information security .

This is part of an extensive series of guides about cybersecurity .

In this article:

What are information security threats? The MITRE threat model

• Malware attack
• Social engineering attacks
• Software supply chain attacks
• Advanced persistent threats (APT)
• Distributed denial of service (DDoS)
• Man-in-the-middle attack (MitM)
• Password attacks

Use of artificial intelligence (AI) by attackers

Cybersecurity skills gap, vehicle hacking and internet of things (iot) threats, threats facing mobile devices, cloud security threats, state-sponsored attacks, using threat intelligence for threat prevention.

Cybersecurity threats reflect the risk of experiencing a cyberattack. A cyberattack is an intentional and malicious effort by an organization or an individual to breach the systems of another organization or individual. The attacker’s motives may include information theft, financial gain, espionage, or sabotage.

Because the number of cyberthreats is growing rapidly, it is impossible for organizations to prepare for all of them. To help prioritize cybersecurity efforts, MITRE developed its Threat Assessment and Remediation Analysis (TARA) with a very clear Tactics, Techniques, and Procedure (TTP) analysis. 

Whichever way you model your cybersecurity threats and start to model, the impact or risk is the same calculation as used for all project and program management:

Risk = Likelihood + Impact

Consider the likelihood of a cyberthreat — how easy is it for attackers to carry out an attack? (This can also relate to scores in the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) rankings released by vendors when they announce a vulnerability.) 

Does it take a skilled adversary or is there an easy buy in or download to launch attacks? If skills are required, are there many attackers out there with the relevant skills or are there threat actor groups that organize to execute attacks for profit? But most important, you must ask your team and your experts locally how likely are you to detect and mitigate the threat?

In addition, consider the impact of the threat — how sensitive are the systems likely to be affected, how valuable and sensitive is the data that may be lost, and in general, what would the financial or reputation impact of an attack be?

By combining the likelihood with impact, you can identify threats that are significant to your organization and ensure you are protected.

Related content: Read our explainer to threat modeling .

What are the main types of cybersecurity threats?

The main types of information security threats are:

We cover each of these threats in more detail below.

Related content: Read our explainer to cyber crime .

1. Malware attack

Attacks use many methods to get malware into a user’s device, most often social engineering. Users may be asked to take an action, such as clicking a link or opening an attachment. In other cases, malware uses vulnerabilities in browsers or operating systems to install themselves without the user’s knowledge or consent.

Once malware is installed, it can monitor user activities, send confidential data to the attacker, assist the attacker in penetrating other targets within the network, and even cause the user’s device to participate in a botnet leveraged by the attacker for malicious intent.

Malware attacks include:

• Trojan virus — tricks a user into thinking it is a harmless file. A Trojan can launch an attack on a system and can establish a backdoor, which attackers can use.
• Ransomware — prevents access to the data of the victim and threatens to delete or publish it unless a ransom is paid. Learn more in our guide to ransomware prevention .
• Wiper malware — intends to destroy data or systems, by overwriting targeted files or destroying an entire file system. Wipers are usually intended to send a political message, or hide hacker activities after data exfiltration.
• Worms — this malware is designed to exploit backdoors and vulnerabilities to gain unauthorized access to operating systems. After installation, the worm can perform various attacks, including Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS).
• Spyware — this malware enables malicious actors to gain unauthorized access to data, including sensitive information like payment details and credentials. Spyware can affect mobile phones, desktop applications, and desktop browsers.
• Fileless malware — this type of malware does not require installing software on the operating system. It makes native files such as PowerShell and WMI editable to enable malicious functions, making them recognized as legitimate and difficult to detect.
• Application or website manipulation — OWASP outlines the top 10 application security risks, ranging from broken access controls and security misconfiguration through injection attacks and cryptographic failures. Once the vector is established through service account acquisition, more malware, credential, or APT attacks are launched.

2. Social engineering attacks

Social engineering attacks work by psychologically manipulating users into performing actions desirable to an attacker, or divulging sensitive information.

Social engineering attacks include:

• Phishing — attackers send fraudulent correspondence that seems to come from legitimate sources, usually via email. The email may urge the user to perform an important action or click on a link to a malicious website, leading them to hand over sensitive information to the attacker, or expose themselves to malicious downloads. Phishing emails may include an email attachment infected with malware.
• Spear phishing — a variant of phishing in which attackers specifically target individuals with security privileges or influence, such as system administrators or senior executives.
• Malvertising — online advertising controlled by hackers, which contains malicious code that infects a user’s computer when they click, or even just view the ad. Malvertising has been found on many leading online publications.
• Drive-by downloads — attackers can hack websites and insert malicious scripts into PHP or HTTP code on a page. When users visit the page, malware is directly installed on their computer; or, the attacker’s script redirects users to a malicious site, which performs the download. Drive-by downloads rely on vulnerabilities in browsers or operating systems. Learn more in the guide to drive-by downloads .
• Scareware security software — pretends to scan for malware and then regularly shows the user fake warnings and detections. Attackers may ask the user to pay to remove the fake threats from their computer or to register the software. Users who comply transfer their financial details to an attacker.
• Baiting — occurs when a threat actor tricks a target into using a malicious device, placing a malware-infected physical device, like a USB, where the target can find it. Once the target inserts the device into their computer, they unintentionally install the malware.
• Vishing — voice phishing (vishing) attacks use social engineering techniques to get targets to divulge financial or personal information over the phone.
• Whaling — this phishing attack targets high-profile employees (whales), such as the chief executive officer (CEO) or chief financial officer (CFO). The threat actor attempts to trick the target into disclosing confidential information.
• Pretexting — occurs when a threat actor lies to the target to gain access to privileged data. A pretexting scam may involve a threat actor pretending to confirm the target’s identity by asking for financial or personal data.
• Scareware — a threat actor tricks the victim into thinking they inadvertently downloaded illegal content or that their computer is infected with malware. Next, the threat actor offers the victim a solution to fix the fake problem, tricking the victim into downloading and installing malware.
• Diversion theft — threat actors use social engineers to trick a courier or delivery company into going to a wrong drop-off or pickup location, intercepting the transaction.
• Honey trap — a social engineer assumes a fake identity as an attractive person to interact with a target online. The social engineer fakes an online relationship and gathers sensitive information through this relationship.
• Tailgating or piggybacking — occurs when a threat actor enters a secured building by following authorized personnel. Typically, the staff with legitimate access assumes the person behind is allowed entrance, holding the door open for them.
• Pharming — an online fraud scheme during which a cybercriminal installs malicious code on a server or computer. The code automatically directs users to a fake website, where users are tricked into providing personal data.

Related content: Read detailed explainer on social engineering techniques .

3. Software supply chain attacks

A software supply chain attack is a cyber attack against an organization that targets weak links in its trusted software update and supply chain. A supply chain is the network of all individuals, organizations, resources, activities, and technologies involved in the creation and sale of a product. A software supply chain attack exploits the trust that organizations have in their third-party vendors, particularly in updates and patching. 

This is especially true for network monitoring tools, industrial control systems, “smart” machines, and other network-enabled systems with service accounts. An attack can be made in many places against the vendor continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) software lifecycle, or even against third-party libraries and components as seen via Apache and Spring.

Types of software supply chain attacks:

• Compromise of software build tools or dev/test infrastructure
• Compromise of devices or accounts owned by privileged third-party vendors
• Malicious apps signed with stolen code signing certificates or developer IDs
• Malicious code deployed on hardware or firmware components
• Malware pre-installed on devices such as cameras, USBs, and mobile phones

4. Advanced persistent threats (APT)

When an individual or group gains unauthorized access to a network and remains undiscovered for an extended period of time, attackers may exfiltrate sensitive data, deliberately avoiding detection by the organization’s security staff. APTs require sophisticated attackers and involve major efforts, so they are typically launched against nation states, large corporations, or other highly valuable targets.

Common indicators of an APT presence include:

• New account creation — the P in Persistent comes from an attacker creating an identity or credential on the network with elevated privileges.
• Abnormal activity — legitimate user accounts typically perform in patterns. Abnormal activity on these accounts can indicate an APT is occurring, including noting a stale account which was created then left unused for a time suddenly being active.
• Backdoor/trojan horse malware — extensive use of this method enables APTs to maintain long-term access.
• Odd database activity — for example, a sudden increase in database operations with massive amounts of data.
• Unusual data files — the presence of these files can indicate data has been bundled into files to assist in an exfiltration process.

Related content: Read detailed explainer on privilege escalation detection .

5. Distributed denial of service (DDoS)

The objective of a denial of service (DoS) attack is to overwhelm the resources of a target system and cause it to stop functioning, denying access to its users. Distributed denial of service (DDoS) is a variant of DoS in which attackers compromise a large number of computers or other devices, and use them in a coordinated attack against the target system.

DDoS attacks are often used in combination with other cyberthreats. These attacks may launch a denial of service to capture the attention of security staff and create confusion, while they carry out more subtle attacks aimed at stealing data or causing other damage.

Methods of DDoS attacks include:

• Botnets — systems under hacker control that have been infected with malware. Attackers use these bots to carry out DDoS attacks. Large botnets can include millions of devices and can launch attacks at devastating scale.
• Smurf attack — sends Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echo requests to the victim’s IP address. The ICMP requests are generated from ‘spoofed’ IP addresses. Attackers automate this process and perform it at scale to overwhelm a target system.
• TCP SYN flood attack — attacks flood the target system with connection requests. When the target system attempts to complete the connection, the attacker’s device does not respond, forcing the target system to time out. This quickly fills the connection queue, preventing legitimate users from connecting.

6. Man-in-the-middle attack (MitM)

When users or devices access a remote system over the internet, they assume they are communicating directly with the server of the target system. In a MitM attack, attackers break this assumption, placing themselves in between the user and the target server.

Once the attacker has intercepted communications, they may be able to compromise a user’s credentials, steal sensitive data, and return different responses to the user.

MitM attacks include:

• Session hijacking — an attacker hijacks a session between a network server and a client. The attacking computer substitutes its IP address for the IP address of the client. The server believes it is corresponding with the client and continues the session.
• Replay attack — a cybercriminal eavesdrops on network communication and replays messages at a later time, pretending to be the user. Replay attacks have been largely mitigated by adding timestamps to network communications.
• IP spoofing — an attacker convinces a system that it is corresponding with a trusted, known entity. The system thus provides the attacker with access. The attacker forges its packet with the IP source address of a trusted host, rather than its own IP address.
• Eavesdropping attack — attackers leverage insecure network communication to access information transmitted between the client and server. These attacks are difficult to detect because network transmissions appear to act normally.
• Bluetooth attacks — Because Bluetooth is often open in promiscuous mode, there are many attacks , particularly against phones, that drop contact cards and other malware through open and receiving Bluetooth connections. Usually this compromise of an endpoint is a means to an end, from harvesting credentials to personal information.

7. Password attacks

A hacker can gain access to the password information of an individual by ‘sniffing’ the connection to the network, using social engineering, guessing, or gaining access to a password database. An attacker can ‘guess’ a password in a random or systematic way.

Password attacks include:

• Brute-force password guessing — an attacker uses software to try many different passwords, in hopes of guessing the correct one. The software can use some logic to trying passwords related to the name of the individual, their job, their family, etc.
• Dictionary attack — a dictionary of common passwords is used to gain access to the computer and network of the victim. One method is to copy an encrypted file that has the passwords, apply the same encryption to a dictionary of regularly used passwords, and contrast the findings.
• Pass-the-hash attack — an attacker exploits the authentication protocol in a session and captures a password hash (as opposed to the password characters directly) and then passes it through for authentication and lateral access to other networked systems. In these attack types, the threat actor doesn’t need to decrypt the hash to obtain a plain text password. 
• Golden ticket attack — a golden ticket attack starts in the same way as a pass-the-hash attack, where on a Kerberos (Windows AD) system the attacker uses the stolen password hash to access the key distribution center to forge a ticket-granting-ticket (TGT) hash. Mimikatz attacks frequently use this attack vector.

Cyberthreat actors

When you identify a cyberthreat, it’s important to understand who the threat actor is, as well as their tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP). Common sources of cyberthreats include:

• State-sponsored — cyberattacks by countries can disrupt communications, military activities, or other services that citizens use daily.
• Terrorists — terrorists may attack government or military targets, but at times may also target civilian websites to disrupt and cause lasting damage.
• Industrial spies — organized crime and international corporate spies carry out industrial espionage and monetary theft. Their primary motive is financial.
• Organized crime groups — criminal groups infiltrate systems for monetary gain. Organized crime groups use phishing, spam, and malware to carry out identity theft and online fraud. There are organized crime groups who exist to sell hacking services to others as well, maintaining even support and services for profiteers and industrial spies alike.
• Hackers — there is a large global population of hackers, ranging from beginner “script kiddies” or those leveraging ready-made threat toolkits, to sophisticated operators who can develop new types of threats and avoid organizational defenses.
• Hacktivists — hacktivists are hackers who penetrate or disrupt systems for political or ideological reasons rather than financial gain.
• Malicious insider — insiders represent a very serious threat, as they have existing access to corporate systems and knowledge of target systems and sensitive data. Insider threats can be devastating and very difficult to detect.
• Cyber espionage — is a form of cyberattack that steals classified, or sensitive intellectual data to gain an advantage over a competitive company or government entity.

Related content: Read detailed explainer on security incidents .

Emerging information security threats and challenges in 2023

As technology evolves, so do the threats and issues that security teams face. Below are a few of the top trends and concerns in cybersecurity today.

AI is a double-edged sword; it is improving security solutions but at the same time is leveraged by attackers to bypass those solutions. Part of the reason for this is the growing accessibility to AI. In the past, developing machine learning models was only possible if you had access to significant budgets and resources. Now, however, models can be developed on personal laptops.

This accessibility makes AI a tool that has expanded from major digital arms races to everyday attacks. While security teams are using AI to try to detect suspicious behavior, criminals are using it to make bots that pass for human users and to dynamically change the characteristics and behaviors of malware.

There is a constant concern over the cybersecurity skills gap . There are simply not enough cybersecurity experts to fill all of the positions needed. As more companies are created and others update their existing security strategies, this number increases.

Modern threats, from cloned identities to deep fake campaigns, are getting harder to detect and stop. The security skills required to combat these threats go far beyond just understanding how to implement tools or configure encryptions. These threats require diverse knowledge of a wide variety of technologies, configurations, and environments. To obtain these skills, organizations must recruit high-level experts or dedicate the resources to training their own.

The amount of data contained in a modern vehicle is huge. Even cars that are not autonomous are loaded with a variety of smart sensors. This includes GPS devices, built-in communications platforms, cameras, and AI controllers. Many people’s homes, workplaces, and communities are full of similar smart devices. For example, personal assistants embedded in speakers are smart devices.

The data on these devices can provide sensitive information to criminals. This information includes private conversations, sensitive images, tracking information, and access to any accounts used with devices. These devices can be easily leveraged by attackers for blackmail or personal gain. For example, abusing financial information or selling information on the black market.

With vehicles in particular, the threat of personal harm is also very real. When vehicles are partially or entirely controlled by computers, attackers have the opportunity to hack vehicles just like any other device. This could enable them to use vehicles as weapons against others or as a means to harm the driver or passengers.

Even if people haven’t fully embraced smart technologies, nearly everyone has a mobile device of some sort. Smartphones, laptops, and tablets are common. These devices are often multipurpose, used for both work and personal activities, and users may connect devices to multiple networks throughout the day.

This abundance and widespread use make mobile devices an appealing target for attackers. Targeting is not new but the real challenge comes from security teams not having full control over devices. Bring your own device (BYOD) policies are common but these policies often do not include internal control or management.

Often, security teams are only able to control what happens with these devices within the network perimeter. Devices may be out of date, already infected with malware, or have insufficient protections. The only way security teams may have to block these threats is to refuse connectivity, which isn’t practical.

With businesses moving to cloud resources daily, many environments are growing more complex. This is particularly true in the case of hybrid and multi-cloud environments, which require extensive monitoring and integration.

With every cloud service and resource that is included in an environment, the number of endpoints and the chances for misconfiguration increase. Additionally, since resources are in the cloud, most, if not all endpoints are Internet-facing, granting access to attackers on a global scale.

To secure these environments, cybersecurity teams need advanced, centralized tooling and often more resources. This includes resources for 24/7 protection and monitoring since resources are running and potentially vulnerable even when the workday is over.

The Russia-Ukraine war and the new geopolitical situation has raised the stakes of state-sponsored attacks against Western nations and organizations. As more of the world moves to the digital realm, the number of large-scale and state-sponsored attacks are increasing. Networks of hackers can now be leveraged and bought by opposing nation-states and interest groups to cripple governmental and organizational systems.

For some of these attacks, the results are readily apparent. For example, numerous attacks have been identified that involved tampering with elections. Others, however, may go unnoticed, silently gathering sensitive information, such as military strategies or business intelligence. In either case, the resources funding these attacks enables criminals to use advanced and distributed strategies that are difficult to detect and prevent.

Threat intelligence is organized, pre-analyzed information about attacks that may threaten an organization. Threat intelligence helps organizations understand potential or current cyberthreats. The more information security staff have about threat actors, their capabilities, infrastructure, and motives, the better they can defend their organization.

Threat intelligence systems are commonly used in combination with other security tools. When a security system identifies a threat, it can be cross-referenced with threat intelligence data to immediately understand the nature of the threat, its severity, and known methods for mitigating or containing the threat. In many cases, threat intelligence can help automatically block threats — for example, known bad IP addresses can be fed to a firewall, to automatically block traffic from compromised servers.

Threat intelligence is typically provided in the form of feeds. There are free threat intelligence feeds, and others provided by commercial security research bodies. Several vendors provide threat intelligence platforms that come with numerous threat intelligence feeds and help manage threat data and integrate it with other security systems.

Using UEBA and SOAR to mitigate information security threats

User and Entity Behavior Analytics ( UEBA ) and Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response ( SOAR ) are technologies that aggregate threat activity data and automate processes related to its identification and analysis, increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of security teams. 

UEBA uses machine learning to construct a baseline of normal behavior for users or devices/entities within a network, which helps to detect deviations from the baseline behavior. Behavior models and machine learning assign various levels of risk depending on the type of behavior. The risk score of the user or device for an event is determined and is stitched with related events into a timeline to assess if these events pose a threat to an organization. By tying together the behaviors identified as anomalous, analysts can trace all the steps an attacker has taken and thus pin down the threat quickly.

Unlike SIEM, UEBA solutions can detect threat activity over an extended period across multiple organizational systems. UEBA allows security teams to work more efficiently by narrowing down the number of threats they need to investigate, generating alerts, and providing information on breaches that occur. 

UEBA can help identify a variety of insider threats, data exfiltration, and lateral movement: 

• Malicious insiders — by determining a baseline of behavior for users, UEBA can detect abnormal activity and assist in interpreting intent. For example, a user might have genuine access privileges but not need to access sensitive data at a given time or place.
• Compromised insiders — users with access privileges can become compromised through malware or phishing attempts, allowing their credentials to be used to initiate an attack. Attackers often change credentials, IP addresses, or devices once in the system. By comparing device and user behavior to baselines, UEBA can identify these attacks in a way that traditional security tools like firewalls and antivirus cannot.
• Data exfiltration — tools like data loss prevention (DLP) that use machine learning, dictionary models, and behavior models to gather all evidence related to sensitive data exfiltration can quickly investigate and alert on anomalous activity. This includes data uploads, remote logins, database activities, cloud access, and file share access. 
• Lateral movement — attackers often traverse a network using a variety of IP addresses, credentials, and machines in search of key assets and data. UEBA tools detect this movement by enriching data with context which allows them to distinguish between servers, users, service accounts, HR personnel, finance staff, and executives and determine if they are behaving suspiciously.

UEBA can also prioritize high-risk events and monitor large numbers of devices:

• Incident prioritization — can help determine which incidents are particularly suspicious or dangerous by evaluating them in the context of organizational structure and potential for damage.
• Monitoring large numbers of devices — can be used even when a baseline for normal behavior has not yet been developed, using heuristic methods like supervised machine learning, Bayesian networks, unsupervised learning, reinforced machine learning, and deep learning.

SOAR tools collect data for security investigations from multiple sources, facilitate incident analysis and triage with machine assistance, define and direct threat response workflow, and enable automated incident response. 

Security teams can integrate SOAR tools with other security solutions to respond to incidents more effectively. They can use these solutions through a generic interface, eliminating the need for expert analysts specializing in each system. SOAR allows security teams to automate enforcement and status tracking or auditing tasks based on decision-making workflows as assigned. 

SOAR tools simplify incident management and collaboration by automatically generating incidents based on guidelines and including relevant contextual information. They provide a timeline of events for analysis and allow for the addition of evidence as it is found as well as assisting case management by accepting documentation of threats, responses, and outcomes. A comprehensive UEBA solution goes hand-in-hand with SOAR as an effective investigation tool, where the ultimate goal of SOC analysts is to reduce the time needed to detect threats and respond to incidents. 

Finally, SOAR tools aid security teams in effectively responding to security incidents by proactively enforcing processes to gather comprehensive evidence, seamlessly integrating with various third-party services and security vendors, and associating a timeline of events to pinpoint anomalous behavior.

Learn More About Cybersecurity Threat

Information Security Threats and Tools for Addressing Them

The value of information today makes it a desirable commodity and a tempting target for theft and sabotage, putting those creating and using it at risk of attack. Criminals are constantly finding new ways of bypassing security tools and security developers are working to stay ahead by building more intelligent solutions.

The loss of information can cause great harm to a company, but by taking the right precautions and using the appropriate tools, the risk can be greatly minimized. Read on to find out what types of information security threats you have to consider, including examples of common threats, and how you can mitigate your risks.

Read more: Information Security Threats and Tools for Addressing Them

Drive By Downloads: What They Are and How to Avoid Them

Most people don’t think twice about the websites they visit, quickly clicking through and not paying much attention to whether a link will redirect them or if a secure protocol is being used. Often, this isn’t a problem but if you happen to visit a site that has been compromised, your system can be quickly infected by a drive by download.

Here, we’ll look at what a drive by download is, the type of damage it can cause, and cover some strategies that your security operations center can use to minimize your risk.

Read more: Drive By Downloads: What They Are and How to Avoid Them

Cyber Crime: Types, Examples, and What Your Business Can Do

Cyber crime is the flip side of cybersecurity — a huge spectrum of damaging and illegal activity carried out using computers and the Internet. This article will help you understand cyber crime and how to defend your organization against it.

Read more: Cyber Crime: Types, Examples, and What Your Business Can Do

What is MITRE ATT&CK: An Explainer

MITRE ATT&CK is a globally-accessible knowledge base of adversary tactics and techniques based on real-world observations of cyberattacks. They’re displayed in matrices that are arranged by attack stages, from initial system access to data theft or machine control. There are matrices for common desktop platforms—Linux, macOS and Windows—as well as mobile platforms.

Read more: What is MITRE ATT&CK: An Explainer

The MITRE ATT&CK framework, model, and taxonomy provide a categorized and structured catalog of tactics (the “why” of an attack) and techniques (the “how” and sometimes the “what” of an attack). The relationship between tactics and techniques is organized and presented as the ATT&CK matrix. The philosophy of the ATT&CK model is that by focusing on and prioritizing your defense against documented threat behavior, you can understand, prevent, and mitigate these threats and attacks.

Read more: Mitigating Security Threats with MITRE ATT&CK

Defending Against Ransomware: Prevention, Protection, Removal

A ransomware attack can be crippling for an organization. During an attack, cybercriminals will block access to your files or network, claiming that if you pay a ransom fee, your access will be restored. An effective ransomware defense strategy is essential to prevent extensive damage and must include three pillars: prevention, protection, and quick removal.

Read more: Defending Against Ransomware: Prevention, Protection, Removal

Top 5 Social Engineering Techniques and How to Prevent Them

Social engineering takes advantage of the weakest link in our security chain — our human workforce — to gain access to corporate networks. Attackers use increasingly sophisticated trickery and emotional manipulation to cause employees, even senior staff, to surrender sensitive information. Learn about the stages of a social engineering attack, what are the top social engineering threats according to the InfoSec Institute, and best practices to defend against them.

Read more: Top 5 Social Engineering Techniques and How to Prevent Them

Privilege Escalation Detection: The Key to Preventing Advanced Attacks

Attackers are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and organized groups of hackers are carrying out advanced attacks against attractive targets. A key component in almost all advanced attacks is privilege escalation — an attempt to compromise an account, and then expand the attacker’s privileges, either by gaining control of more accounts or increasing the privilege level of the compromised account.

Read on to understand how privilege escalation works, how to detect it in your organization, and how to protect your systems and stop advanced attacks before they reach your most sensitive assets.

Read more: Privilege Escalation Detection: The Key to Preventing Advanced Attacks

SIEM Concepts: Security Incidents

Security incidents indicate the failure of security measures or the breach of organizations’ systems or data. This includes any event that threatens the integrity, availability, or confidentiality of information. Causes of security incidents include perimeter breaches, cyber attacks, and insider threats.

Incidents usually require an IT administrator to take action. Incident response (IR) is an organized process by which organizations defend themselves against security incidents.

Read more: SIEM Concepts: Security Incidents

See Additional Guides on Key Cybersecurity Topics

Together with our content partners, we have authored in-depth guides on several other topics that can also be useful as you explore the world of cybersecurity .

Authored by Exabeam

• What Is UEBA (User and Entity Behavior Analytics)?
• What Is UEBA and Why It Should Be an Essential Part of Your Incident Response
• UEBA Tools: Key Capabilities and 7 Tools You Should Know

What is TTPs

• What is Lateral Movement and How to Protect Against It | Exabeam
• What Are TTPs and How Understanding Them Can Help Prevent the Next Incident

Authored by Cynet

Tags: Threat Intelligence , cybersecurity threats ,

Similar Posts

Generative AI is Reshaping Cybersecurity. Is Your Organization Prepared?

British Library: Exabeam Insights into Lessons Learned

Beyond the Horizon: Navigating the Evolving Cybersecurity Landscape of 2024

Recent Posts

What’s New in Exabeam Product Development – March 2024

Take TDIR to a Whole New Level: Achieving Security Operations Excellence

Stay Informed

Subscribe today and we'll send our latest blog posts right to your inbox, so you can stay ahead of the cybercriminals and defend your organization.

See a world-class SIEM solution in action

Most reported breaches involved lost or stolen credentials. How can you keep pace?

Exabeam delivers SOC teams industry-leading analytics, patented anomaly detection, and Smart Timelines to help teams pinpoint the actions that lead to exploits.

Whether you need a SIEM replacement, a legacy SIEM modernization with XDR, Exabeam offers advanced, modular, and cloud-delivered TDIR.

Get a demo today!

Privacy Overview

• CBSE Class 10th
• CBSE Class 12th
• UP Board 10th
• UP Board 12th
• Bihar Board 10th
• Bihar Board 12th
• Top Schools in India
• Top Schools in Delhi
• Top Schools in Mumbai
• Top Schools in Chennai
• Top Schools in Hyderabad
• Top Schools in Kolkata
• Top Schools in Pune
• Top Schools in Bangalore

Products & Resources

• JEE Main Knockout April
• Free Sample Papers
• Free Ebooks
• NCERT Notes
• NCERT Syllabus
• NCERT Books
• RD Sharma Solutions
• Navodaya Vidyalaya Admission 2024-25
• NCERT Solutions
• NCERT Solutions for Class 12
• NCERT Solutions for Class 11
• NCERT solutions for Class 10
• NCERT solutions for Class 9
• NCERT solutions for Class 8
• NCERT Solutions for Class 7
• JEE Main 2024
• MHT CET 2024
• JEE Advanced 2024
• BITSAT 2024
• View All Engineering Exams
• Colleges Accepting B.Tech Applications
• Top Engineering Colleges in India
• Engineering Colleges in India
• Engineering Colleges in Tamil Nadu
• Engineering Colleges Accepting JEE Main
• Top IITs in India
• Top NITs in India
• Top IIITs in India
• JEE Main College Predictor
• JEE Main Rank Predictor
• MHT CET College Predictor
• AP EAMCET College Predictor
• GATE College Predictor
• KCET College Predictor
• JEE Advanced College Predictor
• View All College Predictors
• JEE Main Question Paper
• JEE Main Cutoff
• JEE Main Answer Key
• JEE Main Result
• Download E-Books and Sample Papers
• Compare Colleges
• B.Tech College Applications
• JEE Advanced Registration
• MAH MBA CET Exam
• View All Management Exams

Colleges & Courses

• MBA College Admissions
• MBA Colleges in India
• Top IIMs Colleges in India
• Top Online MBA Colleges in India
• MBA Colleges Accepting XAT Score
• BBA Colleges in India
• XAT College Predictor 2024
• SNAP College Predictor
• NMAT College Predictor
• MAT College Predictor 2024
• CMAT College Predictor 2024
• CAT Percentile Predictor 2023
• CAT 2023 College Predictor
• CMAT 2024 Registration
• TS ICET 2024 Registration
• CMAT Exam Date 2024
• MAH MBA CET Cutoff 2024
• Download Helpful Ebooks
• List of Popular Branches
• QnA - Get answers to your doubts
• IIM Fees Structure
• AIIMS Nursing
• Top Medical Colleges in India
• Top Medical Colleges in India accepting NEET Score
• Medical Colleges accepting NEET
• List of Medical Colleges in India
• List of AIIMS Colleges In India
• Medical Colleges in Maharashtra
• Medical Colleges in India Accepting NEET PG
• NEET College Predictor
• NEET PG College Predictor
• NEET MDS College Predictor
• DNB CET College Predictor
• DNB PDCET College Predictor
• NEET Application Form 2024
• NEET PG Application Form 2024
• NEET Cut off
• NEET Online Preparation
• Download Helpful E-books
• LSAT India 2024
• Colleges Accepting Admissions
• Top Law Colleges in India
• Law College Accepting CLAT Score
• List of Law Colleges in India
• Top Law Colleges in Delhi
• Top Law Collages in Indore
• Top Law Colleges in Chandigarh
• Top Law Collages in Lucknow

Predictors & E-Books

• CLAT College Predictor
• MHCET Law ( 5 Year L.L.B) College Predictor
• AILET College Predictor
• Sample Papers
• Compare Law Collages
• Careers360 Youtube Channel
• CLAT Syllabus 2025
• CLAT Previous Year Question Paper
• AIBE 18 Result 2023
• NID DAT Exam
• Pearl Academy Exam

Animation Courses

• Animation Courses in India
• Animation Courses in Bangalore
• Animation Courses in Mumbai
• Animation Courses in Pune
• Animation Courses in Chennai
• Animation Courses in Hyderabad
• Design Colleges in India
• Fashion Design Colleges in Bangalore
• Fashion Design Colleges in Mumbai
• Fashion Design Colleges in Pune
• Fashion Design Colleges in Delhi
• Fashion Design Colleges in Hyderabad
• Fashion Design Colleges in India
• Top Design Colleges in India
• Free Design E-books
• List of Branches
• Careers360 Youtube channel
• NIFT College Predictor
• UCEED College Predictor
• NID DAT College Predictor
• IPU CET BJMC
• JMI Mass Communication Entrance Exam
• IIMC Entrance Exam
• Media & Journalism colleges in Delhi
• Media & Journalism colleges in Bangalore
• Media & Journalism colleges in Mumbai
• List of Media & Journalism Colleges in India
• CA Intermediate
• CA Foundation
• CS Executive
• CS Professional
• Difference between CA and CS
• Difference between CA and CMA
• CA Full form
• CMA Full form
• CS Full form
• CA Salary In India

Top Courses & Careers

• Bachelor of Commerce (B.Com)
• Master of Commerce (M.Com)
• Company Secretary
• Cost Accountant
• Charted Accountant
• Credit Manager
• Financial Advisor
• Top Commerce Colleges in India
• Top Government Commerce Colleges in India
• Top Private Commerce Colleges in India
• Top M.Com Colleges in Mumbai
• Top B.Com Colleges in India
• IT Colleges in Tamil Nadu
• IT Colleges in Uttar Pradesh
• MCA Colleges in India
• BCA Colleges in India

Quick Links

• Information Technology Courses
• Programming Courses
• Web Development Courses
• Data Analytics Courses
• Big Data Analytics Courses
• RUHS Pharmacy Admission Test
• Top Pharmacy Colleges in India
• Pharmacy Colleges in Pune
• Pharmacy Colleges in Mumbai
• Colleges Accepting GPAT Score
• Pharmacy Colleges in Lucknow
• List of Pharmacy Colleges in Nagpur
• GPAT Result
• GPAT 2024 Admit Card
• GPAT Question Papers
• NCHMCT JEE 2024
• Mah BHMCT CET
• Top Hotel Management Colleges in Delhi
• Top Hotel Management Colleges in Hyderabad
• Top Hotel Management Colleges in Mumbai
• Top Hotel Management Colleges in Tamil Nadu
• Top Hotel Management Colleges in Maharashtra
• B.Sc Hotel Management
• Hotel Management
• Diploma in Hotel Management and Catering Technology

Diploma Colleges

• Top Diploma Colleges in Maharashtra
• UPSC IAS 2024
• SSC CGL 2024
• IBPS RRB 2024
• Previous Year Sample Papers
• Free Competition E-books
• Sarkari Result
• QnA- Get your doubts answered
• UPSC Previous Year Sample Papers
• CTET Previous Year Sample Papers
• SBI Clerk Previous Year Sample Papers
• NDA Previous Year Sample Papers

Upcoming Events

• NDA Application Form 2024
• UPSC IAS Application Form 2024
• CDS Application Form 2024
• CTET Admit card 2024
• HP TET Result 2023
• SSC GD Constable Admit Card 2024
• UPTET Notification 2024
• SBI Clerk Result 2024

Other Exams

• SSC CHSL 2024
• UP PCS 2024
• UGC NET 2024
• RRB NTPC 2024
• IBPS PO 2024
• IBPS Clerk 2024
• IBPS SO 2024
• Top University in USA
• Top University in Canada
• Top University in Ireland
• Top Universities in UK
• Top Universities in Australia
• Best MBA Colleges in Abroad
• Business Management Studies Colleges

Top Countries

• Study in USA
• Study in UK
• Study in Canada
• Study in Australia
• Study in Ireland
• Study in Germany
• Study in China
• Study in Europe

Student Visas

• Student Visa Canada
• Student Visa UK
• Student Visa USA
• Student Visa Australia
• Student Visa Germany
• Student Visa New Zealand
• Student Visa Ireland
• CUET PG 2024
• IGNOU B.Ed Admission 2024
• DU Admission 2024
• UP B.Ed JEE 2024
• LPU NEST 2024
• IIT JAM 2024
• IGNOU Online Admission 2024
• Universities in India
• Top Universities in India 2024
• Top Colleges in India
• Top Universities in Uttar Pradesh 2024
• Top Universities in Bihar
• Top Universities in Madhya Pradesh 2024
• Top Universities in Tamil Nadu 2024
• Central Universities in India
• CUET Exam City Intimation Slip 2024
• IGNOU Date Sheet
• CUET Mock Test 2024
• CUET Admit card 2024
• CUET PG Syllabus 2024
• CUET Participating Universities 2024
• CUET Previous Year Question Paper
• CUET Syllabus 2024 for Science Students
• E-Books and Sample Papers
• CUET Exam Pattern 2024
• CUET Exam Date 2024
• CUET Syllabus 2024
• IGNOU Exam Form 2024
• IGNOU Result
• CUET Courses List 2024

Engineering Preparation

• Knockout JEE Main 2024
• Test Series JEE Main 2024
• JEE Main 2024 Rank Booster

Medical Preparation

• Knockout NEET 2024
• Test Series NEET 2024
• Rank Booster NEET 2024

Online Courses

• JEE Main One Month Course
• NEET One Month Course
• IBSAT Free Mock Tests
• IIT JEE Foundation Course
• Knockout BITSAT 2024
• Career Guidance Tool

Top Streams

• IT & Software Certification Courses
• Engineering and Architecture Certification Courses
• Programming And Development Certification Courses
• Business and Management Certification Courses
• Marketing Certification Courses
• Health and Fitness Certification Courses
• Design Certification Courses

Specializations

• Digital Marketing Certification Courses
• Cyber Security Certification Courses
• Artificial Intelligence Certification Courses
• Business Analytics Certification Courses
• Data Science Certification Courses
• Cloud Computing Certification Courses
• Machine Learning Certification Courses
• View All Certification Courses
• UG Degree Courses
• PG Degree Courses
• Short Term Courses
• Free Courses
• Online Degrees and Diplomas
• Compare Courses

Top Providers

• Coursera Courses
• Udemy Courses
• Edx Courses
• Swayam Courses
• upGrad Courses
• Simplilearn Courses
• Great Learning Courses

Access premium articles, webinars, resources to make the best decisions for career, course, exams, scholarships, study abroad and much more with

Plan, Prepare & Make the Best Career Choices

Cyber Security Essay

Cyber security is one of the most important topics in today’s digital world. With technology evolving at an unprecedented pace and more companies going online than ever before, it’s essential that everyone understands the basics of cyber security. Here are some sample essays on cyber security.

• 100 Words Essay On Cyber Security

As a student in today's digital world, it's important to remember the importance of cyber security. Today, almost everything that we do is done online or through the internet, and that means our personal information, like our passwords, banking information, and even our school work, is vulnerable to cyber security threats.

200 Words Essay On Cyber Security

500 words essay on cyber security.

Cyber security is the practice of protecting networks, systems, and programs from digital attacks. These attacks can come from many different sources, including hackers, viruses, and even from other people. In order to stay safe online, it's essential to understand the basics of cyber security. Cyber security is an ever-evolving field, and it's important for school students to stay informed and take the necessary steps to protect themselves online.

School students are the future of our society, and it's important to teach them the importance of cyber security from an early age. Cyber security is an ever-increasing problem in our digital world, and it's up to us to ensure that our students are aware of the risks and dangers that come with the internet.

What Is Cyber Security?

Cyber security is the practice of protecting digital devices and networks from unauthorised access and malicious activities. With the rise of technology and its integration into our lives, cyber security has become an integral part of our lives, and it's important for school students to understand the need for cyber security measures.

How To Protect Yourself From Cyber Crime?

One of the most important ways to protect your devices and networks from cyber threats is to create strong passwords and never share them with anyone else. Passwords are the first line of defence against cyber attacks, and it's important that school students understand how to create and use strong passwords. Additionally, students should be taught to never share personal information online, such as passwords, credit card numbers, and bank account information.

Staying informed is the best way to stay ahead of the latest threats, and it's important for students to stay up-to-date on the latest cyber security news and updates.

Cyber security is the use of antivirus and anti-malware software. These programs are designed to detect and block malicious programs, such as viruses, worms, and Trojans, before they can do any damage to your devices and networks. By teaching our students about the importance of cyber security, we can ensure that they will be better prepared to protect themselves and their devices from cyber threats.

Cyber Security is essential for all those who regularly and frequently use electronic devices. With so much of our sensitive data and documents stored on these gadgets, it is essential to ensure their protection. There are several ways to protect your devices from cyber threats, such as using Antivirus and Antimalware software, and implementing End-User Protection solutions. Taking the necessary steps to secure your devices can help keep your data safe and secure.

Causes Of Cyber Crime

There are many different causes of cybercrime, but most can be categorised into one of three categories:

Personal gain | This is perhaps the most common motivation for cybercrime, as it can be very lucrative. Cybercriminals may engage in activities such as identity theft, phishing scams, and credit card fraud in order to make money.

Revenge or vandalism | Some cybercriminals commit crimes out of a desire for revenge or simply to cause havoc. They may engage in activities such as denial of service attacks, website defacement, or even doxxing (releasing personal information online).

Political or ideological motivations | In some cases, cybercrime is committed for political or ideological reasons. For example, hackers may attack a website in order to protest its content or disrupt its operations.

How To Increase Cyber Security

For school students, cyber security is especially important. Many students use the internet for their studies, making them more vulnerable to cyberattacks. Hackers may try to access school networks, steal student data, or even disrupt classes. It’s important for students to know how to protect themselves from cyber threats. There are some simple steps that you can take to ensure your safety and security.

The first step is to create strong passwords for all of your accounts. Passwords should be hard to guess and should never be shared with anyone. Make sure to use a combination of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. It's also important to change your passwords regularly.

Next, you should be sure to protect your personal information. This means making sure that you don't share your passwords or other sensitive information online. Be sure to use an up-to-date antivirus program to scan your computer regularly for malicious software.

Finally, be sure to stay informed about the latest cyber security threats. Keeping up with the news and reading articles on cyber security can help you stay aware of the latest threats and how to protect yourself against them.

By following these tips, you can stay safe online and protect your personal information. Cyber security is an important issue and it's important to take it seriously. If you take the time to learn more about cyber security and make sure you take steps to protect yourself, you can stay safe online and enjoy the benefits of today's digital world.

Explore Career Options (By Industry)

• Construction
• Entertainment
• Manufacturing
• Information Technology

Data Administrator

Database professionals use software to store and organise data such as financial information, and customer shipping records. Individuals who opt for a career as data administrators ensure that data is available for users and secured from unauthorised sales. DB administrators may work in various types of industries. It may involve computer systems design, service firms, insurance companies, banks and hospitals.

Bio Medical Engineer

The field of biomedical engineering opens up a universe of expert chances. An Individual in the biomedical engineering career path work in the field of engineering as well as medicine, in order to find out solutions to common problems of the two fields. The biomedical engineering job opportunities are to collaborate with doctors and researchers to develop medical systems, equipment, or devices that can solve clinical problems. Here we will be discussing jobs after biomedical engineering, how to get a job in biomedical engineering, biomedical engineering scope, and salary. 

Ethical Hacker

A career as ethical hacker involves various challenges and provides lucrative opportunities in the digital era where every giant business and startup owns its cyberspace on the world wide web. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path try to find the vulnerabilities in the cyber system to get its authority. If he or she succeeds in it then he or she gets its illegal authority. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path then steal information or delete the file that could affect the business, functioning, or services of the organization.

GIS officer work on various GIS software to conduct a study and gather spatial and non-spatial information. GIS experts update the GIS data and maintain it. The databases include aerial or satellite imagery, latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates, and manually digitized images of maps. In a career as GIS expert, one is responsible for creating online and mobile maps.

Data Analyst

The invention of the database has given fresh breath to the people involved in the data analytics career path. Analysis refers to splitting up a whole into its individual components for individual analysis. Data analysis is a method through which raw data are processed and transformed into information that would be beneficial for user strategic thinking.

Data are collected and examined to respond to questions, evaluate hypotheses or contradict theories. It is a tool for analyzing, transforming, modeling, and arranging data with useful knowledge, to assist in decision-making and methods, encompassing various strategies, and is used in different fields of business, research, and social science.

Geothermal Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as geothermal engineers are the professionals involved in the processing of geothermal energy. The responsibilities of geothermal engineers may vary depending on the workplace location. Those who work in fields design facilities to process and distribute geothermal energy. They oversee the functioning of machinery used in the field.

Database Architect

If you are intrigued by the programming world and are interested in developing communications networks then a career as database architect may be a good option for you. Data architect roles and responsibilities include building design models for data communication networks. Wide Area Networks (WANs), local area networks (LANs), and intranets are included in the database networks. It is expected that database architects will have in-depth knowledge of a company's business to develop a network to fulfil the requirements of the organisation. Stay tuned as we look at the larger picture and give you more information on what is db architecture, why you should pursue database architecture, what to expect from such a degree and what your job opportunities will be after graduation. Here, we will be discussing how to become a data architect. Students can visit NIT Trichy , IIT Kharagpur , JMI New Delhi . 

Remote Sensing Technician

Individuals who opt for a career as a remote sensing technician possess unique personalities. Remote sensing analysts seem to be rational human beings, they are strong, independent, persistent, sincere, realistic and resourceful. Some of them are analytical as well, which means they are intelligent, introspective and inquisitive. 

Remote sensing scientists use remote sensing technology to support scientists in fields such as community planning, flight planning or the management of natural resources. Analysing data collected from aircraft, satellites or ground-based platforms using statistical analysis software, image analysis software or Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a significant part of their work. Do you want to learn how to become remote sensing technician? There's no need to be concerned; we've devised a simple remote sensing technician career path for you. Scroll through the pages and read.

Budget Analyst

Budget analysis, in a nutshell, entails thoroughly analyzing the details of a financial budget. The budget analysis aims to better understand and manage revenue. Budget analysts assist in the achievement of financial targets, the preservation of profitability, and the pursuit of long-term growth for a business. Budget analysts generally have a bachelor's degree in accounting, finance, economics, or a closely related field. Knowledge of Financial Management is of prime importance in this career.

Underwriter

An underwriter is a person who assesses and evaluates the risk of insurance in his or her field like mortgage, loan, health policy, investment, and so on and so forth. The underwriter career path does involve risks as analysing the risks means finding out if there is a way for the insurance underwriter jobs to recover the money from its clients. If the risk turns out to be too much for the company then in the future it is an underwriter who will be held accountable for it. Therefore, one must carry out his or her job with a lot of attention and diligence.

Finance Executive

Product manager.

A Product Manager is a professional responsible for product planning and marketing. He or she manages the product throughout the Product Life Cycle, gathering and prioritising the product. A product manager job description includes defining the product vision and working closely with team members of other departments to deliver winning products.  

Operations Manager

Individuals in the operations manager jobs are responsible for ensuring the efficiency of each department to acquire its optimal goal. They plan the use of resources and distribution of materials. The operations manager's job description includes managing budgets, negotiating contracts, and performing administrative tasks.

Stock Analyst

Individuals who opt for a career as a stock analyst examine the company's investments makes decisions and keep track of financial securities. The nature of such investments will differ from one business to the next. Individuals in the stock analyst career use data mining to forecast a company's profits and revenues, advise clients on whether to buy or sell, participate in seminars, and discussing financial matters with executives and evaluate annual reports.

A Researcher is a professional who is responsible for collecting data and information by reviewing the literature and conducting experiments and surveys. He or she uses various methodological processes to provide accurate data and information that is utilised by academicians and other industry professionals. Here, we will discuss what is a researcher, the researcher's salary, types of researchers.

Welding Engineer

Welding Engineer Job Description: A Welding Engineer work involves managing welding projects and supervising welding teams. He or she is responsible for reviewing welding procedures, processes and documentation. A career as Welding Engineer involves conducting failure analyses and causes on welding issues. 

Transportation Planner

A career as Transportation Planner requires technical application of science and technology in engineering, particularly the concepts, equipment and technologies involved in the production of products and services. In fields like land use, infrastructure review, ecological standards and street design, he or she considers issues of health, environment and performance. A Transportation Planner assigns resources for implementing and designing programmes. He or she is responsible for assessing needs, preparing plans and forecasts and compliance with regulations.

Environmental Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as an environmental engineer are construction professionals who utilise the skills and knowledge of biology, soil science, chemistry and the concept of engineering to design and develop projects that serve as solutions to various environmental problems. 

Safety Manager

A Safety Manager is a professional responsible for employee’s safety at work. He or she plans, implements and oversees the company’s employee safety. A Safety Manager ensures compliance and adherence to Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) guidelines.

Conservation Architect

A Conservation Architect is a professional responsible for conserving and restoring buildings or monuments having a historic value. He or she applies techniques to document and stabilise the object’s state without any further damage. A Conservation Architect restores the monuments and heritage buildings to bring them back to their original state.

Structural Engineer

A Structural Engineer designs buildings, bridges, and other related structures. He or she analyzes the structures and makes sure the structures are strong enough to be used by the people. A career as a Structural Engineer requires working in the construction process. It comes under the civil engineering discipline. A Structure Engineer creates structural models with the help of computer-aided design software. 

Highway Engineer

Highway Engineer Job Description:  A Highway Engineer is a civil engineer who specialises in planning and building thousands of miles of roads that support connectivity and allow transportation across the country. He or she ensures that traffic management schemes are effectively planned concerning economic sustainability and successful implementation.

Field Surveyor

Are you searching for a Field Surveyor Job Description? A Field Surveyor is a professional responsible for conducting field surveys for various places or geographical conditions. He or she collects the required data and information as per the instructions given by senior officials. 

Orthotist and Prosthetist

Orthotists and Prosthetists are professionals who provide aid to patients with disabilities. They fix them to artificial limbs (prosthetics) and help them to regain stability. There are times when people lose their limbs in an accident. In some other occasions, they are born without a limb or orthopaedic impairment. Orthotists and prosthetists play a crucial role in their lives with fixing them to assistive devices and provide mobility.

Pathologist

A career in pathology in India is filled with several responsibilities as it is a medical branch and affects human lives. The demand for pathologists has been increasing over the past few years as people are getting more aware of different diseases. Not only that, but an increase in population and lifestyle changes have also contributed to the increase in a pathologist’s demand. The pathology careers provide an extremely huge number of opportunities and if you want to be a part of the medical field you can consider being a pathologist. If you want to know more about a career in pathology in India then continue reading this article.

Veterinary Doctor

Speech therapist, gynaecologist.

Gynaecology can be defined as the study of the female body. The job outlook for gynaecology is excellent since there is evergreen demand for one because of their responsibility of dealing with not only women’s health but also fertility and pregnancy issues. Although most women prefer to have a women obstetrician gynaecologist as their doctor, men also explore a career as a gynaecologist and there are ample amounts of male doctors in the field who are gynaecologists and aid women during delivery and childbirth. 

Audiologist

The audiologist career involves audiology professionals who are responsible to treat hearing loss and proactively preventing the relevant damage. Individuals who opt for a career as an audiologist use various testing strategies with the aim to determine if someone has a normal sensitivity to sounds or not. After the identification of hearing loss, a hearing doctor is required to determine which sections of the hearing are affected, to what extent they are affected, and where the wound causing the hearing loss is found. As soon as the hearing loss is identified, the patients are provided with recommendations for interventions and rehabilitation such as hearing aids, cochlear implants, and appropriate medical referrals. While audiology is a branch of science that studies and researches hearing, balance, and related disorders.

An oncologist is a specialised doctor responsible for providing medical care to patients diagnosed with cancer. He or she uses several therapies to control the cancer and its effect on the human body such as chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation therapy and biopsy. An oncologist designs a treatment plan based on a pathology report after diagnosing the type of cancer and where it is spreading inside the body.

Are you searching for an ‘Anatomist job description’? An Anatomist is a research professional who applies the laws of biological science to determine the ability of bodies of various living organisms including animals and humans to regenerate the damaged or destroyed organs. If you want to know what does an anatomist do, then read the entire article, where we will answer all your questions.

For an individual who opts for a career as an actor, the primary responsibility is to completely speak to the character he or she is playing and to persuade the crowd that the character is genuine by connecting with them and bringing them into the story. This applies to significant roles and littler parts, as all roles join to make an effective creation. Here in this article, we will discuss how to become an actor in India, actor exams, actor salary in India, and actor jobs. 

Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats create and direct original routines for themselves, in addition to developing interpretations of existing routines. The work of circus acrobats can be seen in a variety of performance settings, including circus, reality shows, sports events like the Olympics, movies and commercials. Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats must be prepared to face rejections and intermittent periods of work. The creativity of acrobats may extend to other aspects of the performance. For example, acrobats in the circus may work with gym trainers, celebrities or collaborate with other professionals to enhance such performance elements as costume and or maybe at the teaching end of the career.

Video Game Designer

Career as a video game designer is filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. A video game designer is someone who is involved in the process of creating a game from day one. He or she is responsible for fulfilling duties like designing the character of the game, the several levels involved, plot, art and similar other elements. Individuals who opt for a career as a video game designer may also write the codes for the game using different programming languages.

Depending on the video game designer job description and experience they may also have to lead a team and do the early testing of the game in order to suggest changes and find loopholes.

Radio Jockey

Radio Jockey is an exciting, promising career and a great challenge for music lovers. If you are really interested in a career as radio jockey, then it is very important for an RJ to have an automatic, fun, and friendly personality. If you want to get a job done in this field, a strong command of the language and a good voice are always good things. Apart from this, in order to be a good radio jockey, you will also listen to good radio jockeys so that you can understand their style and later make your own by practicing.

A career as radio jockey has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. If you want to know more about a career as radio jockey, and how to become a radio jockey then continue reading the article.

Choreographer

The word “choreography" actually comes from Greek words that mean “dance writing." Individuals who opt for a career as a choreographer create and direct original dances, in addition to developing interpretations of existing dances. A Choreographer dances and utilises his or her creativity in other aspects of dance performance. For example, he or she may work with the music director to select music or collaborate with other famous choreographers to enhance such performance elements as lighting, costume and set design.

Social Media Manager

A career as social media manager involves implementing the company’s or brand’s marketing plan across all social media channels. Social media managers help in building or improving a brand’s or a company’s website traffic, build brand awareness, create and implement marketing and brand strategy. Social media managers are key to important social communication as well.

Photographer

Photography is considered both a science and an art, an artistic means of expression in which the camera replaces the pen. In a career as a photographer, an individual is hired to capture the moments of public and private events, such as press conferences or weddings, or may also work inside a studio, where people go to get their picture clicked. Photography is divided into many streams each generating numerous career opportunities in photography. With the boom in advertising, media, and the fashion industry, photography has emerged as a lucrative and thrilling career option for many Indian youths.

An individual who is pursuing a career as a producer is responsible for managing the business aspects of production. They are involved in each aspect of production from its inception to deception. Famous movie producers review the script, recommend changes and visualise the story. 

They are responsible for overseeing the finance involved in the project and distributing the film for broadcasting on various platforms. A career as a producer is quite fulfilling as well as exhaustive in terms of playing different roles in order for a production to be successful. Famous movie producers are responsible for hiring creative and technical personnel on contract basis.

Copy Writer

In a career as a copywriter, one has to consult with the client and understand the brief well. A career as a copywriter has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. Several new mediums of advertising are opening therefore making it a lucrative career choice. Students can pursue various copywriter courses such as Journalism , Advertising , Marketing Management . Here, we have discussed how to become a freelance copywriter, copywriter career path, how to become a copywriter in India, and copywriting career outlook. 

In a career as a vlogger, one generally works for himself or herself. However, once an individual has gained viewership there are several brands and companies that approach them for paid collaboration. It is one of those fields where an individual can earn well while following his or her passion. 

Ever since internet costs got reduced the viewership for these types of content has increased on a large scale. Therefore, a career as a vlogger has a lot to offer. If you want to know more about the Vlogger eligibility, roles and responsibilities then continue reading the article. 

For publishing books, newspapers, magazines and digital material, editorial and commercial strategies are set by publishers. Individuals in publishing career paths make choices about the markets their businesses will reach and the type of content that their audience will be served. Individuals in book publisher careers collaborate with editorial staff, designers, authors, and freelance contributors who develop and manage the creation of content.

Careers in journalism are filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. One cannot afford to miss out on the details. As it is the small details that provide insights into a story. Depending on those insights a journalist goes about writing a news article. A journalism career can be stressful at times but if you are someone who is passionate about it then it is the right choice for you. If you want to know more about the media field and journalist career then continue reading this article.

Individuals in the editor career path is an unsung hero of the news industry who polishes the language of the news stories provided by stringers, reporters, copywriters and content writers and also news agencies. Individuals who opt for a career as an editor make it more persuasive, concise and clear for readers. In this article, we will discuss the details of the editor's career path such as how to become an editor in India, editor salary in India and editor skills and qualities.

Individuals who opt for a career as a reporter may often be at work on national holidays and festivities. He or she pitches various story ideas and covers news stories in risky situations. Students can pursue a BMC (Bachelor of Mass Communication) , B.M.M. (Bachelor of Mass Media) , or  MAJMC (MA in Journalism and Mass Communication) to become a reporter. While we sit at home reporters travel to locations to collect information that carries a news value.  

Corporate Executive

Are you searching for a Corporate Executive job description? A Corporate Executive role comes with administrative duties. He or she provides support to the leadership of the organisation. A Corporate Executive fulfils the business purpose and ensures its financial stability. In this article, we are going to discuss how to become corporate executive.

Multimedia Specialist

A multimedia specialist is a media professional who creates, audio, videos, graphic image files, computer animations for multimedia applications. He or she is responsible for planning, producing, and maintaining websites and applications. 

Quality Controller

A quality controller plays a crucial role in an organisation. He or she is responsible for performing quality checks on manufactured products. He or she identifies the defects in a product and rejects the product. 

A quality controller records detailed information about products with defects and sends it to the supervisor or plant manager to take necessary actions to improve the production process.

Production Manager

A QA Lead is in charge of the QA Team. The role of QA Lead comes with the responsibility of assessing services and products in order to determine that he or she meets the quality standards. He or she develops, implements and manages test plans. 

Process Development Engineer

The Process Development Engineers design, implement, manufacture, mine, and other production systems using technical knowledge and expertise in the industry. They use computer modeling software to test technologies and machinery. An individual who is opting career as Process Development Engineer is responsible for developing cost-effective and efficient processes. They also monitor the production process and ensure it functions smoothly and efficiently.

AWS Solution Architect

An AWS Solution Architect is someone who specializes in developing and implementing cloud computing systems. He or she has a good understanding of the various aspects of cloud computing and can confidently deploy and manage their systems. He or she troubleshoots the issues and evaluates the risk from the third party. 

Azure Administrator

An Azure Administrator is a professional responsible for implementing, monitoring, and maintaining Azure Solutions. He or she manages cloud infrastructure service instances and various cloud servers as well as sets up public and private cloud systems. 

Computer Programmer

Careers in computer programming primarily refer to the systematic act of writing code and moreover include wider computer science areas. The word 'programmer' or 'coder' has entered into practice with the growing number of newly self-taught tech enthusiasts. Computer programming careers involve the use of designs created by software developers and engineers and transforming them into commands that can be implemented by computers. These commands result in regular usage of social media sites, word-processing applications and browsers.

Information Security Manager

Individuals in the information security manager career path involves in overseeing and controlling all aspects of computer security. The IT security manager job description includes planning and carrying out security measures to protect the business data and information from corruption, theft, unauthorised access, and deliberate attack 

ITSM Manager

Automation test engineer.

An Automation Test Engineer job involves executing automated test scripts. He or she identifies the project’s problems and troubleshoots them. The role involves documenting the defect using management tools. He or she works with the application team in order to resolve any issues arising during the testing process. 

Applications for Admissions are open.

Aakash iACST Scholarship Test 2024

Get up to 90% scholarship on NEET, JEE & Foundation courses

JEE Main Important Chemistry formulas

As per latest 2024 syllabus. Chemistry formulas, equations, & laws of class 11 & 12th chapters

PACE IIT & Medical, Financial District, Hyd

Enrol in PACE IIT & Medical, Financial District, Hyd for JEE/NEET preparation

ALLEN JEE Exam Prep

Start your JEE preparation with ALLEN

ALLEN NEET Coaching

Ace your NEET preparation with ALLEN Online Programs

SAT® | CollegeBoard

Registeration closing on 19th Apr for SAT® | One Test-Many Universities | 90% discount on registrations fee | Free Practice | Multiple Attempts | no penalty for guessing

Everything about Education

Latest updates, Exclusive Content, Webinars and more.

Download Careers360 App's

Regular exam updates, QnA, Predictors, College Applications & E-books now on your Mobile

Cetifications

We Appeared in

We use cookies to enhance our website for you. Proceed if you agree to this policy or learn more about it.

• Essay Database >
• Essay Examples >
• Essays Topics >
• Essay on Risk

Essay On Cyber Threats And Their Vulnerabilities

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Risk , Time Management , Organization , Information , Computers , Security , Internet , Viruses

Words: 1000

Published: 12/17/2019

ORDER PAPER LIKE THIS

Cyber threats to Computers and Productivity

The security of computer and information systems is a fundamental aspect in any organization because nearly all organizations, in the current information age, depend on computer networks and information systems to execute their daily operations. Attacks to computer systems can lead to detrimental effects to an organization because it can lead to loss of important information and worse, breakdown of the entire organization system. For this reason, Information security measures must be implemented using vigilant approaches in order to control the pervasive effects of cyber threats and vulnerabilities. Control of inadequacies to cyber threats and other forms of malicious attacks should be an ongoing process that must be updated from time to time (Shih et al., 2004). It is emphatically crucial to note that cyber threats to information systems within organizations is evolving and expanding at an increasing rate. This paper highlights the true threats posed by viruses, the extent of the virus and malicious code problem, virus hoaxes, and their effect on computers and productivity. Information systems have distinct capabilities and the use of internet connections is ubiquitous, and hence, cyber threats and vulnerabilities should not be underestimated or undermined. Insider threats are other forms of threats to many organizations because it leads to breach of private and confidential data (Shih et al., 2004).

Cyber Crime

This refers to unlawful conducts undertaken using computers, ancillary, and electronic devices. It entails the process of disrupting network traffic through the distribution of viruses, email bombing/service attacks, cyber stalking, identity theft, and fraud among others. The effects of viruses and malicious attacks can be categorized according to the effects committed against different groups. These groups include crimes committed against individuals, individual property, organizations, and organizations at large. Virus and malicious effects on individuals include indecent exposure, hacking/cracking of personal emails, and harassment (Robert and Dacey, 2007). Effects to individual property include the process of transmitting viruses, unauthorized intrusion into computer systems, and hacking. Threats committed to an organization and society includes cracking, hacking, distribution of pirated software, and polluting the environment with indecent materials.

Extent of Cyber threats to computer systems

The dramatic increase in the number of internet users has expanded the exposure of computer and information systems to susceptibility of attacks such as virus attacks and unauthorized intrusions. The ability of propagation and increased multiplication of viruses and worms can lead to increased damages to the computer and information systems. Sadly, many organizations are still unaware of the threats posed by malicious hackers and cyber criminals. Good examples of the extent of cyber threats can be evidenced in the following scenarios.

According to BBC News story in 2005, the amount of money lost in internet financial fraud in Brazil outstripped the amount of money lost through bank robberies. In the same year, a computer hacker managed to obtain confidential details of 40 million credit card users while British police uncovered efforts by a cyber-gang to steal $412 million from a Japanese bank (Nigel, 2007). Such examples shows that even at the best of circumstances, all organizations are vulnerable to internet threats and cyber insecurities. Data and information is critical for productivity and sustainability of many organizations. Access to sensitive information by hackers or malicious attacks, may prove detrimental to the organization in question because the accessed information may contain sensitive trade secrets or private and confidential information that might be used for doing the wrong things (Nigel, 2007).

While it can be easier to reach a consensus regarding the urgency of risks caused by viruses, worms, and other forms of malicious attacks to computer and information systems, the right answers for addressing such vulnerabilities are hard realize. This can be attributed to constant changing nature of such risks coupled with their level of dynamic and varying effects (Wright, & Harmening, 2009). Additionally, the ability and scale of such risks in compromising computer systems and the integrity of the network framework is wanting. The introduction of host networks and systems, antivirus software, malware, and removal tools had increased the strengths of user administrative features in addition to minimizing the true threats posed by viruses, the extent of the virus and malicious code problem, virus hoaxes, and their effect on computers and productivity.

The increasing sophistication of computer and information systems, coupled with the increased use of the internet has led to an increase in the volume of cyber vulnerabilities. The problem is yet to become worse with the introduction of open systems, cloud computing, and the emergence of intranets. This calls for the implementation of new measures security of computer and information systems. The need to manage, asses, and monitor such systems is critical and even more urgent. Equally important is the need to prioritize and examine the most significant computer and information systems and other network vulnerabilities in order to guide the process of setting priorities and allocating resources towards the prevention of such risks (Robert and Dacey, 2007). With such measures, it becomes possible to minimize the true threats posed by viruses, the extent of the virus and malicious code problem, virus hoaxes, and their effect on computers and productivity.

Nigel, F., (2007),"Challenges for regulating financial fraud in cyberspace,” Journal of Financial Crime, 14 (2): 190 - 207

Robert F. and Dacey, F. R. (2007). Critical infrastructure protection establishing effective information sharing with infrastructure sectors. Washington DC: DIANE Publishing

Shih Dong-Her, et al., (2004),"Internet security: malicious e-mails detection and protection", Industrial Management & Data Systems, 104 (7): 613 - 623

Wright, J. & Harmening, J. (2009). Computer and Information Security Handbook. New York: Morgan Kaufmann Publications Elsevier Inc.

Cite this page

Share with friends using:

Removal Request

Finished papers: 1614

This paper is created by writer with

ID 253756269

If you want your paper to be:

Well-researched, fact-checked, and accurate

Original, fresh, based on current data

Eloquently written and immaculately formatted

275 words = 1 page double-spaced

Get your papers done by pros!

Other Pages

Essence essays, vitamin a deficiency essays, english culture essays, spiritual practice essays, canons essays, music player essays, new customer service essays, family interaction essays, medieval art essays, medieval world essays, global history essays, prior restraint essays, humbaba essays, phoebe essays, remote desktop essays, depressive episode essays, immediate family essays, good example of report on marketing environment 4, good employment society and the individual essay example, sample essay on paradigm of public administration, sample essay on research review, free a new strategy for kodak research paper sample, good lives from a social work perspective the case of baltimore maryland essay, death and the afterlife in islam essay, good example of review of mark deuzes media work essay, essay on legal and ethical issues in information technology, example of research paper on art of ancient egypt, free bong hits 4 jesus school speech and constitutional conflict research paper example, good example of research paper on harlem renaissance, good report about relocating to china, religious studies essay sample 3, example of research paper on governments plan of action to secure electricity supply, what feminism has to do with gender research papers examples, good essay about short stories, how has the development of technology affected the way in which we create and interact essay, example of policemen of the world term paper, closest friend college essays, power struggles college essays, healthy life college essays, wholesome college essays, company policy college essays, class room college essays, caroselli college essays.

Password recovery email has been sent to [email protected]

Use your new password to log in

You are not register!

By clicking Register, you agree to our Terms of Service and that you have read our Privacy Policy .

Now you can download documents directly to your device!

Check your email! An email with your password has already been sent to you! Now you can download documents directly to your device.

or Use the QR code to Save this Paper to Your Phone

The sample is NOT original!

Short on a deadline?

Don't waste time. Get help with 11% off using code - GETWOWED

No, thanks! I'm fine with missing my deadline

The Future of Cybersecurity with the Rising Tide and Threat Powered by AI

In today's digital age, artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity have converged, giving rise to a dynamic battleground for the future of digital security. As AI technologies continue to evolve, so too do the capabilities of cybercriminals, necessitating innovative strategies to counter emerging threats. AI will be the great accelerator of threat levels as it increases the speed and sophistication of cybersecurity threats. Daniel Tobok , one of the founding thought leaders in the space, has spent years workshopping his theories and strategies for dealing with threats. 

Tobok is not just a cybersecurity professional; he is a pioneer with a track record spanning nearly three decades. With over ten thousand cyber-attack reviews and thousands of successful recovery missions to his credit, Tobok's expertise is unparalleled. Having founded and led multiple successful cybersecurity ventures, Tobok is a trusted advisor to businesses worldwide, shaping the future of cyber resilience through his visionary approach. 

Cyber threats powered by AI represent a new frontier in digital warfare, where malicious actors leverage sophisticated algorithms to launch targeted attacks at unprecedented scale and speed. AI technology is increasingly used in cybersecurity incidents, with cybercriminals employing advanced methods like AI-driven malware and deepfake technology to enhance their attacks and avoid detection. 

The days of assuming cyber security breaches were reserved for simply big corporations or government are history,” says Tobok . “We are all at risk. Each and every one of us is far more digitally connected than ever before. Accessing WiFi in public areas, online banking, social media platform interactions, and watching our favourite shows and movies via digital means — we all live online now. Our exposure levels are at an all-time high and rising. And artificial intelligence is learning this firsthand, in real-time thus amplifying the risk profile for us all. 

As cyber threats evolve, cybersecurity defenses must also. AI-powered cybersecurity solutions promise enhanced threat detection, predictive analytics, and automated response capabilities. Machine learning algorithms can analyze vast amounts of data to identify anomalous behavior and potential security breaches in real-time, enabling proactive defense measures. 

AI is fundamentally changing the landscape of cybersecurity by revolutionizing how threats are detected, analyzed, and mitigated. AI-powered cybersecurity solutions can immediately analyze vast amounts of data to identify patterns indicative of potential cyber threats. “Historically, cyber security would summon a knee-jerk reaction to an inbound threat or breach of privacy,” explains Tobok. “Cyber security is reactive, while Cyber Certainty™ is being proactive. Rather than worrying about the path to recovery and response to digital compromise, what’s now and next is getting ahead of the cyber threat indicators, trends, and emerging portals of opportunity for threat actors to strike.  Creating and maintaining digital stability in one’s digital and online presence, both internally and externally.” 

Automated response capabilities, powered by AI, allow cybersecurity systems to respond to threats in real time without human intervention. These security tools can automatically block suspicious IP addresses, quarantine infected devices, and mitigate the impact of cyber attacks, reducing response times and minimizing damage.  

Tobok is a pioneer in the cybersecurity space, having started in the industry during its earliest days. He’s had a first-hand view and front-row seat in the earliest days of cyber threat and reconciliation, dating back to the earliest days of cyber security. Tobok spent years analyzing, data-forming, and crystallizing theories, strategies, and architecture. 

In response to the escalating cyber threat landscape, Tobok has authored his own urban cyber security philosophy called Cyber Certainty™, a revolutionary view and approach setting a new standard for resilience in the face of cyber-attacks. Cyber Certainty™ emphasizes being more invincible and less vulnerable digitally, empowering organizations to adopt a proactive and holistic approach to cybersecurity. 

“Cyber security is like a knee-jerk reaction to an inbound threat or an obvious breach of privacy,” explains Tobok. “Cyber Certainty™, however, is more about being proactive. Rather than worrying about the response to a business or assets being compromised, it is more important to be proactive. Cyber Certainty™ is about creating and maintaining digital stability in one’s digital and online presence, both internally and externally.” 

As the founder and CEO of CYPFER, Tobok leads one of the world's fastest-growing collective geniuses’ for Cyber Certainty™. So brilliant in fact, The Institute of Futurization, an organization focused on thought leadership, research, and tracking trends for industry combatting the downside to futurization, engaged Tobok as Chief Lead on their global project, Cyber Intelligence & Global Affairs initiatives where Tobok aggregates research, data, and analytics to produce predictions and approaches for the future of cybersecurity upset and turmoil. With offices in five countries, CYPFER is poised to become the global standard for cybersecurity thinking and strategy in an AI-driven new reality for leaders, businesses, and governments.  

With AI continuing to reshape the cybersecurity landscape, organizations must remain vigilant and adaptable in the face of evolving threats. By embracing innovative strategies and leveraging AI-powered cybersecurity solutions, businesses can enhance their resilience and safeguard their digital assets against emerging threats. With visionary leaders like Tobok at the helm, the future of cybersecurity holds promise, empowering organizations to navigate the complexities of the digital age with confidence and certainty. 

Cyber Crime Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on cyber crime.

Cyber Crime Essay – Everybody thinks that only stealing someone’s private data is Cyber Crime. But in defining terms we can say that ‘Cyber Crime refers to the use of an electronic device (computer, laptop, etc.) for stealing someone’s data or trying to harm them using a computer.

Besides, it is an illegal activity that involves a series of issues ranging from theft to using your system or IP address as a tool for committing a crime.

Types of Cyber Crime

Speaking in a broadway we can say that Cyber Crime are categorized into four major types. These are Financial, Privacy, Hacking, and Cyber Terrorism.

The financial crime they steal the money of user or account holders. Likewise, they also stole data of companies which can lead to financial crimes. Also, transactions are heavily risked because of them. Every year hackers stole lakhs and crores of rupees of businessmen and government.

Privacy crime includes stealing your private data which you do not want to share with the world. Moreover, due to it, the people suffer a lot and some even commit suicide because of their data’s misuse.

In, hacking they intentional deface a website to cause damage or loss to the public or owner. Apart from that, they destroy or make changes in the existing websites to diminish its value.

Modern-day terrorism has grown way beyond what it was 10-20 years ago. But cyber terrorism is not just related to terrorists or terrorist organizations. But to threat some person or property to the level of creating fear is also Cyber Terrorism.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Cyber Crime in India

Web world or cyberspace is a massive community of millions and billions of users and websites. Also, people access it for different uses like shopping, movies, music, video games, transactions, and e-commerce, etc.

In this Age of Technology and easy access to the internet, anyone can easily reach it. Because of this fast pace growth from the previous decade. Besides, the internet has opened a world of information on which anyone can connect.

Due to, this the rate of crime especially the rate of Cyber Crime has increased much fold. Moreover, the rate of circulation of data is also increased much fold due to the higher speed of internet. Above all, due to all these issues, the Cybersecurity has become a major concern for society.

Laws related to Cyber Crimes

To stop the spread of Cyber Crime and to safeguard the interest of people the government has made several laws related to Cyber Crimes. Also, these laws serve as protection against Cyber Crime. Apart from that, the government has also introduced cyber cells in police stations to counter the problem of Cyber Crime as fast as they can.

Ways of stopping Cyber Crime

Cyber Crime is not something which we cannot deal with our self. Likewise, with little use of our common sense and logic, we can stop Cyber Crimes from happening.

To conclude, we can say that Cyber Crime is a dangerous offense to someone’s privacy or any material. Also, we can avoid Cyber Crime by following some basic logical things and using our common sense. Above all, Cyber Crime is a violation of not only law but of human rights too.

{ “@context”: “https://schema.org”, “@type”: “FAQPage”, “mainEntity”: [{ “@type”: “Question”, “name”: “What is the main cause of Cyber Crime?”, “acceptedAnswer”: { “@type”: “Answer”, “text”: “The greed for quick money and the desire to get famous quickly are the two main reasons of Cyber Crime. Also, most of the targets of Cyber Crime banks, businessman, financial firms, etc.” } }, { “@type”: “Question”, “name”: “What is the punishment of Cyber Crime in India?”, “acceptedAnswer”: { “@type”: “Answer”, “text”:”If the person is found guilty then there are several punishments based on the level of crime. A simple crime can cost you a fine while a bigger crime can lead you to jail.”} }] }

Customize your course in 30 seconds

Which class are you in.

• Travelling Essay
• Picnic Essay
• Our Country Essay
• My Parents Essay
• Essay on Favourite Personality
• Essay on Memorable Day of My Life
• Essay on Knowledge is Power
• Essay on Gurpurab
• Essay on My Favourite Season
• Essay on Types of Sports

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Download the App

A Study of Cyber Security Issues and Challenges

Ieee account.

• Change Username/Password
• Update Address

Purchase Details

• Payment Options
• Order History
• View Purchased Documents

Profile Information

• Communications Preferences
• Profession and Education
• Technical Interests
• US & Canada: +1 800 678 4333
• Worldwide: +1 732 981 0060
• Contact & Support
• About IEEE Xplore
• Accessibility
• Terms of Use
• Nondiscrimination Policy
• Privacy & Opting Out of Cookies

A not-for-profit organization, IEEE is the world's largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity. © Copyright 2024 IEEE - All rights reserved. Use of this web site signifies your agreement to the terms and conditions.

Special Features

Vendor voice, cyber-crime, has the ever-present cyber danger just got worse, facing down the triple threat of ransomware, data breaches and criminal extortion.

Webinar On the face of it, there really isn't much of an upside for the current UK government after MPs described its response to attacks by cyber-espionage group APT31 as 'feeble, derisory and sadly insufficient.'

The mood won't have been lightened by the recent National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) review which concluded the resilience of the country's critical national infrastructure is not where it should be.

It's imperative that cybersecurity defences are sufficient to withstand attacks like ransomware and prevent data breaches amidst continued extortion from organized criminal gangs, which are sometimes backed by nation states. Proactive planning and the avoidance of reactive firefighting is one step forward, as is recognising compliance as an enabler rather than an obstacle, says Rubrik.

Join our live Regcast on 29 April 11 am BST/6am EDT/3am PDT to hear more as host Tim Phillips and Rubrik CISO Richard Cassidy explore ways that organizations can mitigate the impact of cyberattacks and learn how to recover quickly with minimum disruption to operational capacity or data integrity.

Sign up to watch the webinar here for a guide on understanding the evolution, intricacies, and the implications of the cyberthreat to your business and help on rethinking your cybersecurity strategies.

Sponsored by Rubrik.

Send us news

• Advertise with us

Our Websites

• The Next Platform
• Blocks and Files

Your Privacy

• Cookies Policy
• Privacy Policy
• Ts & Cs

Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024

Cyber Threats: The Safety of Individuals Essay

With the development of new technologies and their active use by millions of people all around the world, cyber-attacks appear more recently and affect a larger number of individuals and businesses. Even though people are aware of the problem and consider it to be serious, almost nothing is done to prevent the appearance of the problem. As mentioned by Singer (2014), “as much as 94% of attacks could be stopped with basic “cyber hygiene” (para. 11). For this reason, my biggest fear in cyberspace is that the population will continue its indifference and fail to follow fundamental precautions. As a result, hackers and criminals will take advantage of the situation and organize worse attacks that will bring complications even to those people who care deeply about their security and protection.

Because many agents cause challenges to the national security of the U.S., it is hard to list them according to severity. However, in my opinion, cyber-attacks should be placed at the top of the threat record. This opinion is based on the evidence that cyber threats are continually increasing in numbers, frequency, influence, and sophistication, and the groups of criminals and ranges of attack methods are expanding (Boot, 2015). In addition, as was already mentioned, businesses and professionals do not pay enough attention to this problem while constantly developing strategies to be prepared for other threats to the national security of the U.S. Thus, the contemporary time of innovation and technological advancement and the inability of people to take action make cyber threats the most severe for the safety of individuals, organizations, and the U.S. nation in general.

Boot, M. (2015). What is the greatest threat to U.S. national security? Commentary. Web.

Singer, P. W. (2014). What Americans should fear in cyber space . Los Angeles Times. Web.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2022, June 15). Cyber Threats: The Safety of Individuals. https://ivypanda.com/essays/cyber-threats-the-safety-of-individuals/

"Cyber Threats: The Safety of Individuals." IvyPanda , 15 June 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/cyber-threats-the-safety-of-individuals/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'Cyber Threats: The Safety of Individuals'. 15 June.

IvyPanda . 2022. "Cyber Threats: The Safety of Individuals." June 15, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/cyber-threats-the-safety-of-individuals/.

1. IvyPanda . "Cyber Threats: The Safety of Individuals." June 15, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/cyber-threats-the-safety-of-individuals/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Cyber Threats: The Safety of Individuals." June 15, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/cyber-threats-the-safety-of-individuals/.

• The Traditional Form of Family
• Leadership Communication and Management
• Addressing the Issue of the HIV Epidemic in the US
• Methods for Improving Voter Turnout in the U.S.
• Cyber-Attacks and the Laws of War
• Emerging Risks in Cyberspace Security
• Cyberspace Liberalization, Regulatory Norms in India
• Cyberspace: Statistics, Policy, and Crimes
• Are Pilots Prepared for a Cyber-Attack?
• Deployment Models in the Aviation Cyberspace
• Proxy Fights: Definition, Factors and Implications
• Marriott and Target: Organizational Change and Security Breaches
• IoT Adoption and Cyber Awareness in Saudi Arabia
• Recovering from Computer System Crashes
• RSA: Public/Private Key Encryption