Importance of Cyber Security for ABCT

This report discusses the importance of cyber security measures in industries and organisations, with a focus on the company ABCT. It highlights the vulnerabilities in ABCT's security system and explores emerging cyber threats and their consequences. The report concludes with recommendations to improve ABCT's security.

Running head: CYBER SECURITY OF ABCT
IMPORTANCE OF CYBER SECURITY, VULNERABILITIES AND EMERGING
THREATS – A CASE STUDY OF THE COMPANY ABCT
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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Executive Summary
The report discusses the importance of cyber security measures in industries and
organisations. The report illustrates on the importance of cyber security and the impact of
neglecting it. The report also discusses about the different vulnerabilities in the company
ABC Technology’s security system. The report also discusses the various types of emerging
cyber threats, their causes and the types of techniques used by such attacks. The report
concludes with a summary of all the main points of the report. The conclusion is followed by
few recommendations to further improve the security of ABCT.

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Cyber security and its Importance..............................................................................................3
Vulnerabilities of ABC Technology..........................................................................................4
Five emerging threats affecting ABCT......................................................................................6
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................7
Recommendation........................................................................................................................8
References..................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
The company ABC Technologies is an information technology firm based in
Australia which deals in high level technological products comprising of both hardware and
software. The company is a multinational company with many offices in Australia and two
offices in foreign countries. The company has over 10000 regular customers and has both
work from home and working onsite policies. The company provides free internet access to
its customers via the wireless LANs and uses a virtual private network for its employees to
work. The employees are requested to bring their own laptops to work. The company has
recently been subjected to multiple cyber-attacks and they are sceptical that their customer’s
data might have been stolen by the hackers. The company fears that if all the data of their
10000 customers is leaked or used for illegal purposes, they will lose the trust of their
customers and suffer massive losses in revenues.
In this report, the basic concept of cyber security and its importance in today’s world
will be discussed. The report will also highlight on the major types of emerging cyber threats
and analyse the vulnerabilities present in ABCT’s security system. These cyber security
threats will be discussed in detail along with their attack techniques, the hackers responsible
for them and their consequences. The report will also illustrate the loopholes in the ABCT’s
system and security structure. The report will conduct thorough research on the above
mentioned topics and provide proper solutions to them and also give recommendations on
how to improve the company’s security.
Cyber security and its Importance
Cyber security is the method used to provide systems, programs and networks
protection against online or cyber-attacks. These type of cyber-attacks are generally aimed at
modifying, accessing or deleting crucial and sensitive information or extorting money from
people using the stolen information. These attacks can also be carried out to disrupt normal
business processes. The implementation of proper cyber security measures are slowly
becoming a challenge because the number of online devices around the world is
exponentially increasing along with the cyber criminals devising more innovative and unique
ways to attack the systems (Bada, Sasse, & Nurse, 2019).
A successful cyber security method has many different layers of security spread
across the devices, networks, data and the programs that are needed to be kept safe. In an

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ideal company, the technology, the processes and the people must all work together and
complement each other to develop an effective and solid defence against cyber-attacks. The
users or people involved in the organisation must have a basic understanding of security and
should comply with individual security measures like using strong passwords and be aware of
emails with malicious attachments. The processes used in the company must have a properly
certified cyber security framework that will have guidelines on how to handle an attempted
and a successful cyber-attack. The technologies needed to protect the connected devices
against such attacks must be provided by the company to its employees to implement proper
security. These technologies include DNS filtering, next generation firewalls, antivirus
software, malware protection and email security solution software (Graham, Olson, &
Howard, 2016).
The cyber security attacks have increased tremendously during the last decade. The
number of devices connected to the internet has grown exponentially in the past few years.
Similarly, the risk to companies from network oriented cyber-attacks has also increased
exponentially. The hackers prowling over the internet are looking for loopholes in the
security structures of organisations around the world to find a potential weakness and exploit
it to steal data or cause harm to the system. This can be done using either a fake social media
posting, compromised hardware or a phishing email message. The potential for cyber-attacks
and disruptions is directly proportional to the number of devices connected to the internet.
The main reason for the implementation of cyber security measures in ABC
Technologies is the massive cost of cyber security breaches. Cyber security breaches are very
damaging and costly to any company both in terms of reputation and revenues. Around more
than 40% of the companies around the world have reported that they have faced at least one
data breach over the years (Cheng, Liu, & Yao, 2017). In most of these data breaches
confidential data of the clients or customers of the companies are leaked or stolen. Even
governments are not safe from these cyber-attacks and sensitive leaked emails have been
published publicly. In one study conducted by the company IBM they reported that the
average cost of a data breach is around $ 3.5 million which is a massive cost for a small
company like ABCT. Therefore it is very important for the company ABCT to establish a
proper cyber security framework and take cyber security measures.
Vulnerabilities of ABC Technology
The main vulnerabilities that are being faced by ABCT Company are (Slayton, 2017):

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1. Internet access without proper security measures can be deadly in a company. The main
vulnerability as seen from the case study is the lack of internal security measures to protect
the company again the outside threats. The devices used by ABCT are all private devices
used by their employees. As the devices does not belong to the company, there is no
guarantee that the devices used by their employees have proper firewall and internet security
measures involved to protect itself from the viruses or potential security threats. The internet
security suite and the firewall is the first line of defence against the hackers and cyber
criminals. Without this software the employee devices are susceptible to various viruses and
online threats. Though the company uses VPN to protect its employees but the VPN only
hides the employee’s traffic and changes its IP address but does not provide protection
against the malware or viruses that is being download inadvertently by the employee into the
devices (Gupta, Agrawal, & Yamaguchi, 2016).
2. No proper data backup system is a major concern for companies affected by data breaches
(Gomes et al., 2018). Due to low space or negligence regular backup of data is not performed
which can create situations from where a company might get back. For example, due to the
bring your own device policies of the ABCT company, the crucial data of the companies are
usually kept with the employees and there are no proper means of doing a backup of those
data which can be used to perform a roll back in case of emergencies. This leads to situations
when a company facing a data breach or potential loss of huge amount of data cannot get
back to its original state due to unavailability of backup.
3. Data theft possibility can be another major vulnerability of the ABCT Company. This is
because the company has the “bring your own device” policy where an employee can bring
his own laptop to work and work on it. This can lead to a potential data theft scenario where
an employee with wrong intentions may easily download and steal crucial and sensitive
information from the main servers. This is one of the most common vulnerabilities around the
world. Due to the nature of the system it is not possible to track which employee store the
information as the data could have physically transferred or stolen with the help of a
software.
4. The cloud storage of data can be another major vulnerability for the company (Manoj, &
Bhaskari, 2016). The company ABCT uses a cloud storage for storing their products and
customers data. The security used by the cloud service provider plays an important part here.
It is assumed here that the company that was given the cloud storage is not a very big

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company. If such is the case it is possible that the cloud storage company has poor quality of
security standard which can lead to potential data loss in case of hacking or cyber-attack on
the cloud server. Even major cloud service providers have had security problems. So, without
a proper local and secured hardware storage, even cloud storage can be victim to a cyber-
attack. Improving the security of the cloud storage or using a better equipped company can
help reduce the chances of an attack.
Five emerging threats affecting ABCT
1. The biggest and the main type of security risk that most enterprises like ABCT are facing
is loss of identity data of its employees and customers. The identity theft is one of the most
common data risks (Kahn, & Liñares-Zegarra, 2016). More than 800 data breaches have
happened over the last decade in Australia alone. In the latest Australian data breach more
than 10 million accounts were hacked and their data leaked. The impact of these data
breaches can be mild to severe depending on the situation. The leaked during such attacks are
soon released on the dark web. These data may contain personal information like addresses,
names, phone numbers and even bank details. These data can be bought by criminals and
organisations to perform identity theft or do other criminal activities. This increases the
number of illegal and fake customers over the internet. The people responsible for such
attacks are hackers and cyber criminals. The three main method of identity theft are
skimming, phishing and pretexting. Among these methods phishing is the most common
method of stealing data.
2. Account takeover is another upcoming threat that has increased recently in frequency. In
this type of cyber-attack, a person’s personal account is hacked remotely and is controlled by
a cybercriminal (Doerfler et al., 2019). This account can now be used to do various types of
online transactions including using of saved credit or debit cards to purchase or order
products in their own name. This results in massive losses from both clients and companies
side. For example, the ABCT Company has over 10000 clients and it deals in high end
software and hardware products. These products are quite expensive and can be purchased by
their clients. If any hacker hacks one of their customer’s account and uses it to purchase high
end products for himself, it can create a situation where the company would have to refund
the entire amount as the owner did not initiate the transactions. This would lead to massive
losses from the company’s end. This type of attacks are mainly carried out by single

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individual hackers or large groups. The main techniques involved in these attacks are: data
breaches, phishing, Man in the middle and Malware attacks.
3. Synthetic fraud is another emerging cyber-attack. In this type of cyber-attack a
cybercriminal or hacker can create a fictitious identity of himself and pose as a customer for a
company. This type of identity created are made using various pieces of relevant information
of real human beings and can easily fool security checking systems if scanned. These fake
customers can then use the company service and do payment frauds with them. For example,
ABCT is a service and product based company. It has many clients and it deals with
customers. A hacker using this technique can appear as a genuine customer in front of this
company. Once registered he may use the system to buy products or use their services with
stolen credit or debit cards which can again lead to potential law suits against the company
and massive monetary losses. The main type of people involved in this type of attack are
hackers, cyber criminals and terrorist organisations. The main type of techniques used in this
type of attack are: creating fake credit profile using stolen data, fake data furnishing and
creating original looking fake profiles using scattered data over the web (Thomas, 2018).
4. Ransomware is a common cyber security threat that has impacted the world around us and
caused a lot of monetary destruction around the world. In this type of attack, a ransomware
gets mistakenly installed into a user’s system and then it completely takes over the user’s
system and asks for a ransom to be paid to get back the system (Brewer, 2016). The amount
asked in the ransom can be a few hundred dollars to few million. This type of attack are
mainly done by large hacking organisations and happen due to poor security measures taken
by the company or employees. This attack can happen on ABCT due to its relaxed security
measures. The main technique associated with it is any form of malware download.
5. Social Engineering is another emerging threat. It is frequently used by people trying to get
into a corporations system by tricking the employees. In this method a hacker may
impersonate someone or use a system flaw to steal crucial system information or to gain
access into the private system (Gupta, Singhal, & Kapoor, 2016). The main types of people
responsible for this type of attacks are single individuals, frauds and big hacking groups
working as a team. This type of attack is mainly used for financial gains or stealing sensitive
data. The most common techniques use in this type of attack are: phone calls, email
messages, snail, through social media or in person.

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Conclusion
The report has discussed about cyber security and the impact of cyber-attacks on
organisations and companies. The report has also illustrated the extent of damage that poor
cyber security measures can cost. The report has also discussed the types of attacks that are
common nowadays in the world. The top five such attacks that can affect the company ABCT
has been discussed. The five major emerging cyber threats discussed in this report are social
engineering, ransomware, identity theft, account takeover and synthetic fraud. The report has
also discussed about the main security loopholes in the company ABC Technologies. The
report highlights on the main vulnerabilities of the company which are cloud storage
vulnerability, data theft from company, improper data storage systems and lack of security
software and solutions to securely access the internet.
To conclude the report touches upon all the major points that the management of the
company ABC Technologies must look into and improve in order to secure the company
from further cyber-attacks. The next section will have a recommendations which can be
implemented to improve the security at ABCT. Overall, there are many vulnerabilities in the
security of ABC Technologies which are needed to be addressed as soon as possible. The
report has discussed these in detail along with a thorough analysis of the future and the
current cyber threats and illustrated the need of cyber security in detail.
Recommendation
The few recommendations for the ABC Technologies company are (Ashenden, & Lawrence,
2016):
1. The company management must install proper firewall both physical and virtual and
also secure each and every device of their employees with proper security solution
software (Neal, & Ilsever, 2016).
2. Hiring of special cyber security expert team that will be able to handle major cyber-
attacks, prevent them and maintain the security system of the company (Fielder et al.,
2016).
3. The company ABCT should conduct a risk assessment using both internal and
external agencies to evaluate their current security measures. Based on the assessment
report, the company management may implement plans and regulations in place that
they deem suitable for their company (Trim, & Lee, 2016).

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4. Enforcing proper password rules among employees and updating the system software
on all devices regularly can help keep the employee devices safe against much of the
cyber threats. A strong password and a regularly updated system is the first line of
defence against the breaches and cyber-attacks (Moschovitis, 2018).

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