Cyber Security Report: Analysis of Threats, Challenges, and Strategies

This report, prepared as an IT security consultant, addresses the increasing threats of cyber crime and its impact on an organization. It begins with an executive summary and an introduction that highlights the rise of cyber crimes like hacking and data breaches. The report identifies emerging threats, including hacking, phishing attacks, insider threats, malware, and credential misuse. It then details the challenges organizations face in mitigating these threats, such as ICT reliability, the growing number of internet users, and difficulties in identifying devices. The report proposes mitigation strategies, including immediate disconnection of compromised systems, regular computer scanning, and data backup. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of proactive security measures to protect against the ever-evolving cyber crime landscape. The report also includes references to support the findings.

Running Head: Cyber Security
Cyber Security

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Executive Summary
Being the IT security Consultant, it was the duty to let the organization know about the threats of
cyber crime and what crimes did the company got affected from. The company had to face a
huge loss because of the data breach crime that attacked it. Also this report explores the types of
threats that exist or are potential to happen in any organization. The challenges that people or
company has to face while mitigating these crimes such as data breach, malware devices etc. For
mitigating these crimes, the strategies which can help the organization or the individual to be
prepared or be safe are also discussed.

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Contents
Executive Summary.....................................................................................................................................1
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................3
Emerging Threats of Cyber Crime................................................................................................................3
Challenges faced by Organization to mitigate crimes..................................................................................4
Mitigation strategies...................................................................................................................................5
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................5
References...................................................................................................................................................6

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Introduction
Crimes which are related to cyber or virtual reality are increasing day after day all over the
world. The crimes like hacking and viruses are being used to steal personal information of
people, organizations etc. The information which is being hacked is important in one or the other
way. Cyber crime should be understood in a deep manner for getting to understand as to how
these criminals use internet for committing such crimes and how can the prevention be done
from such crimes happening. This report states the threats of the cyber crime which the company
has to go through as well as the solution and recommendations to mitigate such crimes.
Emerging Threats of Cyber Crime
There are a few types of threats which can harm any organization and every organization should
be alarmed about them. They are:
 Hacking: Hacking is illegally getting into someone else’s data and taking out important
information from it. The other name of hacking is cracking. Mostly government websites
are targeted by the hackers as they consist of very critical information about the countries
etc (Maghu, Sehra, & Bhardwaj, 2014).
 Phishing Attacks: Phishing mails are sent to many people at the same time and those
mails contain sensitive information. These mails are hard to judge as if they are
trustworthy or not because these mails look like they have been received from the
trustworthy entity (Yadav, Shree, & Arora, 2013).
 Insider Threats: When the data gets breached by any of the employee of the organization,
it is known as the insider threat as this crime is done by the member of the same
company. This crime could be unintentional too as employees could become victim to
phishing mails etc.
 Malware: Malware is one of the most common threats in cyber crime. These are the types
of software which contains virus and is implemented in the laptops and other devices
when the user downloads it (Choudhury, Basak, & Guha, 2013).

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 Credentials: The accounts which are privileged could be misused if their credentials are
weak. Hacker can use legitimate lookalike web application for retrieving the information
which is sensitive. This crime is done usually done because of the financial misuse of
money and data.
There were some impacts of the cyber crime in the organization as well. Data breach was the
crime that the company had to go through and incur loss on a huge basis. The company’s data
was exposed and the customers who had invested in that company lost a lot of shares in the
market as soon as the information came out (Ko & Dorantes, 2006). The financial passwords of
the customers were breached. There were about 100 employees who had to sacrifice their
accounts because of such breach. Loss of customers was huge as the other customers were
finding it hard to trust the company again. Cost is always associated with the workforce. The
other cyber threats were malware in computers but that did not do much harm to the company on
the whole.
Challenges faced by Organization to mitigate crimes
Some general challenges are:
1. Reliability in ICT: Mostly the communication being done depends on the ICT’s. This
dependency is growing in coming years. As the dependency is growing, it makes the
whole system weak and hence, attacks are more frequent. Companies and government
both are prone to such attacks. Even the minor attack can cause high damage to
organizations.
2. User number: Internet is growing like a jet speed. People using internet have crossed 3.36
billion in number. The number of users’ increases so will be the victims who will fall for
the cyber crimes. Within so many people, it is hard to know who is using internet for
wrong purposes (Jethwani & Gaur, 2015).
3. Identification of Devices: Basic equipments that are needed for such crimes are internet
and devices. With the existence of mirroring techniques, peer to peer exchange becomes
quite difficult sometimes for limiting the availability of the devices. These internet

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facilities are used by criminals where there registration is not necessary and hence, the
chance of getting caught is minimal.
4. Available Information: Internet holds a lot of information all over the world. Anything
can be accessed from anywhere. Web pages are accessed by everyone. Now that
information could be used for good or bad both purposes. Internet has made things easy
but also easy for criminals to commit crime.
Mitigation strategies
Disconnect Immediately: Unplugging the network, phone or cable from the computer is to be
done as soon as the crime is noticed. This might become helpful for the data to not be leaked to
the hacker. Also, disconnection could be done as it can prove to be effective in stopping of
sudden damage.
Computer Scanning: Regular scanning of computer should be done. Especially of that computer
which are used by the employees or staff in the organization so that any kind of data breach
would not happen. Anti viruses should also be installed in all the devices so that any malware or
virus attack would not be able to damage the devices (Shah & Vaswani, 2016).
Back Up: The information which is very critical and if leaked can cause huge damage to the
organization or an individual, should be kept as a back up too. The logic of keeping back up is to
recover the data which has been breached and also to gain the trust of the people again who have
invested in the company.
Conclusion
Cyber crime is one of those crimes which is causing huge damage every now and then in all the
countries. Though these crimes cannot be stopped as the population is high all over the world
and internet usage is increasing day after day. It is never easy to judge who uses internet for what
purpose. It can just be mitigated by being safe from self end. This report explores the types of
cyber crime and their mitigation strategies. Also there are challenges which come when it comes
to mitigating cyber crime. These challenges are also discussed.

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References
Choudhury, R. R., Basak, S., & Guha, D. (2013). Cyber Crimes- Challenges & Solutions.
International Journal of Computer Science and Information Technologies , 4 (5), 729-
732.
Jethwani, K., & Gaur, S. (2015). CyberCrime: Issues and Challenges. International Journal of
Emerging Research in Management &Technology , 4 (8).
Maghu, S., Sehra, S., & Bhardwaj, A. (2014). Inside of Cyber Crimes and Information Security:
Threats and Solutions. International Journal of Information & Computation Technology ,
4 (8), 835-840.
Shah, N., & Vaswani, N. (2016). Cyber Crime and Security- Challenges and Security
Mechanisms. International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology , 36 (7).