Challenges in Cyber Security for Business: HI6008 Report

This report delves into the critical challenges businesses face in the realm of cyber security. It begins by outlining the research problem and research question, focusing on the impact of modern computing systems on security. The report explores various challenges, including cyber espionage within cloud service platforms, the detection of undetected IT assets, insider attacks, and a lack of proper IT security management. It also discusses the factors contributing to cyber net vulnerability, such as inappropriate data sharing, stolen mobile devices, misuse of IT resources, exploitation of internet-connected devices, and the complexity of software systems. Furthermore, the report offers recommendations for addressing these challenges, including the implementation of real-time intelligence, assessment strategies for third-party vendors, the establishment of security awareness programs, and the enforcement of stringent security policies. The report highlights the importance of proactive measures to protect organizational assets and mitigate risks associated with cyber security threats.

Running head: CHALLENGES IN CYBER SECURITY FOR BUSINESS
Challenges in Cyber Security for Business
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1CHALLENGES IN CYBER SECURITY FOR BUSINESS
Table of Contents
1. Opening Statement of Research Problem and Research Question.............................2
2. Discussion on Cyber Security........................................................................................2
2.1 The Challenges posed by Cyber Security in Businesses........................................2
2.2 Factors leading to Vulnerability of Cyber Net..........................................................3
2.3 Recommendations for solving challenges towards Cyber Security.........................5
References.........................................................................................................................7

2CHALLENGES IN CYBER SECURITY FOR BUSINESS
1. Opening Statement of Research Problem and Research Question
The research in the discussion focuses over the various kind of challenges that
are faced by businesses with the negative impacts of cyber security. The problem that
has been focused within the research is based on the security aspects that need to be
strengthened with the impact of the modern computing systems (Bekara 2014).
Different problems that are being faced by cyber security experts within an organization
includes lack of a proper IT security management, cyber espionage, insider attacks and
many others. These kind of problems form a major impact towards degrading the
reputation of the organization within the market.
The research question that have been identified for the research discusses the
challenges that are mostly faced by business based on the aspect of cyber security in
relation to the computing systems. Cyber security poses different kind of challenges for
the business, which in turn leads to problems for the cyber security experts in mitigating
them at the earliest (Sajid, Abbas and Saleem 2016). Another research question also
discusses about the factors that help in leading towards the vulnerability of the systems.
With the increase in technological possibilities and new age innovation, hackers have
discovered new ways of posing attacks towards businesses and organizations.
After a discussion over the problems faced within the business, the research
would also discuss about the kind of recommendations that could be supported for
ensuring cyber security for the organization. These recommendation would be
discussed in detail within the report and also widely discuss the ways in which new
advanced systems could help in protecting the rights of people involved within an
organization.
2. Discussion on Cyber Security
2.1 The Challenges posed by Cyber Security in Businesses
The organizations who are often vulnerable to cyber security face different
bizarre kind of issues based on cyber security. This is mostly being faced due to a
certain lack of technical support and lack of awareness within the business strategies.
Some of the major challenges that could be discussed in the context of cyber security in
relation to an organization are:
1. Cyber Espionage within the Cloud Service Platform – One of the most
intriguing problems that are being faced by cyber security experts is based on dealing
with the problems based on cyber espionage. In the present times, business mostly
depend on virtual storage systems. In a recent study focused over different companies
from all over the world, it can be seen that the percentage of adoption of cloud services
have increased to 77% in various organizations (Sametinger et al. 2015). There is a
high economic cost in relation to cyber espionage. An attacker who would be present
outside the premises of an organization could pose harm over private, public or hybrid
form of clod technologies in order to gain access to the secrets of trade, employee data
and other critical assets of the organization. These could thus lead to critical problems
arising before the organization.

3CHALLENGES IN CYBER SECURITY FOR BUSINESS
Hence, it should be highly understood by business houses to implement some
kind of best form of technology regulation and practices that would protect the integrity
of sensitive data. A lot of complication is in relation to the setting up of cloud monitoring
services (Zhou, Liu and Zhou 2015). The management of cloud based service
complexity can be defined as the second most important aspect in relation to cloud
security. Hence, companies should be highly be aware of the management strategies
for cloud complexities and hence would require a high amount of resources and
expertise within the area.
2. Undetected IT Assets – With the major increase of valuable data that is being
stored by the company, the scope of cyber-attacks increase at a rapid pace. In the case
where there is no trace of unsuspicious activity occurring within a network, it would be
extremely impossible for the detection of some form of potential vulnerability. In the
present times, companies mainly store their important data over a certain network,
which increases the scope of the attack (Baskerville, Spagnoletti and Kim 2014).
Companies have also started to rapidly depend on IoT devices to ensure smart activity
within their working environment. Security professionals have also started to ensure
new ways based on which they would need to protect the data of the organization.
Hence, a comprehensive security plan should be designed that would determine the
broad surface of attacks.
3. Insider Attacks – In a report found by IBM, it has been determined that more
than 60% of attacks were detected to have occurred from inside of the company. Most
of the discussed threats were found to occur from employees within an organization
(Khalil 2016). There might be several reasons that would lead to attacks within the
assets of the company but the repercussions could prove to be extremely vital. Some of
the causes of inside attacks are – sending of private information to a wrong email
address, leaking of sensitive information intentionally, social engineering attacks and
lack of awareness (Franke and Brynielsson 2014). Thus, in order to minimize the risk
scenarios, user access could be limited and stringent security policies should be
enforced.
4. Lack of proper IT Security management – Companies often have incapable
security experts who are not able to solve critical risks that are being posed to the
organization. The security alerts, which are considered as highly crucial might get
missed and unexposed for cyber security experts (Abawajy 2014). In order to deal with
the particular problem, companies should majorly hire highly qualified cyber security
experts who would have high level of expertise and thorough knowledge over a vast
range of topics.
2.2 Factors leading to Vulnerability of Cyber Net
Employees have a strong role to fight against the major attacks in relation to
cybercrime. In a report by Kaspersky, it has been stated that businesses face
tremendous losses in every financial year due to fast pacing rate of cyber security
vulnerabilities that are mainly being caused by employees. In the recent study
performed by the company, it has been confirmed that most of the businesses are
highly aware of the fact that it is extremely easy for human error to make an impact over
the security of companies (Yeboah-Boateng and Amanor 2014). The most common

4CHALLENGES IN CYBER SECURITY FOR BUSINESS
reason of worry is that these employees share data and resources of the company in
the most inappropriate manner. They are also worried about the inappropriate use of IT
resources that are made by employees.
In order to focus over the common factors that lead to vulnerability within cyber
net are discussed as:
1. Inappropriate sharing of resources and data that are considered as critical
assets in relation to an organisation. Most of the employees of the company use mobile
devices through which they share important data to other employees who are outside of
the organisation (Vieane et al. 2016). Hence, this sharing of data without the prior
permission of the management could lead to tremendous impacts over data loss.
2. Whenever a mobile device of an employee gets stolen, it not only leads to loss
of personal property but it also leads to danger of stealing of data for the organisation
(Jansen and Leukfeldt 2016). Employees might store data in relation to the organization
within their mobile devices, which might get leaked due to the negligence of employees.
3. Employees might make inappropriate use of IT resources within the
organizational premises (McAlaney, Frumkin and Benson 2018). In this case, if the
company does not have any security concerns within their computing systems, hence, a
certain leak of data could lead to tremendous loss of the resources posed by the
company.
4. Exploitation of internet-connected devices and several applications lead to
negative impacts towards the organization. According to studies and reports submitted
by companies, it has been seen that nearly 458 million devices are provided access to
the Internet on a monthly basis (Al Mazari et al. 2018). Hackers have a high advantage
to locate these device, gain access to the network and steal important data that is being
transmitted.
5. The major demand of interconnectivity, platform compatibility and
interconnectivity have helped in bringing complexity within software systems. This has
further become a major factor of bringing in vulnerabilities within the computing systems
(Albanese, Cam and Jajodia 2014). It has thus been seen that modern applications
make use of open-source components for the purpose of addressing the demands that
further leads to loss of data of an organization.
It has been seen in some cases that employees are not always aware of the
organizational risks and thus they might not take necessary actions when the
organization is hit by a disaster (Borwell, Jansen and Stol 2018). In a research, it has
been discovered that employees generally tend to hide the security incident whenever
they would happen. The discussed problem of hiding of security incidents should be
properly be reported to the management team of the organization. The officials within
the organization should also communicate any form of incident of data breach if posed
within the company (Craig et al. 2014). Hence, the employees should proactively take
necessary steps in order to prevent themselves and thus benefit the company.
However, from another perspective, it could be discussed that irresponsible
employees can form the major factor towards the negative impact being incurred within

5CHALLENGES IN CYBER SECURITY FOR BUSINESS
the organizational prospects (Yim et al. 2015). In a research presented over the
negative impacts being made within the organization, it could be seen that most of the
security incidents have resulted in the leakage of business data, which has been
exposed due to the high negligence on the part of employees. Most of the companies
have also lost their major payment information (Davis et al. 2015). Each of the
discussed applications in relation to the company have a major potential, damaging and
far-reaching impact on the reputation for the organization.
2.3 Recommendations for solving challenges towards Cyber Security
From the discussed factors that lead to vulnerability of cyber-attacks over the
computing systems, it can be understood that cyber security forms major impacts
towards the people and the resources hosted by an organization. In order to secure
every asset incorporated within an organization, cyber security specialists should think
of extremely new ways in which recommendations could be put forward in order to meet
with the security challenges.
Hence, some of the most widely used recommendation strategies that could help
companies to mitigate the risks based on cyber security vulnerabilities are discussed as
follows:
1. Real-Time Intelligence – Companies should heavily invest on technologies
that could act as a powerful tool based on the prevention of cyber-attacks that are being
posed by potential attackers. The time taken for identification of a possibility of hacking
incidents could lead to more form of negative consequences towards the organization.
In relation to the implementation of real-time intelligence tools, companies should take
different kind of tactical steps in order to protect the major assets within the
organization. They should also enact a multi-layered defence strategy. Hence, the
cyber-security specialists working for the organization should ensure that this security
tool would be installed at all major levels of enterprise. Hence, the security experts
should utilize the effect of two or three multi-factor authentication based on ensuring the
integrity of data and network access.
2. The companies should implement an assessment strategy for ensuring that
the third-party vendor would agree with the policies established by the management
level of the organization. They should thus implement a “least privilege” policy that
would be concerning about the people who would make use of the services. The
officials within the company should also ensure a habit to perform review over the
various used credentials based on working with third-party vendors. A one step further
approach could also be enabled based on the incurring of a Service Level Agreement
(SLA) that would help in contractually obligating the third party service providers to
comply according to the security policies established by the organization.
3. The company should also consider the fact of continuously backing up of
business data. Backing up of data of the company could lead to safeguarding of
business assets in relation to the organization. The implementation of such kind of
strategy would prevent the companies against the recent attacks posed by ransomware
that freezes the files within the computer and thus demands for payment.

6CHALLENGES IN CYBER SECURITY FOR BUSINESS
4. A software patch can be defined as an update within the code patterns that
would be implemented within the existing software being used by the computer systems
of an organization. Software engineers who have been dedicatedly working for the
security of the computing systems often discuss new kind of ways in which they would
design the best coding strategies in order to secure the internal assets. A patch could
be highly be useful when the software programmers would need a bug detected within
the software, address new forms of vulnerability within the computing systems, and
address the issues based on stability and also during the installation process of new
drivers.
Based on the discussion supported from the paper, it could be discussed that the
discussion focuses over the main topics that have been put forward in the form of a
research question. The report discusses about the main causes that lead to the impact
of cyber-attacks within organizations. Hence, this properly addresses the needs of the
report and also makes it helpful for understanding and reaching out to a conclusion that
could be derived from the question.
In this report, I have myself researched and reviewed each of the sections within
this report. I have made thorough research over each of the cyber-attacks that are
posed by hackers and that negatively impacts the organization. From the discussion
collected from the review over the assignment, I have also been able to frame some
recommendations that could be put forward to organizations in order to maintain their
privacy of data and ensure a secured environment of work.

7CHALLENGES IN CYBER SECURITY FOR BUSINESS
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