The reign of digital world is here and it is undeniable at every aspect of our lives. From connecting to shopping, engaging clients or even running your infrastructure, businesses and industries the digital drive today worth billions. With this grows the advent of cyber-attacks. Hence the spending of advance, critical and scalable cyber security is at emergence. Hence, many companies have started best practices to keep their infrastructure and businesses safe much known as Cyber Security Best Practices.
To well define today’s cyber security; it can be laid under three vital aspects:
Protecting Systems | Networks and then your Programs. But still cyber-attacks stand at the brink of bringing new challenges to cyber security. Foremost reason to it is the ‘Data’ and sometimes compromising your big pockets to a torn one. To businesses today, information is key and then there enters the era of cyber-security. Cyber attackers are in a constant approach to breach this information, destroying this sensitive information and even putting your businesses processes at an utmost risk. Taking charge of a salient cyber security is equally challenging as there are more devices on earth than humans and it is growing at a rapid pace. New research states that “89 percent of electricity, oil and gas, and manufacturing firms have experienced cyber attacks impacting production and energy supply over the past 12 months. The addition of cloud, edge, and 5G in the mixed IT and OT environments has rapidly transformed industrial operations and systems. Organizations must stay ahead of the curve and take security measures to protect business assets. Improving risk and threat visibility is a curtail first step to a secure industrial cloud and private network.
Key elements of Cyber Security are:
- Application security
- Information or data security
- Network security
- Disaster recovery/business continuity planning
- Operational security
- Cloud security
- Critical infrastructure security
- Physical security
- End-user education.
traditionally an organisation’s cybersecurity budget was frequently clubbed together with the IT budget. At present no jurisdiction requires corporate entities to mandatorily earmark a specific budget for implementing cybersecurity initiatives. Companies of a particular size and those operating in certain sectors (such as the financial and banking sectors) will be well-advised to reserve a particular percentage of their annual organisation budget as an intended investment for cybersecurity measures. Correspondingly, a budgeting process for requisitioning additional cybersecurity funds or staff may be set up via the internal regulations of the organisation. Next, with sufficient financial backing in place, corporates will do well to focus on two heads – investment in human resources and investment in technology.
India on the Verge
It is high time we need to settle and rev-up our cybersecurity policies. As India is promoting and investing heavy on digital services the infrastructure and ideation also needs to be in place. Till now, we have the Information Technology Act 2000 and the National Cyber Security Policy 2013 which merely can safeguard from the growing criticalities of cyber-attacks.
In alone, 2020-21 the MeitY the governing body in the cybersecurity space states a 20 percent increase in the latest incidents of cybersecurity threats in India. In 2020, there were 11,59,208 instances of threats handled by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), which further rose to 14,02,809 in 2022, the ministry told a parliamentary panel lately. This is almost a two-fold spike from the 3,94,499 instances CERT-In handled in 2019. In 2018, there were 2,08,456 cases.
The IT ministry told the panel that in 2021, over 6,096 URLs were blocked in 2021, and in 2022 till June, 1,096 URLs have been taken down. These takedowns were in response to over 7,898 and 1,362 requests for takedowns in 2021 and 2022, respectively. This is a slight dip from 2020 when there were 11,449 takedowns, following 9,849 requests. IN 2019 and in 2018, there were 5,891 and 4,192 takedowns respectively, following 3,635 and 2,799 requests.
Also, infrastructure, health, telecom and other vital sectors came into the active-radar of cyberattacks. The attacks primarily occurred during the peak of Covid 19 pandemic, as per the cyber security wing of the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS). The reason behind it was the growing online activities calling for advance Cyber threats.
Is Social Media Making You Un-Social About Threats
The government has been rasing awareness about cyber security. With online world becoming the reality, a pop-up message or an unwanted social media activity can land up in middle of nowhere. The processes to retrieve and then conclude of what is lost can be massive. Ever click on suspicious web links, always verify email address before opening it, never share your OTP and be careful on social media are said to be attaining the citizens eye balls but mostly skipping in front of lakhs of touch and clicks every day. In 2022, figures stood at 125 (Facebook), 39 (Instagram), 540 (Twitter), 293 (YouTube) and 99 (others) when talking about compromising your identity and security online. There were 1,717 takedowns on Facebook in 2020, 1,273 on Instagram, 2,731 on Twitter, 2,175 on YouTube and 1,963 on other platforms. In 2019 , which saw the highest takedowns on Facebook (2,049), there were 75 posts on Instagram that were taken down, 1,041 on Twitter, 409 on YouTube and 61 on other platforms. In 2018, the figures stood at 1,555 (Facebook), Instagram (379), Twitter (224), YouTube (161) and others (480). Last week, in its transparency report, Twitter said that after the US, India was the country that sought information on Twitter accounts the most, and that India accounted for 19 per cent of such requests globally.
Just for a fact, the US Congress has passed the $280bn Chips and Science Act, providing $52bn in subsidies for US semiconductor manufacturers. Governments across the globe – including the United States, China, India, South Korea, Japan and many others – are embarking on multi-billion-dollar investments in infrastructure improvements, with semiconductors a leading beneficiary.
Semiconductors in the Age of Cybersecurity
Today it is not hard to find the word IoT, IIoT, Industry 4.0 in the latest dictionary of semiconductor industry. Every company, chip-maker is fiddling with this new connected idea. But this new technologies lies the defining truth of Security. While many says to be pro-active the latter finds new technologies to enrich their cyber security experiences for their customers. The combination of advancements in chip technology and the extraordinary level of globalization in the semiconductor industry has spurred enormous changes in the way semiconductor chips are designed, manufactured and used.
Not to forget the race faster time to market and cost-sensitive while integrating seamless supply chain is mostly at the cost of growing cybersecurity concerns. This is alongside giving hackers newer ways to deep dive into the design process and therefore landing inside these new electronics. While hackers can infect a computer or even a system of computers with malware, the connections are broader, deeper and less well-managed in the IoT-powered world. IoT applications creates more challenges for System on a Chip (SoC) designers, and these are no longer limited to time and cost. More complexity means significant integration and validation effort, huge investments, and extensive engineering resource requirements. Chip designers need to focus on implementing security at the design phase, building hardware that incorporates hardened security features to see devices protected throughout their lifecycle from chip manufacturing, to day-to-day deployment, to decommissioning. The way out seems toiling but the opportunities it can create can be just valued beyond expectations.
