The purpose of this chapter is to understand the severity of cyberattacks and identify the importance of using cybersecurity to protect organizations from future threats. This chapter will discuss the types of attacks that can occur along with the types of security measures that can be implemented to ensure information remains protected for individuals or organizations. Information regarding cyberattacks in certain businesses, healthcare organizations, and social media will also be discussed to assess and identify the different types of cyber threats. Information from previous research studies and past data will be evaluated to identify the types of cybersecurity that can help different organizations as well as identify and prevent any future threats they could potentially encounter. Further examination of previous and future cyberattacks will also be discussed to understand how those threats occurred, where they come from, and how security can be used to combat them.
TopIntroduction
Cybersecurity has become an incredibly important part of a day to day life in today’s society. There is an enormous amount of collectible data being generated from individual’s smartphone and organization’s cloud and data center. All of this data is available to be exploited if not protected appropriately. Nowadays, consumers give away their personal information without even thinking twice when purchasing goods or signing up for things like credit cards and website memberships. With every click of your mouse or tap on your screen, you are creating more data points that can help people learn more about you based on your Internet habits. All of this information and all of these data points are vulnerable to attack and can be used to exploit or used for personal use at the expense of others. Cybersecurity aims to prevent these attacks and keep all this information safe and secure (Fedele & Roner, 2022; Garg, 2020; Ramadan, Aboshosha, Jalawi, Alzahrani, El-Sayed, & Dessouky, 2021; Samtani, Chai, & Chen, 2022).
Information safety is of extreme importance to both consumers and businesses. People want to feel as though their information is safe. Individuals are concerned that their financial information like bank account or credit card numbers could be stolen and they would be vulnerable to identify theft, monetary theft, or credit ruin. Businesses are concerned about similar risks as well as valuable customer information or private organizational information being stolen. All of these obstacles are exceedingly difficult to overcome but can be prevented with strict cybersecurity measures put in place. Cybercrime is a global concern, as shown in recent events around the world (Stratton, Powell, & Cameron, 2017). The ramifications of these crimes on individuals and organizations cannot be stressed enough as to how devastating of an impact they can have. As technology has advanced, cybercriminals have also become that much more sophisticated in the ways that they breach different measures of cybersecurity. In turn, cybersecurity has had to also continue to advance and evolve to keep up with these cyber criminals (Janakiraman, Lim, & Rishika, 2018; Tsen, Ko, & Slapnicar, 2022; Wertheim, 2020b). This paper will examine the different methods of cybersecurity used today as well as the different cyberattacks they are attempting to stop and the effects they can have when cybersecurity is successfully breached (Culnan & Williams, 2009; Janakiraman, Lim, & Rishika, 2018; Swift, Colon, & Davis, 2020).