Changing Trends in the Approach to Securing the Cyber Space Date:   Tuesday , March 01, 2011 Man communicated even when language did not exist. With experience and passage of time man invented language and bridged the gap of communication, bringing ease into their lifestyle and catalyzing progress. The birth of the Internet changed the way we communicate forever. The Internet has given a new dimension to globalization and has grown in both variety and volume. To benefit from the gamut of services provided by the Internet, the world must also be prepared to face the security challenges it brings along with it. The technology has brought with itself a huge amount of responsibility and concern. Further with the introduction of electronic transactions cyber crimes have been increasing in leaps and bounds. In today’s hi-tech world, where everyone from corporate bodies, government organizations to individuals understands that information exchange is crucial for business, it has become extremely important to keep confidential data and information safe from hackers and cyber criminals. The study of computer security started as early as beginning of 1970s and is in a constant state of evolution. In the early days of computer security, all important studies were performed and white papers were written through government funded projects. This was quite natural as the Internet had emerged from combination of closed networks such as the ARPANET, all of which were primarily used for universities, research and defense. It has since evolved to encompass a wide array of private companies dealing exclusively in cyber security. Cyber crimes have grown exponentially over the years and the threat of attack is very real and imminent. Getting justice after a disastrous cyber attack is also a mammoth task as the attacker can be very elusive and may be from some country where cyber laws may not be sufficiently developed to identify and prosecute such crimes. Once an organization goes online, cyber security becomes the major concern as a single cyber attack can destroy the credibility of a company. Clients would stop making any online transactions if a financial institute or pay site security were known to have been compromised. The trend in securing cyber space has also transformed entirely from its inception days, owing to the dynamics on the Internet. In recent times, security has become a major concern from every aspect and companies, government organizations, educational institutions are looking for more security in their network. Since it is impossible to guarantee security of data in a network environment, the next best solution would be to limit the possibility of a successful attack and to limit its devastating effects in case it occurs. There are procedures employed to detect network attacks and take corrective actions early and to minimize the after effects of a successful attack. Back up, roll back, disaster recovery and various procedures of business continuity planning are employed to minimize the impact of an attack. The Internet of today offers complex and dynamic service delivery over the Internet such as social networking, on demand services, service-oriented architecture (SOA), Software as a Service (SaaS) and digital rights management as opposed to simple web content and data-voice-video sharing. The traditional methods of using signatures, software patches and firewalls no longer provide sufficient protection from cyber criminals. These protection techniques have added enhanced features and are definitely still required, but cannot detect these new attacks. A cyber criminal can employ distributed attack from end user computers which may reside in the private network or in the public network making it difficult to understand if it is a legitimate traffic. Other methods like identity theft through social network attacks, stealth monitoring and automated tools for detecting system vulnerabilities can be used. These attacks can cripple a website thus making it non functional for genuine users and can even alter the information provided by using website hijacking techniques. A well planned attack has the potential to bring down an entire server farm which is the heart of the data center. Now that enterprises and consumers are using Internet services as the lifebollod of our economy and person al lives, more focus needs to be put to developing security tools for mobile devices. Remote users working from home or accessing company resources from mobile devices for collaborative work need to be provided a level of security equivalent to what they would have while working in their office. The historical study of cyber attacks suggests that the previous trend of attack was intent on disrupting services or sometimes destruction of data. Today attacks are intent on stealing data and hosting fraud websites by means of hacking. What may have started as cyber vandalism and malware has today evolved into sophisticated and stealthy targeted attacks often financially, political, ideological or religiously motivated. If we study the availability of tools and technologies, combined with their effectiveness at mitigating information security risks, we can see a shifting focus from network security to also include data security. Previous security tools focused on network components such as routers, firewalls, Intrusion Detection and Prevention System (IDPS), Denial Of Service protection (DOS), and the like. Today there is a much higher availability of security tools for protecting digital data and authentication such as pervasive data rights management/protection, encryption, digital signatures and certificates, security tokens and biometric security. We have to accept the existence of intellectuals who seek to defy established norms and resort to hacking as a hobby and challenge. And they are some of the best computer experts. Not all hacking activities were malicious in intent; some only put simple messages to leave the security experts shaken. The process of hacking was dangerous and tedious. They had to study the target network and hosts, follow the traffic patterns, and understand the systems, services and security level before launching an attack. Because of the legal implications of hacking, they had to ensure that no clue is left behind which can be traced back to them. Now the hacking attacks are more based on automation, distributed attack, exploitation of known vulnerabilities and social engineering. But gone are the days when hackers were perceived as anti-social elements. Now organizations are giving these intellectuals the opportunity to hack legally. Today, the information security market has seen a surge in business and there are tremendous career opportunities for ethical hackers. They will of course be bound by certain non disclosure agreements and will have to work within the boundaries specified by the organization. Ethical hackers command premium pays in organizations to figure out loopholes and do vulnerability checks in their systems. This helps an organization to procure solutions to curb the vulnerabilities of the organization’s systems and IT infrastructure. The need of the hour is real time traffic analysis tools and to implement a system intelligent enough to detect high level traffic behavior patterns to low level packet analysis. These security measures will be able to identify any distributed attack and can monitor the nature of traffic at all times. Cyber forensics is used to check that no data is altered in any way from the original state ensuring the integrity of data. Not only do security agents need to be well trained with these new tools and methods, but the end users themselves need to be educated. One of the important preventive actions for information security is to educate the end user on the behavioral and social engineering attacks rampant today. The authors is Chief Marketing Officer (Strategic Consultant), Narus