Foundations of Cybersecurity_W1

Cybersecurity (Security)

The practice of ensuring confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information by protecting networks, devices, people, and data from unauthorized access or criminal exploitation

Ex. requiring complex passwords to access sites and services improves confidentiality by making it much more difficult for a threat actor to compromise them.

Threat actor

Any person or group who presents a security risk

External threats

An external threat is someone outside of the organization trying to gain access to private information, networks or devices.

Internal threats

Comes from current or former employees, external vendors, or trusted partners (often accidental.)

Responsibilities for security teams

• mitigate or reduce the impact of threats

• ensure an organization meets regulatory compliance, or laws and guidelines, that require the implementation of specific security standards

• maintain and improve business productivity

Security analyst

Responsible for monitoring and protecting information and systems.

Security analyst responsibilities

• protecting computer and network systems

• prevent threats from happening in the first place (installing prevention software)

• conducting periodic security audits

Security audit

A review of an organization’s security records, activities, and other related documents.

Compliance

The process of adhering to internal standards and external regulations and enables organizations to avoid fines and security breaches.

Security frameworks

Guidelines used for building plans to help mitigate risks and threats to data and privacy.

Security controls

Safeguards designed to reduce specific security risks. Used with security frameworks to establish a strong security posture.

Network security

The practice of keeping an organization’s network infrastructure secure from unauthorized access. This includes data, services, systems, and devices that are stored in an organization’s network.

Cloud security

The process of ensuring that assets stored in the cloud are properly configured, or set up correctly, and access to those assets is limited to authorized users.

Specifically focuses on the protection of data, applications, and infrastructure in the cloud.

Programming

A process that can be used to create a specific set of instructions for a computer to execute tasks.

Tasks include:

• automation of repetitive tasks (searching a list of malicious domains)

• reviewing web traffic

• alerting suspicious activity