Introduction to Cyber Security

CYBER SECURITY TECHNIQUES

There are many cyber security techniques to combat the cyber security attacks. The next section discusses some of the popular techniques to counter the cyber attacks.

1. AUTHENTICATION

It is a process of identifying an individual and ensuring that the individual is the same who he/she claims to be. A typical method for authentication over internet is via username and password. With the increase in the reported cases of cyber crime by identity theft over internet, the organizations have made some additional arrangements for authentication like One Time Password(OTP), as the name suggest it is a password which can be used one time only and is sent to the user as an SMS or an email at the mobile number/email address that he have specified during the registration process. It is known as two-factor authentication method and requires two type of evidence to authentication an individual to provide an extra layer of security for authentication. Some other popular techniques for two-way authentication are: biometric data, physical token, etc. which are used in conjunction with username and password.
The authentication becomes more important in light of the fact that today the multinational organizations have changed the way the business was to be say, 15 years back. They have offices present around the Globe, and an employee may want an access which is present in a centralized sever. Or an employee is working from home and not using the office intranet and wants an access to some particular file present in the office network. The system needs to authenticate the user and based on the credentials of that user, may or may not provide access to the used to the information he requested. The process of giving access to an individual to certain resources based on the credentials of an individual is known as authorization and often this process is go hand-in-hand with authorization. Now, one can easily understand the role of strong password for authorization to ensure cyber security as an easy password can be a cause of security flaw and can bring the whole organization at high risk. Therefore, the password policy of an organization should be such that employees are forced to use strong passwords (more than 12 characters and combination of lowercase and uppercase alphabets along with numbers and special characters) and prompt user to change their password frequently. In some of the bigger organizations or an organization which deals in sensitive information like defence agencies, financial institutions, planning commissions, etc. a hybrid authentication
system is used which combines both the username and password along with hardware security measures like biometric system, etc. Some of the larger organizations also use VPN(Virtual Private Network), which is one of the method to provide secure access via hybrid security authentication to the company network over internet.

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