Cyber Breaches Impact on Society and Methods of Its Prevention

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Facebook Data Leak
Ways to Avoid Information Leakage
A Risk Become a Victim of Cyberattacks
Protection of Personal Data
Importance of Privacy
The Applicable Government Requirements
Conclusion
Reference

Introduction

In the XXI century, cyber-attacks are becoming an increasingly tangible, powerful threat to the security of individual companies, users, Internet resources, and states. It can disable individual infrastructure facilities, destabilize the operation of entire systems. More and more developed countries are trying to protect themselves by creating units operating as part of special services. A cyberattack — or hacker attack – is a malicious interference in a company’s information system, hacking websites and applications, personal accounts, and devices. The hackers’ main goals are to benefit from using this data or blackmailing the owners. Often they hack websites, infrastructures, and services to make themselves known.

Facebook Data Leak

Considering the problem of hacking in more detail, it is important to give an example of a Facebook information leak. On April 3, 2021, a hacker forum user published the records of hundreds of millions of Facebook users on the Internet for free. According to Business Insider, the published data contains more than 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries, including more than 32 million user records in the US, 11 million user records in the UK and 6 million user records in India (Sheehan et al., 2021). The data leak became known in January of this year for the first time. Alon Gal, technical director of the Hudson Rock information security company, said that an advertisement for an automated Telegram bot appeared on the same hacker forum, which issued phone numbers of Facebook users for a fee (Sheehan et al., 2021). Telegram bot allowed one to find out Facebook ID by phone number or vice versa. Initially, the bot provided edited search results. Then the user could pay and get full information about the phone number. Facebook said Facebook’s leaked data contains Facebook IDs created before Facebook fixed the vulnerability. Facebook tested the bot and found out that the bot does not give any results on newer data.

Ways to Avoid Information Leakage

Having taken possession of data, an attacker can easily impersonate and take possession of what belongs to one person. Therefore, stronger authentication will be required to protect the identity. For example, Firefox offers free services to protect user privacy (Tayaksi et al., 2021). With Firefox Monitor, a person can track whether the email account has been hacked. Firefox Relay creates aliases, randomly generated email addresses, emails from which are forwarded to real mailbox (Sheehan et al., 2021). People should use it to protect their online accounts and identities from hackers.

A Risk Become a Victim of Cyberattacks

There is always a risk that organizations may become victims of cyberattacks. To determine how risky the provision of data may be, follow these steps: read the terms and conditions of the organization and the privacy policy. Find a section that will help answer the first two questions. People do not need to read it carefully, but click ‘agree’ immediately. Find out about person’s privacy rights under data/privacy provisions. Knowing people’ rights will not make a person data safer, but it will help hold the organization accountable after the incident. Although the published data dates back to 2019, leakage poses a great risk for most of people (Sheehan et al., 2021). Unlike the password, which can be changed in case of theft, a man will not change a first and last name after discovering that the data has been disclosed.

Protection of Personal Data

If a person has a business, he should ask for help from a company that specializes in detecting malware, suspicious data exchange and attacking actions. In case of protecting a personal computer, it is enough to install an up-to-date antivirus. One can protect data from scripts during web surfing by using one of the most secure browsers, Chrome or Firefox. To achieve the highest level of protection, it is necessary to prohibit the browser from executing scripts and other types of potentially harmful software. ‘Walking’ on the Internet, one should not click on dubious ads and attractive buttons with tempting offers (Tayaksi et al., 2021). If a person wants to go to the site, enter its name manually in a separate open window. In all popular browsers today, phishing protection is provided by default: if the resource is such, the system will warn about it. And one should not forget to update the operating system regularly (Tayaksi et al., 2021). This will allow to eliminate vulnerabilities in a timely manner and protect from various kinds of cyber intrusions.

Importance of Privacy

Most users of the world Wide Web consider the issue of privacy to be very important. However, Instagram, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter are active users of social networks. ‘Privacy’ is a very subjective concept because different people look at the same problem from different sides. In the digital world, privacy takes on a new meaning. Nowadays, users are forced to choose more important to them – privacy or benefit and convenience. Social media platforms have seriously aggravated this problem by reducing users’ alertness about the rejection of part of their own identity. Without worrying at all, some users talk about intimate aspects of their lives, publish information about vacations, food, or a life event for a huge number of subscribers on social networks. Such people value digital interaction and social interaction much more than the confidentiality of their personal information; because of this, such users are at serious risk.

The Applicable Government Requirements

The state cybersecurity policy enhances the security and reliability of the state’s information systems. In the strategy, a high-level and top-down approach is applied to the cybersecurity problem: several state goals and priorities are put forward that need to be achieved over a certain time. The strategy is a model for solving the problem of cybersecurity within the state. There is no agreed definition of cybersecurity at both the European and international levels (Tayaksi et al., 2021). The definition of cybersecurity and other key terms may vary significantly in each country. As a result, approaches to the compilation of cybersecurity strategies also differ. The lack of a common ‘language’ and approach complicates the process of international cooperation when all countries recognize the importance of cooperation. As a rule, the following topics are covered in the cybersecurity strategy: building a government model to ensure cybersecurity. Moreover, it is important to identify an appropriate mechanism that allows private and public stakeholders to discuss and approve policies related to the problem of cybersecurity. Planning and defining the necessary policies and regulatory mechanisms, clearly defining roles, rights and responsibilities for the private and public sector.

Conclusion

By way of conclusion, people may not immediately realize that our data has been stolen in the virtual world. In fact, the stolen digital data is still there. All ‘0’ and ‘1’ can be infinitely duplicated without errors. Hackers can create perfect copies of personal data and use them for imitation or phishing. Password managers have long been invented for reliable storage of all credentials. These are convenient applications that, when used correctly, dramatically increase the level of security.

Reference

Sheehan, B., Murphy, F., Kia, A. N., & Kiely, R. (2021). A quantitative bow-tie cyber risk classification and assessment framework. Journal of Risk Research, 1-20. Web.

Tayaksi, C., Ada, E., Kazancoglu, Y. and Sagnak, M. (2021). The financial impacts of information systems security breaches on publicly traded companies: reactions of different sectors. Journal of Enterprise Information Management, 1-14. Web.

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