What are the Advantages and Disadvantages of Cyber Security?

In today's internet world, data has become one of the most prized targets for hackers. In addition, hackers sell some of the most sensitive and valuable data on the black market. As a result, Cyber Security has become the knight in shining armour that can effectively protect businesses from these threats. Read on more to find out the advantages and disadvantages of Cyber Security for businesses and its importance and impacts on them.   

According to Statista, there will be about 29 billion IoT (Internet of Things) devices worldwide by 2030, compared to 9 billion devices as of 2022. These devices could be anything from consumer electronics to complex systems that business use for their operations. Protecting 9 billion devices is difficult, but protecting 29 billion devices is a humungous task, and that's where Cyber Security comes in.    

Cyber Security uses the power of machine learning and AI to monitor and protect an organisation from outside threats effectively. And if any business wants to survive in today's competitive world, it needs to have the right Cyber Security strategy. 

Table of Contents 

1) Let’s learn what Cyber Security is

2) What are the advantages of Cyber Security for businesses?

3) The Disadvantages of Cyber Security

4) The importance and impact of Cyber Security on businesses

5) Conclusion

Let’s learn what Cyber Security is

Cyber Security is the process of protecting Computer systems, networks and data from malicious attacks like Hacking, Phishing and other Cyber threats. The purpose of Cyber Attacks is to   

1) Unauthorised or illegal access to data: Gaining access to data in an attempt to either modify or delete the data.   

2) Extortion: Threaten the victim in exchange for money by illegally gaining access to their private and sensitive data.   

3) Hurt the Competition's Business: It is possible to hurt a competitor's business by stealing trade secrets or other valuable information like Intellectual Properties that has significant value. Once these secrets are leaked publicly, they could lose their financial worth and, in turn, affect an organisation's profitability.   

4) Disrupt Business activity: One of the purposes of Cyber Attacks is to disrupt the day-to-day business activity of an organisation.   

5) Damage reputation: Sometimes organisations may experience security breaches, and although their impact would be minimal, they could damage the organisation's reputation among the public. 

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What are the advantages of Cyber Security for businesses? 
 

Businesses and organisations can benefit significantly by implementing Cyber Security in their strategy. Whether it's about reducing downtime, minimising security costs or preventing Cyber-attacks, Cyber Security can do that and much more.   

Let's take a look at some of the advantages of Cyber Security for business: 

Protects sensitive personal information  

Data has become a precious commodity these days, and data containing personal information is in high demand. Hackers can illegally gain access to a person's data using malware and other tools to either extort money or damage the person's reputation. Cyber Security can prevent such attacks in the first place as it is a proactive approach.   

Protect private and Business data  

Cyber Security is a complete security package that can protect businesses and organisations from various threats. For example, companies must protect their sensitive data like Intellectual Property (IP), Trade secrets and other private information like their internal communication logs. With its constant monitoring and early detection, Cyber security can very effectively protect an organisation.   

Improves productivity  

One of the most devastating consequences of a Cyber Attack is downtime. Unnecessary downtime leads to decreased productivity. An effective Cyber Security strategy can give an early warning on when to expect attacks and give suggestions on how to respond. This early response is unique to Cyber Security which the conventional security approach needs to improve.   

Provides a business continuity plan  

Cyber Security uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning to create a business continuity plan. Using AI and statistical algorithms, it can effectively build prediction models with timelines by analysing historical data.   

Improve the overall security of an organisation  

Cyber Security is a one-stop solution for all security issues for businesses and organisations. It not only looks out for threats on the Cyber Space but also monitors outside threats. It is cost-effective compared to the Conventional security strategy since its operating costs are low.   

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The Disadvantages of Cyber Security
 

1) Regular Update: Businesses need to regularly update their software, hardware, and security strategy to be one step ahead of the attackers.   

2) Needs Continuous learning: The threats are new and never-ending, and so is the learning process to keep up with the threats.   

3) Complex to Setup: Setting up security architectures and tools like a firewall can be complicated and could take a long time.   

4) Slower Systems: Over time, Systems tend to become sluggish as running these security applications takes up a lot of resources.   

5) Constant Monitoring: An effective Cyber Security strategy involves continuous monitoring of new threats. An organisation needs to monitor its system and network constantly, and that's the only way it can detect threats well in advance. Also, it enables them to assess the threat level and develop a solution quickly.   

6) Talent Shortage: Cyber Security is vast, and there's a significant talent shortage in this field. It will take a lot of work for organisations to fulfil the scarcity.   

7) Expensive: Implementing Cyber Security can be very expensive as it is an ongoing process that requires consistent learning and spending. So, it can be challenging for many small businesses to bear the costs. Despite that, most companies with more than 1000 employees in the west plan to increase their spending on Cyber Security.   
 

The importance and impact of Cyber Security on businesses

Cyber warfare programs target a county's top public and private institutions to destabilise a country's economy or weaken its defences. In today's world, almost every organisation interlinks its data on the Internet. Everything is interlinked on the Internet, and this dependency on the Internet will only grow even more. That itself acts like a gateway for these attackers to target an organisation.   

Apart from this, there's Cyber espionage, where the attacker's identity and origin remain anonymous. The purpose of such attacks is to continuously collect Intelligence data for as long as possible until they are detected. Once detected, they would halt their activities temporarily.  

Cyber Security can protect against Cyber threats like Cyber warfare, espionage, hacking, phishing, malware and many other threats. Therefore, it is essential for business owners to get aware of Cyber Security and how it can benefit their business. 

Let’s take a look at the impacts of Cyber Security:  

1) Artificial Intelligence: Artificial Intelligence is getting stronger these days, and hackers are also starting to employ AI in their efforts, giving an even more convincing reason to use AI in an organisation's security.   

2) Threat Detection: Traditional security measures do not use AI and can only detect threats using the attack signature based on historical data, but with the help of AI, we can integrate behaviour analysis and historical data to strengthen the threat detection process.   

3) Vulnerability management: As the number of threats is constantly increasing, it is getting harder and harder for organisations to manage these vulnerabilities. The Conventional vulnerability management process uses a reactive approach and can only react to a threat after an attack. This approach could be faster, more robust, and rectified by deploying AI and Machine learning.   

4) Network Security: Network Security is crucial as a single breach could affect all the systems in a network and result in downtime. And traditional network security solutions can only detect threats based on their security policy. These security policies must be regularly updated to keep up with the rising and newer threats. Here also, implementing AI can significantly improve the monitoring process.   

5) Ethical Hacking: Ethical hacking is the process of conducting authorised tests like penetration tests and other techniques to find areas of weakness in an organisation's system, devices and network. 
 

Conclusion

We hope you have learned everything about Cyber Security's advantages, disadvantages, and impacts on businesses. Incorporating the right Cyber Security can be a game changer for an organisation.

If interested, kindly check out some of our courses on Cyber Security Training to get a complete understanding of Cyber Security.