You might think, “What is this guy talking about?”, hold your thoughts people, let me explain.
Let’s do the famous divide and conquer algorithm to this.
Cyber Security is protecting your digital belongings from the bad guys, if you want a formal definition of
Cybersecurity, just Google it...
Chess is a 2-player board game with a set of pieces of a different color. It has a lot of variants, but we
can consider Standard Chess for this case. The goal of the game is to checkmate the king. Now, in this case,
we as a Cyber Security company are the good guys and the cybercriminals are the bad guys. So, we have to
always be active and updated to protect our clients. The blackhat/gray hat hackers always try to come up with
new techniques to hack the system and exploit it for their gain. This can have terrible consequences for both
the company and our clients. We should not let that happen as it is totally against our core principles. We as
a company always try to make a positive impact on society. We want to grow with you.
...
Coming back to the analogy, we (White pieces) are the white hat hackers and the black pieces are the
black hat hackers. They try to checkmate our king, that is stealing our data and do whatever they
want...usually, they sell it in the black market or the dark web.
To prevent an organization from getting hacked, we can do a few small things that can benefit all of us.
Each and everyone in the organization should have some kind of cybersecurity awareness. This is what we
call ‘Cyber hygiene’. This does not guarantee 100% safety no technology or practice can make you or your
organization fully safe. We can add several layers of protection to slow down hackers.
Cyber hygiene is a practice that can help you to be safer online. Some common steps include:
Keep your apps/Softwares up to date
Have a proper company policy to manage the sensitive data of your clients and employees
Make sure you give importance to physical security as well
Its always recommended having a cybersecurity framework, example: NIST
Have a good incident response team to handle the cyber attacks
Have a good disaster recovery plan in case of any natural calamities/terrorist attacks
Points mentioned above are few and there is always more we can add to it.
Furthermore, we have to understand that our cyber world is not safe and we don’t know anything about our
opponents. So its always better to keep yourself updated. This is important to stay ahead of your game.
Not only that, make sure you gather your information from reliable sources. Information can be of
different forms - blogs, news, videos, podcasts, etc.
If someone says that he/she is a cybersecurity expert, don’t believe them. There is always more to
learn as this is an evergreen domain. Apart from that we also have to have some soft skills to be
successful in this domain. Some of them are Effective Communication, Adaptability, Collaboration,
Determination, and Leadership.
One of the most important character I think is persistence. There will also be obstacles in our way. The
one who always gets back up and starts running again will be successful.
Cyber Security 101
Would you be comfortable living in a house that someone else had the key to? What if an underground tunnel
led into it from a public park, or its windows could never quite close all the way? Would you trust it with
your safety and your privacy?The internet is that house.
This is not to say—never go into the house, but rather, you should know the hazards before you store all of
your valuables there—and do what you can to protect them. So why is it insecure, and why can’t we just fortify
it until it’s safe?
Well, first of all, the internet was not originally built to be what it is today. It’s like someone decided
to expand a shoebox into a skyscraper. The internet originally developed when computers were huge and so
expensive to own that only universities, big businesses, and a few governments had them. The point,
originally, was to let these massive supercomputers talk to each other. And as soon as two computers could
send information back and forth, we had a network. The network gradually grew, until personal computers
emerged in the 1980s, and then it exploded....
Soon people were not just talking to each other, but also exchanging money, playing games, reading news,
shopping, and doing everything we associate with the internet today. Other devices started talking to the
network too—phones, and cars, and refrigerators, and elevators and power plants, and much much more. But the
ease of all of those devices talking to each other came at a price: security.One computer could send another
instructions to delete everything on it or take it over—we call these viruses and malware. Or one person
could steal another’s identity by guessing, cracking, or extracting a password.
Vulnerabilities such as these will never completely go away, because they’re built into the internet’s very
architecture. Criminals use them to steal billions of dollars, governments use them for surveillance, and
hacktivists use them to further their political goals. Between 2004 and 2013, over 1 billion records of
personal information were stolen or leaked through data breaches of major organizations.
As a thought experiment, let’s imagine what a perfectly secure internet might look like. Users would not be
allowed to download or install anything onto their computers. All internet traffic would be monitored and
regulated by bots and humans, massively limiting the number of websites you could visit. In order to log
onto a website you’d have to type in a 100 character password, submit a genetic sample, and whistle a tune.
The servers that hold data would be kept in heavily armed fortresses... on the moon. And even with all of
these safeguards in place, some clever hacker would almost certainly still find a way in. The good news is,
even with our flawed internet, there are simple things you can do to protect yourself, and there are a lot
of people committed to make the internet more secure.
As a cybersecurity expert you play the role of one of these people, protecting a company that is the target
of increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks. You must continuously strengthen your defenses in order to
thwart these attackers. You will do this by spotting scams designed to trick you into giving up your
secrets, and teach you how passwords are cracked and strengthened.
The house that is the internet may be built on a shaky foundation, but it’s been a home to innovation and
an unprecedented free exchange of ideas. It’s up to us to make it livable in spite of its flaws.
What is AI?
Picture this a machine that could organize your cupboard just as you like it or serve every member of the
house a customized cup of coffee. Makes your day easier doesn't it? These are the products of artificial
intelligence.
But why use the term artificial intelligence well these machines are artificially incorporated with
human-like intelligence to perform tasks as we do. This intelligence is built using complex algorithms and
mathematical functions. But AI may not be as obvious as in the previous examples. In fact AI is used in
smartphones, cars, social media feeds, video games, banking, surveillance and many other aspects of our daily
life. The real question is what does an AI do at its core?
Consider a robot built in a lab which is dropped onto a field. In spite of a variation in lighting, landscape
and dimensions of the field, the AI robot must perform as expected. This ability to react appropriately to a
new situation is called generalized learning. If the robot is now at a crossroad, one that is paved and
another, that is rocky. The robot must determine which path to take based on the circumstances. This portrays
it's reasoning ability. After a short stroll, the robot now encounters a stream that it cannot swim across. If
a plank is provided as an input the robot is able to cross this stream. Therefore, the robot uses the given
input and finds the solution for a problem. This is problem solving....
These three capabilities make the robot artificially intelligent. In short, AI provides machines with the
capability to adapt reason and provide solutions.
There two broad categories that AI is classified into - weak AI m, also called narrow AI, which focuses
solely on one task. For example alphago is a maestro of the game go but you can't expect it to be remotely
good at chess. This makes alphago a weak AI. One might say Alexa is definitely not a weak AI, since it can
perform multiple tasks well. That's not really true. Alexa cannot respond to a question it isn't trained to
answer. For instance, try asking Alexa the status of traffic from work to home. Alexa cannot provide you
this information as she is not trained.
That brings us to our second category of AI, strong AI. Now, this is much like the robots that only exist
in fiction as of now. Ultron from Avengers is an ideal example of a strong AI that's because it's self-aware
and eventually even develops emotions. This makes the AI's response unpredictable.
Many people are confused on how artificial intelligence is different from machine learning and deep
learning. Machine learning is a technique to achieve AI and deep learning in turn is a subset of machine
learning. Machine learning provides a machine with the capability to learn from data and experience
throughout rhythms. Deep learning does this learning through ways inspired by the human brain. This means
through deep learning data and patterns can be better perceived.
Ray Kurzweil a well known futurist predicts that by the Year 2045, we would have robots as smart as humans
this is called the point of singularity well. That's not all. I In fact, Elon Musk predicts that the human
mind and body will be enhanced by AI implants which would make us partly cyborgs.
AI is built to work with humans and make our tasks easier. However with the maturation of technology, we
can only wait and watch what the future of AIholds for us.
