Challenges Facing Cyber Security And The Rise Of Cybercrime

Advancements in Technology and the Adoption of Digital Platforms

Discuss about the Challenge of Cyber Security.

There has been a great advancement in technology in the recent years. This has been characterized by a massive increase of electronic devices and new methods of communication and data storage methods. Many companies have adapted to the new developments, and almost every company in the world is going digital. Also, many people have adopted the new changes in technology. This is because the new forms of communication based on the new technology are cheap and more efficient as compared to the analog ways. By the year 2011, it was estimated that more than 2 billion people were using different methods of communication via the internet with more than half of the companies globally adopted new management systems based on the new technology which is characterized by the use of the internet (Tynes et al., 2011). About three- quarter of the two billion people was active on the internet for more than five hours in a day.

However, the new technology has also led to increasing in many vices among them the cybercrime. This is a criminal activity which involves the use of a computer, a network device and sometimes the network connections (Broadhust et al., 2014). This crime can be carried out for profit generation or with the main purpose of damaging the computers. Cybercrime can be carried out in different ways like the spreading of malware, the sharing of illegal information, images and other materials which can directly harm people (Broadhust et al., 2014). It is very hard to control cybercrime activities because many of the criminals are familiar with the current technology and they hide their identity online hence it is very hard to trace them.

The United States Department of Justice divides cybercrime into three categories. The criminal activities in which the computer is the target to gain access to the network, the crime whereby the computer is used as a weapon to launch a denial of service attack and the crime in which the devices are used as the accessories to the crime (Broadhust et al., 2014). All these forms of crimes affect individuals, companies and organizations. They also affect governments, and hence making cybercrime a great threat to security.

In the last quarter of the year 2017, 55% of the Vietnam citizens who use the internet were affected by cybercrime (Sankhwar et al., 2018). 49% of Philippines were also affected with 44% of Indians also affected by cybercrime (Sankhwar et al., 2018). China, UAE, Indonesia, Thailand and South Africa had 43%, 43%, 43% and 41% of the internet users who were affected by the Cybercriminal activities (Sankhwar et al., 2018). Other countries like Mexico and Brazil had 30% and 32% of the people who were affected by Cybercrime in last quarter of the year 2017.

Rise of Cybercrime and Types of Cybercrime

From the statistics, it is evident that many people are falling victims of cybercrime. One of the outstanding challenges of controlling these criminal activities is that most of the people who are involved are intelligent and they only lack ethics hence making it very hard to control them.  They also hide their identity and hence making it very hard to trace them.

Hacking is also another form of cybercrime which is on the rise and which affects many companies and individuals. It is defined as unauthorized access to data by a third party (Sukhai, 2004). Hackers target financial institutions or individual social media and financial accounts to either benefit from them or to use them in carrying out criminal activities. In the year 2015 and 2016, 40% of businesses globally faced a hacking threat, 35% of health care entities were also victims and governments and military centers accounted for more than 8%. From this analysis, it is evident that cybercrime is one of the greatest threats in the 21^st century. This study is designed to evaluate the challenges which face cyber security hence making cybercrime grow at a very high rate.

The main objective of this study is to evaluate the challenges which face cyber security. The following are the other objectives of the study.

1. To evaluate who is most affected by cybercrime between males and females.
2. To evaluate the main factors which make it hard to control cybercrimes.
3. To estimate the challenges which people face hence make them victims of cybercrime.
4. To study how different people approach the effects of cybercrime.

1. What are the main challenges which face cyber security?
2. Who are most affected by Cybercrime between males and females?
3. Which factors make it hard to control cybercrime?
4. What challenges do people face hence make them victims of cybercrime?
5. How do people approach the effects of cybercrime?

This research will be carried out online hence there will be no geographical restrictions. It will be carried out in the form of a survey targeting people who are active online and companies which carry out their activities online. This is because many of the participants who could have been victims of cybercrime can only be found online because that is where the crime is carried out.

Due to the development of technology, there has been increased competition among industries. Most of them have adopted the new modes of technology to market and do business. This is because the new technologies are more efficient and they make them have a competitive advantage among the other companies (Glantz et al., 2014). However, through the adoption of the new technology methods, these companies are faced with the risks of cybercrimes, and many of them become victims.

To avoid these attacks, the companies develop cyber security mechanisms. Cyber security is defined as the methods which are used by enterprises, individuals and organizations to protect their data, and prevent unauthorized access and damage to the programs (Ben-Asher & Gonzalez 2015). The popularity of the internet has made it a good platform to use in doing market research and also doing business directly since many of the customers are also digital and most of the time can be found online. However, the increased popularity has also come along with the increased rate of cybercrime hence forcing the companies to develop cyber security measures.

Challenges in Investing in Cyber Security Measures

Criminals use different ways to carry out cybercrimes. Some are interested in gaining the access to vital information of the enterprises and others are interested in using the acquired information for stealing or other malicious activities. Due to this increased cyber threats, the investment in the cyber security has increased and is expected to reach 96 billion in the year 2018 (Hopping, 2017). This is because many of the companies and organizations have known the advantages of carrying out business online, but they are faced by the challenge of cybercrimes hence making them invest more on the cyber security to curb the vice.

However, despite the large investment made in the cyber security, only large organizations can invest more. The small enterprises lack enough funds to invest heavily in the cyber security hence they are more prone to the cyber-attacks leading to the increase of cybercrimes. Also, most medium enterprises do not take the cyber security too serious, and they allocate little resources on it. This makes them less secure to the cybercrimes. Lack of investment in the cyber security by medium firms makes hacking easy since it reduces the barriers which the hackers face while carrying out cybercrimes (Cherdantseva et al., 2016). This means poor investment in the cyber security is one of the main factors which leads to the increase of cybercrimes.

Also, many organizations are not aware of the cybercrimes. This has been brought by ignorance of the cooperation’s, and the assumption that even if the cybercrimes happen, they may not affect them a lot. Due to these assumptions, the Yahoo Company was a victim of the cybercrime where more than three billion people were affected by the data breaches. It is until this point when the company created awareness of the crimes and developed its cyber security. Many companies and cooperation’s do not take precautions regarding cybercrimes, and they are not aware of the consequences which they may face if they fall victims of the crimes.

According to a study which was done by the UK government, 73% of the managers of the micro-organizations value the importance of cyber security with 39% thinking that they are insignificant to cyber-attacks (Grant McGregor, 2017). The study also found that if those medium and small organizations valued simple cyber security measures, they could avoid 80% of those attacks. This is because many of the criminals target the small enterprises since they know that they don’t have advanced cyber security measures.

Lack of Awareness Among Small and Medium Sized Enterprises

many organizations are aware of the cybercrimes and take precautions, there is a significant increase in the cyber threats. This is because the criminals are coming up with new ways of carrying out the attacks and as the organizations advance their security measures, the criminals also advance their tactics (Gordon et al., 2015). The criminals also have access to the most current technologies, and hence they are also open to change.

The development of Ransomware has made the fight against cybercrimes hard. This is a software which is designed with the main purpose of blocking the company’s system till the users pay a given amount of money.  Locky is one of the most distributed Ransomware software. It appeared in the year 2016 February and since then it has been widely used to carry out criminal activities in different companies (Keogh et al., 2018). The Locky software has the capability of attacking more than 20 million people in a day.

Along the popularity of the internet, there are other emerging technologies which have also attracted many users. The internet of things is one of them. It has been characterized by the development of smart devices which are connected from each other hence making communication very easy. These devices are connected to a single network, and most of the people prefer them because they give them more personalized options. However, due to the increased demand of these devices, the manufactures are not keen in protecting them from cyber-attacks. They lack key features which can be used for cyber security. The lack of security in the IOT devices has made it easy to be used by criminals to access personal data and hence carry out cybercrimes (Abomhara, 2015).  According to ethics, these devices pose a great danger since they work using personal data which can cause serious privacy violations in case the data is breached.

Hacktivism is more dangerous attacks than cyber-attacks since they target in crippling the organization both financially and socially. Among the popular hacktivists is anonymous which targets large organizations due to social and political issues. For example, in 2011, the organization attacked Sony’s website due to their lawsuit against George Hotz and specifically because the company gained access to the IP addresses of people who visited the blog of Hotz which was considered as a breach of free speech and internet freedom. Although this is not generally referred as cybercrime, it is also a potential threat since it is also carried out via the internet and affects both organizations and individuals.

Emerging Technologies and their Impact on Cyber Security

In order to address the challenges of cyber security, there is a need to take precautions which are important in either preventing or eliminating the possibilities of cyber-attacks. Through the taking of the precautions, there will be a well-developed strategy for each company which will be used to prevent cybercrimes. Also, their companies will be aware of the different forms of cybercrimes and how they affect the performance and the trust of customers. Through this way, it will be easy to implement the set strategies. However, these strategies cannot be implemented or adopted without a proper study on challenges which currently face the cyber security. This research is designed to evaluate those challenges and give out recommendations of how they can be handled. It will give a good platform for decision making and hence minimize the challenges of the cyber security.

It deals with the methods which will be used to carry out the research. It explains the research design, target population, sampling techniques, instruments for data collection, the data collection procedures, and the methods for data analysis.

This research is a quantitative study.Quantitative research is an empirical study which involves the collection of data and scientific analysis of that data to answer a given claim or the research question (Nardi, 2018). This type of research had twelve steps. The first step is the research question or the research topic. In this step, the researcher comes up with the research topic which should be investigated. The research questions should be empirical and researchable (Ary et al., 2018). The next step is the objectives of the study where the researcher comes up with the research objectives which he or she needs to be met in after the research. There follow the research questions. In this step, the researcher formulates the questions which will be answered by the research. These questions should be in line with the research objectives, and they should be real and researchable (Muijs, 2010). The next step is the research hypothesis which explains the claims which are to be accepted or rejected in the study.

There follows the step of literature review. In this step, the researcher studies the already existing literature on the chosen topic. This makes him, or her have a solid background of the topic and also be able to know the research gaps under the topic (Polit and Beck, 2010).  Then it follows the step of methodology in which the researcher explains the methods which he will adopt in carrying out the research. The next step is the research design where an explanation of the design which will be adopted is explained.

Then it follows the step of sample and sampling procedure where the researcher explains how he will select the sample and the sample size. The next step is data collection where the researcher collects data to answer the research questions. Then it follows data analysis where the researcher analyzes the collected data to get information. After data analysis, the researcher comes up with recommendations which should be implemented based on the research.

This research will use purposive sampling. This is a non- probability sampling method which allows one to select a sample based on set rules (Etikan et al., 2016). Since this research will be based on an online survey, purposive sampling is the best since there will be no physical meeting with the selected sample. This sampling method will help in selecting the sample based on the set rules. The sample size of this study will be 50 participants. The selection of the large sample is to make it easy to adopt the assumption of normality. This is based on the central limit theorem which states that as the sample size gets larger, the data tends to approach normality (Shcherbina, 2011).

The questionnaire will be the main tool for data collection. The questionnaires will be designed and uploaded online as a survey. There will be set rules which should be met by the participants of the survey. People will be allowed to participate in the study, and then a sample of fifty participants will be collected after filling the questionnaire those who meet the selection criteria using purposive sampling. The questionnaires will then be downloaded for data collection and analysis. The study will use questionnaires since they save time during data collection because many participants can respond to the questions at once (Saris and Gallhofer, 2014). 

The SPSS software will be used for data analysis. The data will first be downloaded, and then the selection of fifty participants who meet the selection criteria will be chosen. Then the data will be entered into an excel file for cleaning. After data cleaning, then it will be imported into the SPSS software for analysis. Quantitative analysis will then be carried out.

Although this research has been based on scientific methods, it has some limitations. Some of the participants may not meet the selection criteria, but because they have knowledge in the topic, they may participate, and hence the researcher chooses them since they seem to meet the selection criteria. Through this, the data may not be more credible. Also, the time for the research is limited hence there may be no enough time to thoroughly analyze and get all the information from the data

In conclusion, this study has been designed to evaluate the challenges of cyber security. The research will be carried online because most of the cybercrimes crimes happen online. It will include fifty participants who will give out data which will be used to answer the research questions of the study. The research will be carried out on a given target population whose selection will be based on the set rules. The recommendations of this research will be helpful in solving the challenges facing cyber security.

References

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 Ary, D., Jacobs, L. C., Irvine, C. K. S., & Walker, D. (2018). Introduction to research in education. Cengage Learning.

 Ben-Asher, N., & Gonzalez, C. (2015). Effects of cyber security knowledge on attack detection. Computers in Human Behavior, 48, 51-61.

 Broadhurst, R., Grabosky, P., Alazab, M., Bouhours, B., & Chon, S. (2014). An analysis of the nature of groups engaged in cybercrime.

 Cherdantseva, Y., Burnap, P., Blyth, A., Eden, P., Jones, K., Soulsby, H., & Stoddart, K. (2016). A review of cyber security risk assessment methods for SCADA systems. Computers & security, 56, 1-27.

 Etikan, I., Musa, S. A., & Alkassim, R. S. (2016). Comparison of convenience sampling and purposive sampling. American Journal of Theoretical and Applied Statistics, 5(1), 1-4.

 Glantz. C.S, , Landine. G.P, , Craig. P.A, & Bass. R.B, (2014). Lessons Learned in Over a Decade of Technical Support for US Nuclear Cyber Security Programmes. International Conference on Nuclear Security: Enhancing Global Efforts

 Gordon, L. A., Loeb, M. P., Lucyshyn, W., & Zhou, L. (2015). Externalities and the magnitude of cyber security underinvestment by private sector firms: a modification of the Gordon-Loeb model. Journal of Information Security, 6(1), 24.

 Hopping. C. (2017). Cyber security spending will hit bn in 2018. Retrieved from https://www.itpro.co.uk/cyber-security/30122/cyber-security-spending-will-hit-96bn-in-2018.

 Keogh, K., Gordon, C., & Marinovic, P. (2018). Cyber security: Global developments in cyber security law: is Australia keeping pace?. LSJ: Law Society of NSW Journal, (42), 82.

 Muijs, D. (2010). Doing quantitative research in education with SPSS. Sage.

 Nardi, P. M. (2018). Doing survey research: A guide to quantitative methods. Routledge13.

 Polit, D. F., & Beck, C. T. (2010). Generalization in quantitative and qualitative research: Myths and strategies. International journal of nursing studies, 47(11), 1451-1458.

 Sankhwar, S., Pandey, D., & Khan, R. A. (2018). A Step Towards Internet Anonymity Minimization: Cybercrime Investigation Process Perspective. In Information and Decision Sciences (pp. 257-265). Springer, Singapore.

 Saris, W. E., & Gallhofer, I. N. (2014). Design, evaluation, and analysis of questionnaires for survey research. John Wiley & Sons.

 Shcherbina, M. (2011). Central limit theorem for linear eigenvalue statistics of the Wigner and sample covariance random matrices. arXiv preprint arXiv:1101.3249.

 Sukhai, N. B. (2004, October). Hacking and cybercrime. In Proceedings of the 1st annual conference on Information security curriculum development (pp. 128-132). ACM.

 Tynes, B. M., Garcia, E. L., Giang, M. T., & Coleman, N. E. (2011). The racial landscape of social networking sites: Forging identity, community, and civic engagement. ISJLP, 7, 71.

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