Cyber Security Of Pakistan’s Small And Large Enterprises: Threats And Recommendations

Project Objective

Discuss about the Cyber Security Of Pakistan’s Small And Large Enterprises.

There are various modern communities have reliant on cyberspace that provides valuable and essential services for the functionalities of the environment and the human life along with the challenges and threats. The field of cyber security focuses on preventing databases, networks and programs from unlawful access or destruction. It is essential for this to have adequate knowledge about the limitations, vulnerabilities and stability of ICT (Awan and Memon, 2016). The world has changed rapidly due to the amendment in technology; this might need innovative and effective involvement among developing countries at the different level of development. It has become necessary for the developing countries to pay attention towards the cyber security issues. Pakistan is one of them that facing challenges regarding cyber security. This research contributes a clear overview of cyber security threats which may impact the business performance of small and large enterprises of Pakistan. The project objective will be defined in a concise manner. Furthermore, it concludes by providing some recommendations to the makers of cyber security policy which can be implemented by the country to prevent the cyber boundaries.

The project objective of the research is to find out the various factors which may influence the cyber security of Pakistan’s small and large enterprises. The objectives are defined below:

• To explore the essential services of small and large enterprises.
• To evaluate the current threats and attacks in Pakistan by considering infector, infection and infected by.
• To investigate the cyber threat policies and cyber protection policies in Pakistan.

The project scope is wide as it covers various factors regarding cyber security challenges and policies in small and large enterprises of Pakistan. The project is firmed through various regular authorities in the enterprises as it aims to present the specific knowledge about the cyber security challenges and policies. The readers will get sufficient knowledge about the cyber security issues in developing country and about the actions which have taken by the government of Pakistan to prevent these concerns.

The governments are in the way of revolutions of their key services to online services because of increasing in the implementation of Internet-based services. There are  number of firms that use internet-based infrastructure to give their services to the customers because it helps them to attain the objectives of the organization in an adequate manner. The use of internet-based services at government level has enhanced the chances of damage systems security not from internal sources but also from external sources. According to Reddy and Reddy, (2014), it has been found that cyber terrorists are able to make availability, integrity or confidentiality attack on different cyber services. The flexibility, security and consistency of the cyber assets of nation and services of government are a huge challenge for not only organizations but also for the growing number of serious attacks on confidential information. It is considered the most serious national security and economic threats (Graham, Olson and Howard,  2016). As per the New York Times Report malware is the hazardous software that hits Atomic Organization of Iran and nuclear facilities before evading and causing chaos on the public web. It has been found from the report of phishing campaign (APWG, 2013), has focused a huge variety of recipients at the time of employing the Dyre/Dyreza banking malware, which objects sensitive user account credentials and provides the captured data to malicious actors. It has been analyzed from the report that the Dyreza banking malware brings new challenge for developed countries which mostly targets senders, themes, payload and attachments. According to Elmaghraby and Losavio, (2014), medium and large enterprises have a significant role in the development of the industrial, economic and social of a country. These enterprises play an integral role in the growth of technological innovation in Pakistan. Large and medium enterprises are one of the major sources to decrease poverty and enlarge economic renewable and social development (Gupta, Agrawal and Yamaguchi, 2016).

Project Scope

There are many countries that deploy online services and one of them is Pakistan, in which most of the organizations whether medium or large are deploying services of information technology into their infrastructure along with the upper level of authorities are interesting to organize these kinds of latest technology into their infrastructures. As per Awan and Memon, (2016), NADRA (National Database and Registration Authority) is ID data base of Pakistan which is centralized. It has been sharing in passport offices, among banks, mobile networks, FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) and Election Commission Departments and many more. It has been found that NADRA is the only enterprise which has the responsibility of keeping information regarding population. As per the report (Threat Track Security 2014), NADRA is considered as the top most organization all over the world due to the usage of state of the art technologies for its services. It has been found that at current time, the countries of Europe are using SCAP (Security Content Automation Protocol) algorithm for National Vulnerability database which helps in data automation of security management, vulnerability management and compliance (APWG 2013). It has been observed that hackers are endeavoring to hack the sensitive information about the country to hack the confidential information.  NADRA might be targeted for cyber attackers to increase the damage in its vital services and utilize them for illegal objectives.

According to Jang-Jaccard and Nepal, (2014), the access usage of social media sites is being the cause for vulnerability of people towards the cybercrimes. It has been found that more than 3 billion users are active on social media sites. Pakistan’s government has initiated e-government component for modernization which facilitates to develop the on-going stress by developing their effectiveness and modifying to the pressure of latest society of information (Ben-Asher and Gonzalez, 2015). Government organizations which are considered as the large organization of Pakistan are enabled due to effectiveness of e-government that provides rapid and effective services to their constituents. There are various business and financial services such as Pakistan stock exchanges, mobile banking, and online banking transactions, various financial services and mobile and postal money services which are being used by medium and large enterprises in Pakistan. It has been analyzed that capital markets are selling and purchasing the financial markets for investment purpose that facilitates many organizations and government to empower their amount by preventing them from various frauds (Sadeghi, Wachsmann and Waidner, 2015).

Literature Review

The literature review suggests that the cyber security issues can decrease the business performance as it develops the fear in the mind of an employee of losing confidential data. There are various threats of cyber attacks that hamper the goodwill of the enterprises whether it is large or medium. The DDoS or Distributed Denial of Service attack is biggest challenge for thee enterprises as it prevents various functions that perform at an efficient level. Generally, hackers have a tendency to attack the single system and then utilize such process to attain access to others systems that are linked to same server. Zargar, Joshi and Tipper (2013), stated that the servers are not made for handling high volume of traffic that outcome in their failure along with their security measures. In case of vulnerability of server, hackers take benefits and attack on server to attain the confidential information. It has been found that BBC, Rio Olympics, DYN are the illustrations that faced the DDoS attacks (Bisson, 2016).

The business performance of the company is vital for the organization as it helps to increase the revenues of thee enterprises. There are various impacts of cyber security challenges on the business performance such as the economic cost of cyber attack, reputational damage and legal consequences of cyber breach. It has been stated by Lohrke, Frownfelter-Lohrke and Ketchen Jr, (2016), that cyber attack can be the reason of financial loss due to confidential data and loss of business contract that may lead the medium as well as large enterprises into adverse situation. Trust is a vital element for maintaining the customer relationship. Cyber attacks can spoil the image of the company in the point of view of outsiders as well as insiders which bring the issues in the form of loss of customers, reduction in profits and loss of sales (Gai, Qiu, Sun and Zhao, 2016). The effect of reputational damage may affect the relationship with suppliers and other third parties. Personal data should be managed by company in an effective manner to maintain the relationship with customers as well as employees for the long period (Kim, Shin and Lee, 2009). Data protection and privacy laws should be implemented in the enterprises and if this data is accidentally compromised, the company has to suffer with fined and regulatory sanctions (Rasool, 2015).

Pakistan is developing country where execution of cyber services is under development so it is vital for the enterprises of the country to secure confidential information on prior basis. Social websites provide the comfort facilities to many users where user feel free to communicate with each other in an effective manner but cyber criminals are targeting these social media sites for the purpose of stealing personal information of the user involving locations. It has been found from the journal article of Awan and Memon, (2016), that the current cyber threats are Trojan Horse, worms, fraud, phishing, Malicious code, cyber harassment, content relates, denial of serves, zero day attack and insider threat. In the context of cyber threats and policies in Pakistan, it has been analyzed that after thieving of confidential information by US National Security Agency (NSA), it has been recommended by the National Telecom & Information Technology Security Board (NTISB) for preventing government, enterprises and their services from various kinds of cyber attacks. It has been found from the report of APWG, (2013), that the cyber crimes started to attack on various websites of Pakistan which entails number of confidential information regarding security forces and the federal government. The business performance can be affected due to several reasons such as political extremism, ethnic associations, extremisms, unemployment and terrorism.

It has been from the articles of Lau, Xia and Ye, (2014), that Pakistan is most at risk of malicious software cyber attacks worldwide. There are various kinds of malicious software that make impossible for cyber security to be 100 percent efficient all the time. Cloud-based computing is one of the examples which are utilized by many organizations in Pakistan. Whilst, it is most effective and safe data hub but still, it has a potential risk of cyber attack (He, Maple, Watson, Tiwari,  Mehnen,Jin and Gabrys, 2016). However, there is a majority of companies in Pakistan that face challenges of cyber attacks which can be reduced by keeping strengthen password management to make sure that focused phishing attacks of third parties should be avoided. The employees and customers are afraid to provide information about personal data to the companies whether it is small or large due to hacktivism. 

It has been analyzed that Pakistan has no policies and laws regarding cyber attacks that might widely deal with the growing threat if cyber crimes. There is a lot of inadequacy in available crime justice legal framework which is ill-equipped to handle the concerns of cyber attacks in a sophisticated manner. This new age is being the cause of damage existing crimes while conducted with the utilization of internet services. These provided opportunity to different attackers of cyber crime to bring new kind of criminals and cyber crime like interference with data and ICT system, hacking by adopting illegal access, frauds, illegal interception made by civilians and utilization of malicious code viruses to the detective on ICT systems (Choo, 2011). The existing legislation of Pakistan is not able to punish or entertain these issues in a significant manner which may bring issues to the various enterprises of Pakistan. It is required for the government of Pakistan to develop a comprehensively legal framework in against of unique crimes. It has been suggested by Tanzanian delegation that Pakistan needs to make Cyber Crime Unit (CCU) to handle cybercrimes and it requires enhancing an effective and liable legislation and creating Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) to help the execution.

It has been researched that Tanzania has lost approx $6 million due to non-care about the cyber crimes which forced them to enhance CCUs and CERTs. The worthies of delegation described in the discussion that the big amount of $445 billion is misplaced annually due to cyber crimes and electronic thefts. Additionally, it has been observed that 800 million recorded data are hacked in the developing countries. In this relation, Pakistan needs to describe the various policies regarding controlling the crimes as well as the developed nations (APWG 2013). It has been analyzed that Pakistan’s medium and large enterprises ar facing challenges in the context of cyber crimes such as financial crimes, sale of illegal articles, email spoofing, forgery, trojan attacks, internet time theft, password cracking, buffer overflow, worm attacks and many more. On December 31, 2007, the president of Pakistan Pervej Musharraf broadcasted a law called The Prevention of Electronic Crimes Ordinance (PECO) 2007 (Imam, 2012). It was the best gift for the nation because the cyber crime rate was increased day by day. However, this bill was not passed by the Pakistan Parliament which is still pending. It might be problematic that there are many systems in Pakistan which have become computerized but no legal implications are taken place yet. There is no procedure to check the things and no policies of punishment for criminals. Cellular companies of Pakistan are facing the issues of cyber crimes, the public of nation is looted through email hackers and ‘African Lottery’ scams many people.

It has been found that the banking sector of Pakistan is increasing its dependence on cyber space which increases the unsafe environment among people and their trust is losing on the banking sector. It is vital for the different sectors of Pakistan to ensure their employees and customers that their information is safe at the workplace (Rasool, 2015). Without the support of government’s policies, it would not be possible for the enterprises of Pakistan to increase the business performance. The economic stability and revenues of the company can be increased by implementing the various policies regarding cyber crimes in Pakistan (Yan, Qian, Sharif and Tipper, 2012).

Conclusion

From above discussion, it can be concluded that cyber crimes can decrease the performance of the business and may lead the organizations into the adverse situation. With the support of various authors, the discussion has been made on cyber security challenges in Pakistan. There are many medium and large enterprises such as stock exchanges, mobile banking, financial organizations and government sectors which can be influenced by Cyber attacks and decrease the performance of the companies. It has been analyzed that there is no law and legislation regarding cyber security attack in Pakistan which is threat in itself. It is recommended to the government of Pakistan to implement significant policies regarding these concerns so that the business performance of the company can be increased.

References

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