Cybercrime is a criminal activity involving the use of computer network to manipulate private information belonging to targeted organizations. Most of the cybercrime activities are profit-driven intended in directly attacking the computer devices or infrastructure that is hacking, distribution of malwares for money extortions, spreading of illegal information among others. This menace is really a great challenge to most of the organizations that conduct their business operations via internet.
The rising of cybercrime therefore calls for better mechanisms to combat the vice that has cost the society a lot in terms of information privacy, information theft, and cost of recovering damaged network components and spreading of illegal or malicious information (Merchant-Dest, 2016). There are a number of law enforcement agencies that have created cyber-task forces to try to reduce cybercrime that has greatly spread due to increased used of internet in daily lives.
This report therefore provides a thorough analysis on some of the technologies and tools that could help combat cybercrime and the impact it causes to most organizations. The report also looks at some of the laws enacted by different countries in order to protect their citizens against cybercrime activities such as hacking, malware attack, and information theft, among others.
Technologies and tools for combating cybercrime
According to the report by the AFCEA, a defense department in the United States of America, on the national cybersecurity awareness month 2016, about 80 percent of the cybercrime incidences are related to three issues which are: poor practices by users, poorly designed network and management of data practices and poorly implemented of network architecture by IT professionals (Koon, 2010). According to the report in 2016, most of the Department of Defence (DOD) daily network attack was as a result of human error. Therefore, it is up to the agencies to take every step to learn, adapt and implement best practices that will mitigate against cybercrime (Neal, 2018). The following are some of the technologies and tools that will help combat cybercrime.
Use Machine learning and anomaly detection
This is a tool that is subjected to learning process and this enables it to automatically detect any malicious activity being executed within the network (Cybersecurityintelligence.com, 2015). The use of machine learning will ensure that errors made by humans are greatly reduced since no human will be needed to identify any malicious activity. This tool is able to provide a statistical report of all malicious activities of cybercrime thus helping the IT professionals to be able to counter the attack before it causes harm. Using capture packet and metadata, machine learning is able to identify and blocks malicious files or scripts by detecting the objects DNA. This approach therefore, will see to it the cybercriminals do not gain access to the agencies or organizations network space to execute their attacks.
Collective Threat Intelligence
With such a great widespread of cybercrime activities, organizations should collaborate in order to ensure that this threat is well managed. This technique therefore, involves sharing of information about vulnerabilities, threats and some of the solutions to mitigate these threats between various enterprises (Deloitte, 2016). Most of many organizations are caught by surprise by cybercriminals and they fall victims of the cyber threats or activities due to lack of knowledge.
Therefore, with the employment of collective intelligence, organizations will create awareness amongst themselves on some of the existing threats that could affect their operations. This approach will ensure that cybercrime is well managed as well as ensuring that agencies are well equipped with knowledge and methods of protection to prevent risks associated with this threats. In USA, the federal government have enacted a Cyber Security Act of 2012 that aided in promoting sharing of information regarding cyber threat and vulnerabilities between private and public sectors in order to curb the impact caused by these activities to the society.
Real-time file brokering to sandbox technologies
These are tools that are able to extract files in real-time and determine whether these files are good or bad or unknown. Agencies need such tools in order to conduct a thorough inspections and analysis on cybercrime. Real-time file brokering tool ensures that an unknown file is delivered to the sandbox for detonation and an in-depth analysis against the environment in which it operates on. With such a tool malicious files or scripts sent to the agencies network will be detected easily and their effect countered by preventing them from executing until the real-time inspection proves otherwise. This approach will ensure that only authorized files are given access to the organizations network or information systems thus reducing or eliminating the chances of suffering any attack as a result of cybercrime.
Application identification with advanced deep packet inspection
Most of the cyber-attacks are executed using various applications residing in agencies network. This therefore raises need for the agencies to be able to identify all the applications that are hosted in their network or IT systems. To do this agencies should use cyber professional to penetrate into their network in order to conduct thorough analysis on what applications are in existence and ,identify whether their structures or artifacts can be exploited to conduct any attack to the give agency. Application inspection will ensure that the agencies IT professionals is aware of all the applications present as well as determine what function these applications execute, where they are hosted and who uses them. This comprehensive information will provide a good understating of the agencies IT infrastructure thus enhancing the security of their system greatly.
Layer 2–7 Analysis
This is a tool that carries out an advance network layer analysis ranging from the packets being transmitted to the protocols used, applications, user session and all the files available. This tool will ensure that agencies have strong security attack response by fully reconstructing user sessions, providing real-time reliable look-up, enhancing instant messaging, image and email reconstruction, identifying root cause of cybercrime attacks as well as delivering complete artifacts for security evidence support. This tool will ensure that the Information system or network is secure by ensuring that threats or attacks are identified in real time and action taken against them. This approach was part of the Defense Department of the DOD and its key aim was to ensure that attacks that caught people by surprise are countered head on to avoid loss of information as well as damaging of network equipment.
Therefore, for cybercrime to be countered agencies need to prepare themselves well by ensuring that they are well equipped with ways that can protect them against cybercrime (Merchant-Dest, 2016). It is therefore very essential for agencies to know what is in their networks regardless of where the computer assets or components are hosted, also know who accesses the network and whether those who access their network are authorized or not (Davidow, 2013). This will provide a good way of knowing how to protect these components against unauthorized access or interference by an intruder.
The agencies should also conduct regular monitoring of their network to identify whether there are any malicious activities or whether their network is functioning as per the expectations. It is also proper to have a threat response team within the agencies who will be able to provide immediate response to any attacks or attempts to interfere with their network. These steps will ensure that the above discussed technologies are well used and implemented thus helping the agencies improve their information security and that of their devices.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is therefore evident that cybercrime is a great threat to many agencies cutting across all business operations and this calls for critical measures and technologies to ensure that agencies do not suffer in the hand of cyber criminals. These threats of cybercrime affects very critical aspect of organizational information such as integrity, confidentiality and privacy. Any organization that suffers cybercrime attacks is likely to make great losses or even have their services halted if the attack is directed directly to the core of their network.
It is therefore high time for organizations to adapt new technologies in fighting this vice in the world of ICT. The discussed technologies and tools such as the layer 2-7 analysis, collective threat intelligence, use of machine learning and anomaly detection tools, real-time file brokering to sandbox technologies and application identification with advanced deep packet inspection are some of the more advanced ways of handling cybercrime.
With these methods in place, the security of agencies networks will be improved and cybercrime will be reduced at a great percentage even if not fully. Hence there is need for organizations to create a cybersecurity culture that ensures their network and information system are well secured. This will guarantee quality services to their clients as well as improve the organizations service delivery efficiency.
References
Cybersecurity Act of 2012, S. 2105, 112th Congress (2012). [online] Available at:
Cybersecurityintelligence.com. (2015). Array. [online] Available at:
Davidow, B. (2013). Productivity Tools for Cybercrime. [online] The Atlantic. Available at:
Deloitte (2016). Fighting Cybercrime with Collective Intelligence and Technology. [online] Available at:
Koon, K. (2010). [online] Unodc.org. Available at:
L AW E NFORCEMENT T OOLS AND T ECHNOLOGIES FOR I NVESTIGATING C YBER A TTACKS. (2018). 1st ed. [ebook] Hanover: INSTITUTE FOR S ECURITY T ECHNOLOGY S TUDIES, pp.3-9. Available at:
Merchant-Dest, A. (2016). 5 Tips for Creating a Cybersecurity Culture Within DOD Environments. [online] SIGNAL Magazine. Available at.
Merchant-Dest, A. (2016). 5 Tools for Recognizing and Combating Cybercrime. [online] SIGNAL Magazine. Available at:
Neal, B. (2018). Emerging Technical Measures to Combat Cyber Crime. 1st ed.
Westby, J. (2012). Governance of enterprise security: CyLab 2012 report—How boards and senior executives are managing cyber risks. 1st ed. [ebook] pp.2-6. Available at
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