Cyber Security
by Crash Test Guide.
What is Cyber Security?
Some of us are with friends and family, and others are working. This is our world.
When we are not physically close to our friends family or work, then fortunately, we are blessed with other forms of contact and communication.
We have cell phones, video conferencing, computers and a whole lot more of digital devices that can compensate us for that lack of physical contact and communication with each other and our businesses as well.
Digital Communication. What is this?
This is when you use a digital devices like a cell phone to contact and communicate with someone else who has a digital devices, for voice talking, or digital talking like on WhatsApp, Facebook, email, etc.
Now we come to today's topic.
How does all this relate to cyber-security?
Lets handle cyber-security in digital communications first. So many forms of communications but I will cover radio frequencies as a beginners guiding concept. Now the connection from device 1 to device 2 is done via unique radio frequencies. These radio frequencies are usually encoded so that you have your own line and ensure that your communication is private.
Otherwise it will be like you are talking in a crowded place where people are shouting in order to be heard, and everyone there will hear what you are saying. This is why we need a private line that is encrypted. Now to get this private line, in the market place, we use software to encrypt our communication.
So all of the sounds from everyone is there, in that common place and we use software to separate the sounds to our unique sounds and contain it into our unique space, where we can talk (encryption), with everyone else excluded.
Sounds complicated but it's actually very simple. All of these sounds are unique, so they are easy to separate. So this is quite a wonderful support system for people to communicate. As you may realize by now, this communication is vast. It's not only cell phone talking, it's business talking as well, devices talking to each other to do functions in a sense like turn on the lights at sunset.
This would require light sensors, software to send messages to it's boss computer, which in turn has software to help it make a decision and then it has other software to help it execute a decision like sending a message to the light box computer to switch on the light. All of these processes are done by software and either a physical line or radio which will be like bluetooth, wifi or internet data connection via modems etc.
So far it sounds like we got a good thing going good, but some good things may not last because we have good people and then we also have bad people.
If every was good we won't have this topic today. So we gonna give the bad people a say now. Bad people do many bad things here.
They try to harm you in many different ways. Here is the crazy thing, in this digital world they can hide and do bad things to you without showing themselves, they can even get away with their bad deeds without leaving a trace.
This cyber-world is deep. Bad people like to compromise your connections for many reasons. For example, There might be a perv, who wants to take control of you computer camera and watch you while you are unaware, or a fraudster who wants to intercept your communications to steal your bank codes and steal your money, or a blackmailer / extortionist who wants to make your data unavailable until a ransom is paid, or an enemy who wants to track your location so that they can kidnap you, and so on. The list is endless as bad people have many bad ideas.
So you see, with the good that we got, we also created vulnerabilities for ourselves because we are using digital networks, devices etc. that all operate in a similar open market place maybe in ways that are not secure and not policed. This world is known as the cyber world as it is not a physical world. It is a digital world. This digital world gives bad people a chance to eves drop on us, steal our stuff, track our movements etc. In general, these people are known as hackers. People who manipulate your communication so that they have access to the things you do.
There are two kinds of hackers here; The white hats who hack your systems by your request in order for you to know how ease or difficult it is for a baddy to take control of your systems. They usually give you a report of their ethical hack on your system and ways to improve your security. Now the second kind of hacker is known as the Black Hat. These are the baddys who do the bad things.
To accomplish these bad things, they have many strategies. They use Spyware to steal your information, Ransomware to encrypt your data, Malware/Viruses to break your devices and software, Trojan horses to infiltrate your systems, Keyloggers to steal passwords and lots more.
One would need to cover each of these topics separately to better understand them. Each of the above can get more advanced and used with each other in bigger attack sequences for complex compromises and to do more cyber-crime.
So you see that if you are not careful, a baddy can easily get hold of you, hijack your information, damage your devices etc. So in this cyber-world, you definitely need some form of security to protect you from the hoods out there. This is commonly known as Cyber security. This is always in the form of software that you will install into your devices or services from the many companies out there whom cater for this types of protection.
This was an introduction into cyber-security, positioned easy enough for the kids to get it. If you like me then you love crash courses. If you unsure about certain topic, research what is out there because you are not alone, I am learning the basics from scratch everyday. Here are some reference links I used to learn some the basics today.
1. https://www.theknowledgeacademy.com/blog/digital-communication/ 2.https://www.avast.com/c-topic-hacking 3. https://www.imperva.com/learn/application-security/cyber-security/
You are never to old to learn basic things, take a crash course everyday because the information age is at our fingertips.... Crash Test Guide.