The digital revolution has transformed the
world with its focus on time, speed, reach and quality. As its broad sweep continues
to touch almost every aspect of our lives, cyber criminals have found its all
encompassing ecosystem too lucrative to wreak havoc. Hence, the challenge
before everyone connected to the digital world, with its vast repositories of sensitive
government, business and personal customer information, is to remain ever vigilant
with new safeguards put in place. The threat of data breach can not only impact
the lives of end customers but can also ruin the brand equity of companies and
institutions. Given the enormity of the threat of cyber crime, security testing
experts often find themselves at their wits’ end while strengthening data
security measures. As customers’ lives begin to be increasingly governed by software
applications, the need for companies to make software security testing an
important part of the overall SDLC, has become the sine-qua-non to fight the
menace of cyber crime.
The digital
platform has opened new vistas that till a few years back were considered part
of science fiction. Today, there is hardly any activity that has not been
touched by the digital revolution, more so after the advent of smartphones. Of
late, we have become so dependent on software applications that willy-nilly we have
become party to share sensitive personal information with app developers. Although
increased digitization has made our lives easier, it has spawned a new threat of
cyber crime that many of us have fallen victims to at some point of time or the
other. The threat is not confined to common customers alone but applies to
businesses, institutions and governments as well.
There have
been many instances of data breach or breach of data security measures in
banking institutions leading to a loss of people’s confidence in the system. It
appears a constant game of cat and mouse is being played between security
testing experts and cyber criminals with hurrahs and sighs drawn from each of
the sides. Given below is a list of methods that are employed by cyber
criminals to gain access into secured systems:
Phishing: Here, emails are sent to customers tricking
them into revealing sensitive information. A typical example is the ‘lottery
win emails from Nigeria,’ wherein bank details are sought from customers to
receive the ‘jackpot money.’
Spam: Unsolicited mails containing malware or links
to fraud websites, which mimic the designs of familiar websites are sent to
customers. These emails trick customers into using these fraud links to share
information.
Denial of
Service: Also known
as Distributed Denial of Service or DDOS, it includes sending a barrage of multiple
service requests from a number of IP addresses to a site, preferably a
financial one, causing it to crash.
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