What is Cyber Security?

Cyber security, also known as information technology security, focuses on protecting computers, networks, programs, and data from unintended or unauthorized access, change, or destruction. It is a comprehensive approach to protecting digital assets from various threats, including hackers, viruses, and other forms of malware, as well as natural disasters, human error, and other potential risks.

The main goals of cyber security include:

1. Protecting against unauthorized access and use of sensitive data and systems.
2. Ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of critical information and infrastructure.
3. Detecting and responding to security incidents on time to minimize damage.
4. Complying with relevant laws, regulations, and industry standards.

What are the Types of Cybersecurity?

Cybersecurity aims to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information while maintaining the privacy and security of individuals and organizations. There are several types of cybersecurity, which include:

1. Network Security: This type of cybersecurity protects a computer network from intruders, whether targeted attackers or opportunistic malware.
2. Application Security: This involves securing software and services from threats. This includes the design, development, deployment, and maintenance of secure software applications to prevent different threats such as denial of service attacks, data breaches, etc.
3. Information Security: This protects the integrity and privacy of data, both in storage and in transit.
4. Operational Security: This involves the processes and decisions for handling and protecting data assets.
5. Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Planning: This involves how an organization responds to a cybersecurity incident or any other event that causes the loss of operations or data.
6. End-user Education: Users might be tricked into allowing unauthorized access to the network they are using. Therefore, user education involves teaching users to follow best practices like not clicking on unknown links.
7. Cloud Security: This involves protecting cloud-based data and applications. It's a significant concern for many companies due to the rapid growth in cloud usage.
8. Mobile Security: This involves protecting both personal and business information stored on and transmitted from smartphones, tablets, laptops, and other mobile devices.
9. IoT Security: The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of physical devices that connect to the internet. IoT Security is the technology for protecting internet-enabled devices that connect to each other in this way.

What are Common Cyber Threats?

Cyber threats encompass a wide array of attack vectors. Common cyber threats include:

1. Malware: Malicious software, such as viruses, worms, Trojans, ransomware, and spyware, is designed to infiltrate, damage, or disrupt computer systems, networks, or devices.
2. Phishing: Fraudulent attempts to obtain sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details, by disguising as a trustworthy entity in an email or other electronic communication.
3. Social Engineering: Manipulating people into divulging sensitive information or performing actions that compromise security. This can include tactics like pretexting, baiting, and tailgating.
4. Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attacks: An attacker intercepts communication between two parties, altering or eavesdropping on the data being exchanged without their knowledge.
5. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks: Overwhelming a targeted system, network, or website with a flood of internet traffic, causing it to crash or become unavailable for legitimate users.
6. Ransomware: A type of malware that encrypts a victim's files or locks their computer, demanding payment (usually in cryptocurrency) to restore access to the data or system.
7. SQL Injection: An attack that targets a website's database by inserting malicious SQL code, potentially allowing the attacker to view, modify, or delete sensitive information.
8. Zero-day exploits: Attacks that exploit previously unknown vulnerabilities in software or hardware, allowing hackers to infiltrate systems before developers can release a patch or fix.
9. Insider threats: Security breaches caused by employees, contractors, or other individuals with authorized access to an organization's systems or data, either intentionally or unintentionally.
10. Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs): Highly targeted and sophisticated cyberattacks, often state-sponsored, that aim to infiltrate and remain undetected within an organization's network for an extended period, stealing sensitive information or causing damage.

Methods to Prevent Cybersecurity Threats

Cybersecurity refers to the practice of protecting computer systems, networks, devices, and data from unauthorized access, theft, damage, or disruption. It involves implementing various technologies, processes, and practices to safeguard digital information and infrastructure from cyberattacks, hackers, and other malicious activities. There are several technology methods and tools that can help prevent cybersecurity threats:

1. Antivirus and anti-malware software: These tools scan your devices for known malware, including viruses, worms, Trojans, and ransomware, and remove them to prevent damage or unauthorized access.
2. Firewall: Hardware or software firewalls monitor incoming and outgoing network traffic, blocking suspicious or unauthorized connections based on predefined security rules.
3. Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems (IDPS): These systems monitor network traffic for signs of malicious activity and can automatically block or alert administrators to potential threats.
4. Encryption: Encrypting data, both at rest and in transit, helps protect sensitive information from being intercepted or accessed by unauthorized parties.
5. Virtual Private Networks (VPNs): VPNs create a secure, encrypted connection between your device and the internet, helping protect your data from eavesdropping and man-in-the-middle attacks.
6. Multi-factor Authentication (MFA): MFA adds an extra layer of security by requiring users to provide at least two forms of identification before accessing an account, making it more difficult for attackers to gain unauthorized access.
7. Patch management: Regularly updating software and hardware with the latest security patches helps protect against known vulnerabilities that attackers may exploit.
8. Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems: SIEM tools collect and analyze security-related data from various sources, helping organizations detect and respond to potential threats more effectively.
9. Data Loss Prevention (DLP) tools: DLP solutions monitor and control the movement of sensitive data within an organization, helping prevent unauthorized access or accidental data leaks.
10. Network segmentation: Dividing a network into smaller, separate segments can limit the damage caused by a successful cyberattack and make it more difficult for attackers to move laterally within the network.
11. Endpoint protection: Endpoint security tools protect devices like computers, smartphones, and tablets from malware, unauthorized access, and other threats.
12. Regular vulnerability scanning and penetration testing: These proactive measures help identify and address potential security vulnerabilities in your systems and networks before they can be exploited by attackers.

By implementing these technology methods and integrating them with strong security policies and employee training, organizations can significantly reduce their risk of experiencing cybersecurity threats.

What Security Protections does Tencent EdgeOne Provide?

Tencent EdgeOne is a next-generation Edge Services provider that delivers unparalleled speed, dependable protection, and an extremely flexible programmable platform for your global services, regardless of scale. Tencent EdgeOne protects your websites, apps, and APIs by intelligent identification to block various attacks, mitigates DDoS threats, and employs AI and bot policy engines to analyze web, bot, and CC attacks.

1. DDoS Protection(DDoS protection at the network layer)

A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack refers to an attacker remotely controlling a large number of zombie hosts through the network to send a large number of attack requests to one or more targets, blocking the target server's network bandwidth or exhausting the target server's system resources, making it unable to respond to normal service requests.

DDoS protection can effectively ensure availability and continuity, monitoring network traffic in real-time, and immediately cleaning up traffic-based DDoS attacks when detected.

2. Web Protection

Web Protection can control and mitigate various risks, with typical scenarios including:

• Vulnerability attack protection: For sites involving customer data or sensitive business data, you can enable managed rules to intercept injection attacks, cross-site scripting attacks, remote code execution attacks, and malicious attack requests from third-party component vulnerabilities.
• Access control: Distinguish between valid and unauthorized requests to prevent sensitive business exposure to unauthorized visitors. This includes external site link control, partner access control, and attack client filtering.
• Mitigating resource occupation: Limit the access frequency of each visitor to avoid excessive resource occupation, which may cause service availability decline.
• Mitigating service abuse: Limit session or business dimension abuse, including batch registration, batch login, excessive use of API, and other malicious usage scenarios. Strengthen the usage quota of a single session (such as users, instances, etc.) to ensure that users use service resources within a reasonable limit.

3. Bot Management

Bot management is a service that maintains the quality of your website traffic. Among your website visitors, there may be a portion of visits that are not initiated by real users, but by automated programs, which we usually call bots. Although some bots (e.g., search engine crawlers) are beneficial to the website, they may also cause the following issues:

• Abnormal website traffic or performance degradation: A large amount of bot traffic may consume a lot of server resources, affecting the access experience of real users. In this case, bot management helps to identify and control these bots, optimizing website performance and improving user experience.
• Abnormal data statistics: This may be caused by bots simulating user behavior. Bot management can more accurately distinguish between real user and bot behavior, allowing you to obtain more realistic data.
• Website content or user information leakage or abuse: Bots may try to crawl and copy website content or obtain user personal information. Bot management can effectively block unauthorized access, protecting the security of website content and user information.

EdgeOne provides many of the security services listed above, including DDoS Protection, Web Protection, Bot management, Rules Template, IP and IP Segment Grouping, Origin Protection, Custom Response Page, Alarm Notification, and more.