Cyber Security Essay Writing Guide

Today people spend much of their time on the Internet. This virtual world largely reflects the real one; and there is crime, which, unfortunately, is an integral part of the society. Victims of cybercriminals are private users, enterprises, and organizations of all sizes. It has been estimated that economic damage from such malicious acts could reach $8 trillion by 2022. Among other risks, recent cyberattacks have led to the closure of small businesses, delays in performing vital surgical operations, and disruptions in the provision of public services.

Given the growing relevance of this topic, students of many educational institutions write computer crime essays every year. If you have also received an assignment like this, the facts outlined below will become a reliable basis for your academic paper.

Information for an essay on different types of cybercrime

The pace of innovative development in the competition of ‘offensive’ and ‘defensive’ technologies is very high. More than 100,000 new samples of malicious software are being developed every day. Some modules are bought for more than $1 million. Cybercriminals are willing to pay such money because they are sure that the invested funds will pay off very quickly.

You can write about the following types of threats in a research paper on cyber security:

• malicious spam containing spyware or inviting users to sites with harmful content.
• target phishing, intended for narrow groups of people and contains messages with a social context that encourage a potential victim to open a dangerous file or visit a site with malicious code.
• PDF-attacks: a lot of serious vulnerabilities have been discovered in PDF documents.
• SEO poisoning: interference of hackers with search engine algorithms leads to the sites containing malicious code occupying high positions in the rankings. To prevent such threats, it's needed to use the latest version of the gateway antivirus and the intrusion prevention system. And also it is not out of place to know how to fix IDP Generic Virus.
• pernicious software that can spread through popular social networks.

The need to write network security research papers and perform a detailed analysis of this problem is informed by the fact that up to 60% of the threats detected during the year do not have special patches from software vendors at its end. Also, there are the dangers associated with privileged users that include insider attacks when employees either knowingly steal data from their company or allow others to do so because of carelessness. You can mention in your cybercrime effects on corporations essay that many techniques applied earlier for home attacks are now used for business as well. There are modified banking Trojans intended for financial, accounting departments and various encryption programs.

Measures against criminals to describe in cyber security essay

In order to effectively confront the threat, which has so dramatically strengthened in the recent years, companies need to consider information security as one of the key components of their operation. One of the first important steps to prevent cyberattacks that should be described in an essay on cybercrime and security is introducing a position of information security director in the organizational structure of the company. As a rule, he/she is not a member of the management board but must have direct access to firm’s data and report either straightly to the Directorate or to an official who is maximum one step below the board members in the subordination hierarchy. The information security director is obliged to inform senior managers about the importance of measures required to ensure the preservation of sensitive data and to seek the allocation of necessary resources. Along with this, an information security management system should be implemented after the risk assessment.

In a speech on cybercrime, it is worth mentioning that all departments should be involved in protective work at all stages. It is always very important to choose the best informative speech topics. Another significant point is awareness of the staff. It is necessary for each employee to have basic knowledge in the field of information security because antivirus programs could only help people in making the correct decisions and doing the right things.

Your cyber crime research paper outline may contain the items listed below.

1. Firewall

All the companies, including the small ones, must have a firewall that restricts access to the network. This is the first line of defense.

2. Access control

The use of the Internet by office employees should be closely monitored. In addition, organizations must have antivirus protection and content filtering gateway.

3. Regular checks

Network administrators or managers should check all user accounts and data access rights each month or at least once a quarter.

4. Physical protection

Protection is not limited to data inside the computer. Organizations must also ensure the physical defense of their equipment. All visitors to the office must be accompanied by someone from the staff, and computer screens should not be visible to them.

5. Reliable passwords

Organizations must ensure the selection of strong passwords. This means a certain level of their complexity and a periodic change.

6. Avoiding stinginess

If it is possible, management should hire a data protection specialist(s). In addition, the budget should provide for special equipment and software.

7. Vigilance

Office staff must be taught to be watchful. Simple rules can significantly improve the security of the company. For example, workers should never directly proceed to an unknown website whose link is sent by mail.

Social engineering

This category should be singled out in your cyber security argumentative essay. No technical means could confront the methods of social engineering. Armed with the knowledge of human psychology, scammers gather data regarding the users in social networks.

So, what can you write about in a how to prevent cybercrime essay? The only advice that can be given here is to completely ignore the message. So you can formulate some rules and propose a staff training scenario that will help minimize the risks for the company. Regular training of all employees and informing them about existing types of threats helps to counteract social engineering attacks.

Cybersecurity Tech Accord

Your criminals and cybercrime essay should be relevant, and contain factual information. Here are some suggestions and trend reviews that could be helpful when writing an essay like this.

On April 17, 2018, 34 technology and security companies signed the Cybersecurity Tech Accord, an agreement between the world’s largest organizations that possess sensitive customer data. The list of 34 participants included ABB, Arm, Cisco, Facebook, HP, HPE, Microsoft Corp., Nokia, Oracle, and Trend Micro. Together, these enterprises represent the creators and users of technologies that ensure the work of global communication and information infrastructure.

The main activities of the association:

• New system of protection. Enterprises will create a more powerful system of protection from cyber-attacks. As a part of this initiative, companies are obliged to defend customer data around the world, regardless of the motivations and goals of online attacks.
• Non-attack. Companies will not assist governments in imposing cyberattacks and will take measures to protect their products and services from hacking or malicious use at all stages of technological development and distribution.
• Collective actions. Participants will strengthen existing relationships, jointly create new formal and informal partnerships with other industries, civil society, and research communities to increase the scope of technical cooperation.

The Tech Accord remains open to other signatories from but only if they will unconditionally adhere to strict standards and principles of the agreement.

Here is a full list of Cybersecurity Tech Accord participants: ABB, Bitdefender, Cisco, ARM, BT, Cloudflare, Avast!, CA Technologies, DataStax, Dell, HPE, SAP, DocuSign, Intuit, Stripe, Facebook, Juniper Networks, Symantec, Fastly, LinkedIn, Telefonica, FireEye, Microsoft, Tenable, F-Secure, Nielsen, Trend Micro, GitHub, Nokia, VMware, Guardtime, Oracle, HP Inc., RSA.

Microsoft Security Intelligence Report

In April 2018, Microsoft Corporation published a report on information security threats from February 2017. It is based on data received by the company’s protective programs and services. Information was provided by corporate and private users who agreed to share it.

The report is devoted to three topics: botnets, popular methods of hacker attacks, and viruses-extortionists. The purpose of publishing this report is to raise user awareness about existing threats and methods of countering them.

The highest risk was recorded in Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Ukraine (33.2% or higher), the lowest - in Finland, Denmark, Ireland, and the USA (11.4% or less).

According to Windows Defender Security Intelligence, Trojans are the most common category of unwanted software. The percentage of their spread from February 2017 to January 2018 increased from 6% to 10%.

It is also worth mentioning the following fact in a cybercrime and identity theft essay: according to Microsoft Advanced Threat Protection (ATP), phishing was among the most serious threats in Office 365 users’ mailboxes in the second half of 2017 (53%). 180-200 million dangerous emails were detected monthly. The next most common risk sources were malware loaders (29%) and Java backdoors (11%).

Another target for attackers is cloud-based applications with low levels of security. The study revealed that 79% of SaaS-apps for cloud storage and 86% of SaaS-apps for collaboration do not provide encryption of either stored or transmitted information. To protect corporate infrastructure, organizations must limit the use of cloud-based applications by workers and monitor the labor process using Cloud Access Security Broker, CASB.

Cisco Annual Cybersecurity Report

Malware does not cease to improve. Today, attackers use cloud services and avoid detection owing to encryption that helps to hide the command flow. According to the Cisco 2018 Annual Cybersecurity Report, experts begin to apply artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to reduce the detection time.

On the one hand, encryption helps to strengthen protection. On the other hand, the growth of both legitimate and malicious encrypted traffic (50% as of October 2017) increases the problems for those who defend themselves in the process of identifying potential threats and monitoring their activity. Over the past 12 months, Cisco information security experts have recorded a more than triple growth in encrypted network traffic in inspected malware samples

Some results of the Cisco 2018 Annual Cybersecurity Report

The financial damage from attacks is becoming more and more real. According to the respondents, more than half of all attacks caused financial damage (about $500 million) including loss of revenue, an outflow of customers, lost profits, and loss in direct costs.

Attacks on the supply chains become more complicated and gain speed. Such attacks can cause large-scale damage to computers. At the same time, their effect can last for months and even years. In 2017, two strong attacks infected users with Nyetya and Ccleaner viruses through trusted software. To reduce the risks of attacks on the supply chain, it is necessary to review the actions of third-party organizations and test the effectiveness of information security technologies.

Protecting the data is becoming more difficult, and vulnerabilities are more diverse now. Organizations use complex combinations of products from different manufacturers. This complication, coupled with a growing variety of vulnerabilities, adversely affects the ability to repel the attacks and leads to an increase in the risks of financial losses.

• In 2017, 25% of information security professionals reported using products from 11-20 vendors. In 2016, only 18% responded so.
• Information security specialists reported that 32% of the vulnerabilities affected more than half of the systems. In 2016, 15% responded so.

The use of cloud technologies increases; attackers take advantage of the lack of modern security means:

• In 2018, 27% of information security professionals reported using external private clouds (20% in 2016).
• 57% of them place the network in the cloud for better data protection, 48% - for scalability, and 46% - for ease of use.

While cloud provides increased security for data, attackers use the fact that organizations are not very good at protecting emerging and expanding cloud configurations.

Trends in malicious software growth and detection time are the following:

• Cisco’s average time to detection (TTD) for the period from November 2016 to October 2017 was about 4.6 hours. In November 2015, this figure was 39 hours. According to the Cisco Cybersecurity Report of 2017, the detection time for the period from November 2015 to October 2016 was 14 hours.
• Cloud security technology became the key factor for Cisco in the process of reducing the time to detection and keeping it at a low level. The shorter the TTD, the faster the attack is reflected.

Additional recommendations which may be enlisted in research articles on cyber security:

• monitoring of compliance with corporate policies and practices for updating applications, systems, and devices;
• timely receipt of accurate data on threats and the existence of processes that allow the use of these data for security control;
• advanced analysis;
• regular backup of data and verification of recovery procedures, which are the critical actions in conditions of rapid evolution of network extortion programs and destructive malware;
• conducting a security check for cloud services and application administration systems.

The Internet is threatened with fragmentation due to cyber attacks

As a result of cross-border cyber attacks, the Internet can disintegrate into separate national and regional parts. This news was announced in The Global Risks Report 2018 presented at The World Economic Forum (WEF) in Geneva and it may be used as one of your cyber security thesis topics. Fragmentation of the global network can lead to the termination of its functions and slow down the technical progress. The development of cybersecurity will help to prevent the division of the Internet into parts. According to the authors of the report, a great deal of importance will be attached to the dialogue between governments and technology companies.

Currently, more attention is paid to the creation of offensive and not defensive capabilities in cyberspace. There is a possibility that a real source of a cyber attack will be determined wrongly, and an innocent target will suffer from a retaliatory strike.

At present, the use of conventional weapons is regulated from the legal point of view. The authors of the report are sure that it is necessary to develop similar norms in relation to the conduct of cyberwar. With the help of such rules, it would be possible to ban entire classes of cyber instruments as it was done with chemical and biological weapons.

Cyber crime essay writing rules

Before working on any academic paper, you need to think well about what exactly you will write in it. It is necessary to choose a concept that best suits your preferences among computer security research topics. In addition, it is important to know in what order the material should be presented in an essay. That is why it will be necessary to compile a preliminary cyber security research paper outline. It is recommended to do so each time before starting a new paper.

How to compile plans for cyber security papers?

Essay genre has its own requirements. Traditionally, such papers include:

1. Introduction with a thesis statement or a problem.
2. The main part which includes the theses and arguments. Each new paragraph can be started with cyber security research questions and continued with answers and recommendations.
3. Detailed conclusion.

At the initial stage of writing a paper, it is important to consider what kind of thought you want to convey. Approach the choice of cyber security research paper topics with utmost seriousness. This will be the core of your work. Then you have to write an introduction in which the main idea is described in detail.

Next, you should think about a conclusion. This is the secret of a successful essay. While just starting to work on your paper, you need to know what you will finish with. You need to provide the answers to your analytical essay questions on cybercrime topics and support your thoughts with the argumentation of the basic ideas.

Editing of computer security research papers

When an essay, along with all its key elements, is ready, it is not yet a high time to submit it. First, you need to thoroughly read the text, check everything, and think how you could make it even better.

Cybercrime essay title can be formulated at the very end. At this moment, you will clearly see the finished work and will be able to express the main essence of it in a few words.

In the process of writing essays, various difficulties may arise, and therefore, students can make mistakes. It is worth keeping in mind that it is better to write less in terms of volume but make the text concise and engaging. By adhering to the described plan, you can write an argumentative essay about cybercrime law more thoughtfully and avoid the most common mistakes.