All the financial firms, government organizations, and other major firms stress over cyber vulnerabilities. The major groups that exploit cyber vulnerabilities are government, ethical hackers and cybercriminals to make discoveries, steal information, protect the information, steal money or expose corruption.
Cyber vulnerability is the flaw or weakness that can pose a threat when attackers perform unauthorized actions on the computers by taking their advantage. This can result in major exploitation by cybercriminals. However, these cyber vulnerabilities are unlikely to go away soon or ever go away. This is because these cyber vulnerabilities are side effects of the ease of online communication and the freedom of communicating on the internet. With the growing use of the internet, these cyber vulnerabilities are almost impossible to eliminate.
Some of the major cyber vulnerabilities that are unlikely to go away soon are:
- Malware: The terms malware and virus are often used interchangeably. That is because a virus is a specific type of malware. Malware is malicious software that is designed to damage servers, computer or a computer network. Major types of malware are ransomware, trojans, and worms. They can trick users to be installed in the system and can replicate themselves through a variety of means like emails or email attachments. A basic antivirus can only protect from some malware but not all.
- Not updating the available updates: There are countless threats in an operating system. Software manufacturers provide regular updates for these security vulnerabilities. These available updates always popup as a reminder to each individual separately. However, most individuals prefer not to update and just dismiss the update notification they received. This is mainly because they do not want to waste their 10-15 minutes just making some minor updates. Updating the software is a nuisance to most users. But this nuisance is significant if we want to avoid cyber vulnerabilities.
- Hidden backdoor programs: A backdoor program is an intentionally created program that exposes the security of computers. Manufacturers of computer systems and software design code for the computer to be remotely accessed. This is mainly done for the purpose of providing technical support. However, backdoor programs can be installed without user knowledge for illegal access to the computer system. This poses an enormous threat to the computer system.
- Privileges of the admin account: Some software users have limited access to the system whereas, administrator-level access is only provided to the admin account. However, some software organizations fail in this and have enough flaws to provide admin-level information to unprivileged users.
- Phishing attacks: When attackers trick the employees of an organization into giving away confidential information by email mimicking or downloading malware, it is known as phishing attacks. Even though there are several ways to become secure from these kinds of attacks, they can never be eliminated because of the lack of user awareness and knowledge.
These cyber vulnerabilities can be found out and can be avoided but they cannot be eliminated completely. That is because these activities are performed by both legal and illegal organizations. Cybersecurity cells and ethical hackers use these for ethical purposes, whereas cybercriminals and attackers use it for theft purposes. Moreover, with the growing ease of online communication and the freedom of communicating on the internet, these cyber vulnerabilities are unlikely to go away soon.
