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Since the dawn of the now vast Internet, humans have had to deal with a very new and unfamiliar issue, information security. More than ever before, our information is available in some fashion on the internet through social networking sites, online voter records, online transactions, digital footprint, and more. However, information security doesn’t only apply to common individuals. Every year we see approximately a 5% growth in the number of large organizations being compromised by at least one successful hacker attack and we have seen a 4-5 billion dollar increase in the amount of money lost due to malicious hacker attacks. Information Security, or Cybersecurity in a broader sense, has been a major concern for everyone in our more digital world. As citizens of this planet, we must ask ourselves how we can protect ourselves in a harsh digital world and create a more positive digital environment where we don’t have to be afraid of the smallest mistakes. Regardless, the fact remains that we aren’t even close to a complete solution to cyberattacks. However, cybersecurity is being transformed by an element of technology that has already caused major breakthroughs in the digital community, automation. Artificial Intelligence is one of the fastest growing fields of technology and one of the most far reaching and adaptable fields, integrating with the industrial, medical, technological, and even educational sectors in various ways. The field of Cybersecurity, though very advanced, still relies primarily on a statistical approach and art-based strategies. However, the advent of more advanced digital attack strategies has prompted many major cybersecurity defense organizations to consider the use of predictive models and machine learning to predict the behavior of cybercriminals and attack patterns. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been working with IBM’s Watson AI Program to incorporate Artificial Intelligence into their National Vulnerability Database, which stores data on severe system vulnerabilities worldwide. The NIST, as one of the largest technological and cyber-defense organizations in the world, has shown that Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity can, in fact, have a symbiotic relationship. Predictive automation systems like Intel’s Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) have been used to predict what kind of attacks will be most likely based on data type and to calculate an estimated frequency at which a particular attacker might conduct cyberattacks. This type of automation within the field of Cybersecurity has been revolutionary because it has given cybersecurity the potential to constantly evolve with each cyberattack because information defenses are training on attack data and tuning their parameters to better protect against cybercriminals. Despite the criticism of many data scientists and organizations, Artificial Intelligence has proven to be a powerful tool in the development of Information Security. It was initially believed that Artificial Intelligence would actually exacerbate the problem of system vulnerabilities due to faulty automation algorithms in cybersecurity that are not properly regulated by humans. However, since the introduction of AI/Machine Learning into the Cybersecurity Industry, trends in Cybersecurity have continued to trend positively, with a projected 32% growth in cybersecurity jobs within the next 5-8 years. Artificial Intelligence in Cybersecurity has truly allowed the realm of cyber defenses to become more reliable in making a vast internet in our society truly viable. Though cybercriminals and malicious attacks in the digital world will always be a problem so long as so much of the world is active in it, the absolutely groundbreaking development of a cross-discipline strategy between AI and Statistical Information Security has proven to have great potential for success and has already changed the way that we deal with digital threats in the 21st century, truly making the world a safer place. References: Kazim, Emre, and Adriano Soares Koshiyama. “Human Centric AI: A Comment on the IEEE’s Ethically Aligned Design.” SSRN Electronic Journal, 2020. Crossref, doi:10.2139/ssrn.3575140. O'Brien, Chris. “Is Ai Cybersecurity's Salvation or Its Greatest Threat?” VentureBeat, VentureBeat, 11 Feb. 2020, https://venturebeat.com/2020/02/11/is-ai-cybersecuritys-salvation-or-its-greatest-threat/. Stoltz, Ryan. “Cyber Security Job Outlook in 2021.” NEIT Public Website, 4 June 2021, www.neit.edu/blog/cyber-security-job-outlook. “Visualization and Analysis of the National Vulnerability Database.” NIST, 21 Sept. 2016, www.nist.gov/itl/math/visualization-and-analysis-national-vulnerability-database.

This post is an introductory post that dives into the fundamentals of cybersecurity, why cybersecurity is important, and its real world applications among other things. What is Cybersecurity? Cybersecurity is the protection of systems, programs, and networks that are often dependent on internet connection and an online user base. It is often the umbrella term given to the actions taken and the protections implemented by companies or individuals looking to protect their information from unauthorized access and malicious attacks. To put it in simpler terms, Cybersecurity is the protection of the digital world, which is getting closer and closer to our world by the second. What makes it so important? In recent years, as the number of digital databases and more complex data structures have increased, more and more companies have taken part in the wave of digitization through the internet. Though our digital security and data protection methods have only improved in recent years, the number of vulnerabilities logged by worldwide databases has dramatically increased. For example, the United States National Vulnerability Database has logged a dramatic increase in Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) over the past few decades, "NIST National Vulnerability Database Analysis | Redscan". Redscan, 2021, https://www.redscan.com/news/nist-nvd-analysis/. Accessed 20 May 2021. This begs the question...Why are we identifying more vulnerabilities in systems everyday even though we seem to be getting better cybersecurity advancements? Well, despite the many strides that have been made in the field of data protection and vulnerability resolution, the most dangerous variants of common vulnerabilities are on the rise as hackers and data manipulators have become more sophisticated in their methods and as data systems have become more complex and open to new kinds of vulnerabilities. As we get more sophisticated, so do those who try to breach and manipulate systems and networks with malicious intent. In other words, cybercriminals. The only way to mitigate the efforts of sophisticated cybercriminals, our world’s focus on cybersecurity must become more apparent and more individuals along with large businesses must spend more energy on securing their position in the global cyberspace. Without proper protections in the digital world, businesses and individuals are very vulnerable to any number of terrible cyberattacks that could completely destroy the lives of many. Now, you may ask….How can a cyberattack destroy my life? Most of us commonly use devices like cell phones, laptops, desktops, tablets, etc., meaning we almost always have access to the internet and we visit hundreds or sometimes thousands of websites in a year. What we don’t realize, however, is that when we visit those websites, large-scale data mining algorithms initiate and pull a lot of our personal information to store and analyze in their own databases. Other than large businesses, most individuals don’t have enough knowledge or access to digital protections against unauthorized or unwanted breaches of data. As a result, many large corporations like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, etc. have access to our personal information due to our unprotected use of their digital services. Data Mining: How You're Revealing More Than You Think A single cyberattack that exploits a single vulnerability can breach such large databases and access our personal information, which can be used to access credit card information, social security information, bank accounts, etc. Cybercriminals are a very real threat that we often disassociate from our reality because we seem to think they only affect the digital world. The Three Tenets of Information Security In essence, information security is the protection of information and information systems in order to ensure quality, safety, and efficiency. As many enterprises in big business have realized, no large business can run effectively in the global cyberspace without a constantly adapting and improving information security management system with resources devoted to ensuring the protection of pertinent data. Confidentiality One of the main purposes of Information Security is to maintain the privacy of the data stored in databases, systems, and networks. The Confidentiality component of the CIA triad essentially represents privacy and its importance to the sustainability of major data systems and networks. The principle of Confidentiality is to keep information hidden and only accessible to those with the proper authorization to access it. For example, a financial services company would like to keep its client list and those clients’ details hidden and not accessible by cybercriminals, and thus they would focus on the principle of confidentiality in their work towards information security. Generally, the principle of confidentiality is what entails the development of sophisticated firewalls, data encryption, and strict access control. Integrity The principle of integrity refers to the accuracy or reliability of data that is stored in a system or network. For the integrity of a system, database, or network to be compromised, a hacker can access the information stored in them and modify it in a way that is favorable to themself, thus compromising the integrity of the data. If a hacker went through a medical insurance company’s records and modified recipient information to suit their own needs, they would have compromised the integrity of that company’s data that was stored in their own database. Contrary to popular belief, the integrity of a system or network can be compromised without an actual malicious attack. The integrity of a system can be compromised due to user error resulting in the improper entry of data. Availability In the context of Information Security, the principle of availability in the CIA triad refers to the accessibility of information. In other words, this principle refers to the ease of access for those who are properly authorized to access that data. Unlike the principle of confidentiality, this principle refers to how easily an authorized individual can access the proper data rather than how easily an unauthorized individual can breach a system and access that data. An example of an interruption in availability would be when a hacker takes down a website for a business through a Distributed Denial of Service(DDoS) attack by flooding it with unwanted traffic. Wrapping it all up In this post, we discussed the definition of cybersecurity and why it is becoming increasingly important in the modern world. We also talked about possible reasons for an increase in vulnerabilities worldwide in recent years. This post also discusses the effect of big data mining on the confidentiality of our personal information in the digital cyberspace. We also discussed the major tenets of information security which are absolutely essential in understanding the fundamentals of cybersecurity and data protection. 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One word that would describe podcasts the best is creativity. With a podcast, people enter a whole different world with multiple roles to play. For a person who creates one, they get to share their thoughts with the world and develop complex connections to their original ideas. For listeners, they get to hear differing or similar opinions on connections they have previously made before. For newcomers, they have no idea what to expect other than reading a title and base their initial judgments on whether a topic is interesting or not. A title can tell all if you prefer to say what actually happens. This can bring in listeners from all over the world to hear discussions and ideas you create. Titles draw in listeners depending on their likes and dislikes. It's important to narrow your topic to ascertain you appeal to a certain crowd. For example, you can talk about birds in general and how amazing they are. You'll definitely get listeners who are interested. But let's say you narrow your research and discussions to about Hoatzins, birds that are native to the Amazon, and how they have tiny claws that are on their wings. With just that specific information, you maybe want to see what a Hoatzin looks like or find out why they have them there. Just by learning about a Hoatzin, you've gained a small interest in the subject itself. Additionally, many people out there might not know what a Hoatzin is either and may develop an interest just from listening to that information. Specificity takes on its form and draws in listeners to hear what is being said. Without being specific, you can obtain your own crowd that will be small, but by adding a certain filter to your topic, you dive deeper within a subject and gain more listeners. Creating just one thought and honing it down can open up multiple ideas to be discovered. Leading up to creating a title can go into what discussions can be made. If you really love to talk about your topic in your podcast for hours, then go for it! Of course, when you're talking to a person or try to gain listeners on your podcast, my number one rule is to keep a variety going. To be truthful, no one wants to listen to the same idea for a long time, so like my previous discussion, have multiple perspectives on your idea. One way to avoid this is by scheduling your discussion timings. You can have a stopwatch going on beside you to remind you how much time has passed and have a piece of paper listing what topics you wanna talk about. Keeping your audience engaged is the tricky part to master, but an easy important step. Creativity innovates everyday life. It is the foundation of thoughts and the inspiration for what the future brings to the table. Technology starts out of creativity and slowly evolves itself around it. One idea leads to another and builds on until a proper foundation is created upon a single topic. This is present throughout our world and is also included within podcasts. They're what inspires people to create a podcast and what invokes others to listen. This technology is something that is simple and yet complex all at once and makes podcasting a work that I consider to be truly remarkable.