All posts by thetechnicalboyorg

Cybersecurity is the only domain of technology that needs to act according to the future. There is no guessing what new method the hackers might use to exploit the weaknesses which once looked like strength in the domain of network security. Time and again, hackers have found new and interestingly impressive ways to break down the defenses of multiple websites or web-based services. While the motives can be different like the casual hackers who just want to test their skills, hackers who demand ransom or simply the hacktivists that try to bring the large corporations to ‘mend their ways’ by affecting their services.

No matter the motive, a hacker is a hacker. No one gives you a right to hack into the private life of someone or cause someone to lose business just because you think otherwise. In the coming years, it will become rather a difficult task to contain such an activity frankly because there is no way to predict their next plan of action. The most experts can do is, based on the pattern they can observe on which the hackers continue operating, predict the next few years and their potential targets or actions. Few of these which the experts have thought to be the threats of the future are:

• The increasing underground cybercriminal activity:
  In the good old days, the hackers undertaking the cybercriminal activities performed solely by themselves or with a group of friends sitting, trying to find Public IP addresses which can fairly easily be exploited did so not as to reap massive amounts of profits but just to wreak havoc. While this has clearly been long far gone in today’s time, the underground has been assembling and growing by the numbers.Dark web shows multiple hackers putting their services for hire and for ‘n’ amount of can simply obliterate someone’s personal or digital life. With the lack of security on the new smart devices, it has become increasingly easy for them to hack into our network and thus retrieve sensitive information to either blackmail or expose them throwing their social life amuck.The hacktivists and other cybercriminals which work to simply take down corporations for moral or monetary reasons work in groups of hundreds from across the countries and continents to hurt them bad. The experts say the number is only to increase each passing day.
• The increased use of worms to launch cyber attacks:
  Spreading Malware from worms is extremely fast and effective. The identification of said worms is tough which keep replicating the Malware software whichever network they hit. WannaCry and Trickbot used this method in the 2017 and are only expected to be used more often to affect more and more services each day.
• A breach of Cloud and Big Data servers:
  Big Data and Cloud services have extensively used in the past few years and are to rise in numbers in the coming years. The old clouds services like the Amazon, Google and IBM have been keeping up with the security to keep their data more secure and are not expected to lose the battle of cyber security so quickly. The small vendors, however, even though loaded with data, can’t seem to protect their sensitive data of the thousands and millions of users who use their services. With the leak of data, other areas of your life can get affected due to the exploitation of all the sensitive data that you hold.

The hackers have already planned to come after you but what can you, as average corporations do, in order to employ an effective defense mechanism against the very dangerous and persistent groups of hackers? Turns out there are some effective measures you can take to help you protect against the exploitation caused by these hackers and other cybercriminals.

1. Have a definite Game Plan:
   The first and the most important step here would be to be prepared for anything and everything. A brilliant and unpreventable crime is the one to which we have no prior information. The ones which we can expect and still have no way to handle is our own mistake. This is the reason that a corporation should be ready for any and all security breaches and have a playbook ready in order to know how to tackle such a data breach. This includes not just the quick response team’s actions but also the security team’s responsibility to find out what caused the data breach in the first place.Have this plan ready and perform drills in order to make sure that during a breach of this kind, the purposeful reactions become second nature and you can act way faster than you could before.
2. Attain a healthy security habit:
   At a time when a worm or a Trojan can be attached along with any file, it is more than important to keep your software updated with the latest patch and keep a thorough check on all the files you download and scan them to make sure you aren’t creating an unnecessary security threat. There is no way as an engineering or medical company; you would let defected parts or chemically unsafe medicines out in the general public. The same way you can’t let your system be infected by keeping an unhealthy security habit.

3. Employ AI in your security:
   No matter how great we try to minimize the damage of an ongoing attack, there isn’t simply a lot we can do. We may be prepared to deal with the worst, but we are in no way ready to handle or resolve the worst. This is because we are always ready for the past and not the future. The method once used shall not be used again by the hackers as they know we would be closing the security gap quickly.

The only way to get out of this fix is to employ a system that can recognize patterns, process big chunks of data at an extremely fast rate to take decisions which will close down the doors which the hackers can use to infiltrate the network.

Machine Learning, once used effectively by the AI to see these gaps and scan the applications and software quickly to pinpoint the infected files can save more than just time. A perfectly timed response can protect and save the data of thousands of people by taking the right decisions faster than a human ever could.

The future of data protection lies strictly in the hands of AI as this ‘Adaptive Security’ can shape itself to protect the data and neutralize any new emerging harmful threat from causing the damage it can without the presence of this intelligent security measure.

The question that we keep asking ourselves i.e. ‘Why is surveillance important in India?’ can be answered simply by the following facts. This includes not only home and business but also public surveillance.

India, a country of 1.3 billion people, is a place where the growth is imminent. With each passing day, India keeps recording itself in the history books in terms of all the scientific and socio-cultural achievements we earn. The Indian Space Research Organization showed the space agencies across the globe and the entire world for that matter of fact that economical and highly complicated yet accurate launches can be made by this nation full of minds which are destined for nothing but greatness. In the department of sports, India has cemented itself as the unbeatable giant in the face of the Indian Cricket team, winning matches after matches in face of unbeatable odds.

While all that’s said and done, our population of 1.3 billion has been under constant threat of growth in another department that more or less is a public risk; this threat, however, is much more severe and comes from our own fellow countrymen.

Crime in the country has never been higher than it is now. Since 2001, the total criminal activities reported under the National Crime Recording Bureau have increased a whopping 41% from 1.7 million to 2.9 million in 2015; that’s an increase of around 2.8% each year!

The majority of crimes that were reported include theft, burglary, and murder, majorly, along with several other miscellaneous crimes. To think that each day over 8,000 people are subjected to crimes across India is shocking, to say the least.

Surveillance

While the country has been fighting a legal battle against all the suspects to convict them fairly as per the IPC, there are a lot of those who do not even fall onto the radar and thus slip away from the hands of justice due to the absence of a surveillance state. This not only fails to deliver justice to the victims but also encourages the suspects to repeat the crimes as the lack of evidence is bound to set them free even if they get caught.

However ever since the dawn of the information age, Surveillance Technology has aimed to do just that. There have been multiple instances where with the employment of surveillance, crime started diminishing exponentially.

Using the Tilley model which directly maps a correlation and effect that CCTV cameras and video surveillance has on Crime, Brown (1995) was able to map out the changes and effects that CCTV and surveillance cameras had in the Newcastle town center while maintaining it under a surveillance state. According to his finding, after analyzing the crime reports, 26 months prior and 15 months post installation of the CCTV cameras at the Newcastle town center area, he identified a huge drop in the overall criminal activities. Just 14 cameras dropped burglary by 57%, damage to property by 34% and MV theft dropped by 47%.

How did the numbers start falling so significantly?

As per the Pawson and Tilley, in their 1994 and 1997 research respectively, they were able to shine a light on possible mechanisms which prevent crime and correlate directly with how surveillance helps with it. These 8 types of surveillance effects include:

• Being ‘caught in the act’ mechanism, which states that CCTV surveillance can effectively reduce crime by capturing the faces of the criminals while they are committing crimes, in order to apprehend them and thus further deters crime.
• ‘You have been framed’ mechanism where the potential criminals choose to not follow through with the crime in an attempt to not be caught by the surveillance equipment.
• The ‘nosy parker’ mechanism that allows the surveillance equipment to make an area feels safer thus attracting more people in that particular place. This will effectively make the potential criminals, in their effort to not being seen by the increased set of ‘eyes’ on the premises, choose not to follow through with the criminal activity.
• Then comes the ‘effective deployment’ mechanism that will enable the security staff to be deployed faster to the location where crime is being committed, allowing them to become guardians on watch.
• ‘Publicity’ mechanism, where the announcement and deployment of CCTV and surveillance equipment will seem like a risk to the potential criminals, thus reducing their overall activity in the area.
• The ‘time for crime’ mechanism effectively lets an offender realize that the overall time to commit a particular crime has been reduced due to the effective deployment of CCTV and other surveillance equipment which forces them to engage in petty criminal activities and effectively drop ball on the more severe ones which take a rather long time to complete.
• The ‘memory jogging’ mechanism lets the general public, look at the surveillance equipment and remember to play caution by effectively locking doors and follow other habits which keep the threat of a criminal activity minimum.
• ‘Appeal to the cautious’ will allow the more security minded individuals to only stick to the areas with high to average CCTV coverage.

While the above-mentioned data was extracted too long ago from a country that isn’t like ours, there are a lot of examples where a successful deployment of video surveillance cameras was able to curb out crime, effectively.

Prime examples in India

Bhavnagar City:

It is a city which enjoys a rich history and has a fast growing rate of both human and vehicle population on the streets. It’s a city whose roots date back to the 17th century has been growing exponentially while increasing with itself, the traffic and the areas to monitor each day. Moreover, with the annual celebration of Jagannath Rath Yatra, the city, for its guardians, the local cops started becoming eventually a surveillance nightmare. In order to cope up with the city’s massive growth and the increasing crime rates, Superintendent of Police Bhavnagar, Dipankar Trivedi decided to empower the city with electronic eyes. The 155 CCTVs installed as government surveillance program across the city in 2015, have effectively been able to bring the crime down by 20-25% and brought the number of petty crimes like snatching and petty thefts next to nothing. The increasing confidence in the department of Police and the resting sense of security in people has been a real driving force for the growth in the city.

Delhi:

The capital of our country, or often known as the crime capital of our country, has also seen a massive shift towards a city less plagued by crime due to the addition of CCTV and other video surveillance technology. According to Madhur Verma, DCP (north) Delhi Police, the crime in the hot areas like Chandni Chowk has decreased dramatically by 50% after the CCTV cameras came into the picture. It has become easier to speed up the investigation, find suspects and apprehends criminals all due to the presence of video surveillance in the city.

Mumbai-Thane:

The numerous societies scattered across Mumbai and Thane once were plagued by the regular and exponentially increasing criminal activities. Regular crimes included snatching, theft, burglary and many others which were brought down effectively after the CCTV surveillance cameras came into the picture. After the installation of said surveillance equipment in 2013, the crime was seen dropping down by 22%. The crimes like stealing of car stereos, snatching and robbery came down exponentially and the suspects were apprehended fairly due to the video evidence present.

Find the Safe haven

The above-mentioned evidence clearly shows the importance of surveillance technology in our day to day lives. The constant research, time and again has proven how you can protect yourself and your family and business with a simple addition of CCTV coverage over your own domain. To know more about how you can bring everything in your life under the protective umbrella of surveillance security, visit: https://www.wicamfi.com.