What is Cyber Security? The definition of Cyber Security is essentially the following:
- Measures taken to protect a computer or computer system (as on the Internet) against unauthorised access or attack.
Cyber Security in todays world actually refers to the implementation of security controls and configurations that prevent unauthorised/unlawful access to a variety of computer systems, networks and data. We will expand on these topics a little below, just to give you a better understanding if you are not familiar.
The definition of a Computer System today is somewhat vague to many people, however considering that computers or computer systems come in many shapes and form factors, there are various types of ‘Internet Connected Computers’ that are not initially thought of as a Computer or Computer System. Some examples include:
- Single Board Computers
- Mobile Phones
- Tablets
- Wearables (Smart Watches)
- Smart Televisions
- Games Consoles (Xbox, Playstation, etc)
- Internet Routers or Modems
- IoT Devices (Philips Hue, Dash Buttons, etc)
- and more
Networking in its most simple format is the connection, wired or wireless, that exists between two or more computers. This connection allows the transmission of data between each of the computers, which in turn enables us to send and receive many different data formats and commands at great speeds and distances in the blink of an eye.
As an example, the Internet is the largest network on the entire planet, allowing billions of connected devices to communicate with one another. Data transmission is so fast, that we are able to send a message to the other side of the world in hundreds of milliseconds, maybe 1 or 2 seconds on a bad day ;), but sit back and think about that, tens of thousands of miles per second!
The communication on a network can either be encrypted or unencrypted, encrypted data is designed in a way that is it not directly human readable which makes it an ideal transmission method to keep data secure but unencrypted network communication can be read.
Data is simply the type of information that we store, or send, on and between computers and networks. Data comes in many different formats and standards and this helps either the humans, software or hardware to determine what the data is used for and how it can be used. The structure of data and information on computers and over networks is complicated, hopefully i can explain this further to you in more advanced sections of this site.
Within the context of Cyber Security, this could be data or information regarding the configuration of a computer, server or network, and can also include the personal information belonging to an individual or proprietary information belonging to an organisation.
For a high level overview on Computer Security/Cyber Security, please pop over to the Wikipedia site. You can also pair that knowledge with the information on Information Security which can be found here.