Valuing Digital Security
Digital security involves all activities that ensure the digital environment remains reliable and safe. It includes business continuity planning, catastrophe recovery strategies and ensuring that digital systems are resilient to cyberattacks. The field also focuses on improving human capacities to recognise and respond to threats. This includes educating people about risks and best practices. The field also incorporates artificial intelligence and machine learning. These tools can help to forecast risks and discover anomalies that might go unnoticed by humans.
For example, a personal piece of information like your favourite season of Babylon 5 may seem harmless but can be used in a social engineering attack if it’s the answer to one of your account security questions. Other types of information that can pose a risk include your bank details, credit card numbers, passwords and other login credentials, and personal email addresses and social media accounts.
Another important component of digital security is encryption. Encryption transforms data into an unreadable format, so even if hackers gain access to your information they would not be able to use it. This makes it an essential part of digital defences and it’s a key feature of many popular security software applications, such as Azure Active Directory.
Valuing digital security relates to quantifying its monetary value and importance within different domains- from individual, organisational and national assessments. These methods range from risk-based calculations like Annualised Loss Expectancy at the individual level to strategic models that hone in on the impact of cybersecurity threats and the cost-effectiveness of investments in defensive measures.