Cyber Security Fields
Cyber Security is one of the most important technical disciplines at this time, and it is a vast world in itself, and contains many sub-fields that fall under it.
Cybersecurity is a huge and huge industry that is now worth about $218 billion, and its value is expected to reach $345 billion in 2026, after just five years.
The simplest definition of cybersecurity is that it is all the technical practices that protect networks, devices and information from any kind of intrusion or electronic attack.
With the development of methods of penetration and electronic attacks, it has become necessary to develop means of protection against these attacks as well. For these reasons, the discipline of cybersecurity has branched out into many of the smaller areas that we will talk about in this article.
You can learn more about cyber security and the types of cyber attacks by reading our article: What is Cyber Security .
In this article, we will go over the 10 most important areas of cybersecurity, and we will talk about each of them in some detail.
What are the areas of cyber security?
As we said, there are a lot of sub-fields within the field or major specialization cybersecurity, but in this article we will talk about the 10 most important and famous.
The areas we will talk about are:
- Application Security.
- Network Security.
- Cloud Security.
- Identity & Access Management.
- Internet of Things IOT Security.
- Mobile Security.
- Operation Security.
- Cryptography.
- Malware Analysis.
- Digital forensics.
1. Applications Security
The first area we will talk about and one of the most important areas of cybersecurity is Applications Security, which is concerned with protecting and maintaining software from being hacked.
Due to the importance of this area, about 10% of the famous CISSP test is about application security alone.
Application security is the practices concerned with securing applications, whether during the design and programming period, by discovering and addressing vulnerabilities to improve application security, or protecting these applications after they are launched.
According to some statistics; After examining more than 85,000 applications, it was found that 83% of them had at least one problem or security vulnerabilities, most of them had several gaps, and they found about 10 million vulnerabilities.
In addition to 20% of these applications have dangerous security holes, and these dangerous numbers show you the importance of application security, which works to neutralize these gaps and remove their great danger to the company that owns the application or even the user.
2. Network Security
Network security is one of the oldest known areas of cybersecurity, and this is because for decades we have been using these networks to do a lot of tasks, and of course we want them to be secure.
We talked before about the risks that can affect networks, and it is enough just the many types of attacks that affect them, for example: Denial of Service, Injection Attacks, and others.
Therefore, it is important to apply the practices and protocols for protecting networks, whether they are public networks or private networks of networks and government institutions.
The most important goal of network security is to prevent any unauthorized access to internal networks, especially if this is a questionable intent.
Network security professionals are now using technologies such as machine learning and other modern technologies to help them carry out their tasks.
It should also be noted, dear reader, that no field in cybersecurity is isolated from the rest, as well as network security professionals use application security practices.
3. Cloud Security
Cloud computing has become a very pioneering and widely used technology in the last five years.
One of the simplest examples is Cloud Storage , and other more complex operations that you can now perform remotely without having to occupy your computing power.
Because there are loopholes in everything that people do, and there are bad guys who always want to steal data that doesn’t belong to them, there is a need for practices that protect cloud-computed data.
Here comes the role of cloud security to protect those data stored at a distance from being hacked, stolen, tampered, distorted or even deleted.
In greater depth, computer security protects all components and data that go into the cloud computing process… This includes the devices through which the cloud is accessed, and even all the data on it.
This field has begun to gain great popularity in the past years due to the great need for it in technical circles.
4. Identity & Access Management
Identity & Access Management, or IAM for short, is one of the very important areas of cybersecurity.
It takes care of permissions issues, and who has the right to access any data on the shared network, and thus it addresses many security issues and cyber attacks.
It is a set of rules and practices that ensure that the right person has access to the right information at the right time and for the right reasons.
This field overlaps with many other fields, such as: network security, application security, and many others, and it is an area that is highly demanded in the labor market.
5. IOT Security
technologies Internet of Things that is expected to grow a lot in the coming years, as it has grown from $235 billion in 2017 to $520 billion in 2021.
It is based on the fact that the machines and things around us that we use, such as: the refrigerator, the washing machine, or the entire house is smart and interconnected with all its contents through the Internet, and it makes decisions according to the data that the sensors give it to it.
This technology will allow us to focus on our work and the tasks that are most important to us, while letting machines help or alert us to secondary tasks.
But one of the most prominent disadvantages of this technology is that it is vulnerable to hacking, and any electronic attack or hack will cause us a lot of damage or problems.
Attacks can cause great damage to our lives, imagine a hacker making your door not open for you, cutting off all the lights, or even worse.
Cyber-attacks may also cause the disclosure of a lot of your important personal information, very sensitive information that you do not want anyone to know about.
Here comes the role of cybersecurity to protect your data and ensure that any attacks are made on your devices and your home that are controlled by the Internet of Things (IOT).
It is a necessary branch and its importance is increasing, especially since in the year 2025 there will be 75 billion things – devices – connected to the Internet that we will have to protect.
Of course, this field depends on many practices and applications of other fields, such as: network security and application security.
6. Mobile Security
We rely on phones and laptops a lot nowadays, which is why there are a lot of bad people targeting them in their cyber attacks.
The problem here is that these small devices have become a part of our lives, whether through our important and sensitive information.
And a lot of people will have their lives disrupted or hurt if anything happens to their beloved mobile devices, of course due to dependence on them.
For these reasons, it has become necessary to secure these devices and enhance their security so that no harm of any kind may happen to them.
The types of attacks for these devices are very similar to non-mobile devices, but there are other ways to infect them, for example through a strange Wi-Fi network, or other easy ways to hunt these devices.
The security of mobile devices is protected by a set of rules and practices that are implemented by professionals or some of them are taught to the owners of these devices.
7. Operation Security
Operational Security, or Operational Security, is an extremely important part of any comprehensive cybersecurity strategy.
It is the processes by which friendly or authorized processes and actions are identified as opposed to other processes carried out by hackers to gain access to sensitive data.
Process Security, or OPSEC, attempts to eliminate or at least minimize all such unauthorized processes.
That is why the field of information security is so important and necessary in all aspects of electronic life on the Internet, and functionally it is very much in demand in companies.
8. Cryptography
Cryptography is one of the techniques that is widely used in several technical fields. It is used in cybersecurity, blockchain dozens of other fields.
But today we are going to talk about its amazing uses in the field of cybersecurity, and I will not be exaggerating when I tell you that it is a very important part of cybersecurity.
Through it, you can encrypt important information and numbers, such as passwords or others, in order to prevent anyone else from accessing or reading them unless they have their own decryption method.
For example, in a WhatsApp conversation, you will send your message that you do not want anyone to see using a certain encryption method, so that it is sent to the other person in this way without anyone being able to intercept or decrypt it.
Then when it reaches the other correct person on the end of the conversation it will be decoded so that only he can read it.
This was a very simplified example, but cryptography is used in hundreds and thousands of other methods and techniques in cybersecurity.
9. Malware Analysis
Malware is one of the most annoying and highly hated things in the world of cybersecurity, be it Viruses, Trojans or Ransomwares , it is a nightmare for a cybersecurity professional.
This malware has many types and ways of working, and there are dozens of new programs that appear periodically and pose a challenge to workers in this field.
So this software is a matter of life and death for them, they must always identify and neutralize it and get rid of its negative effects.
Fortunately there is an entire field that specializes in this, the field of malware analysis that deals with unknown types of malware and comes up with the best ways to beat them.
It is indeed one of the most sought-after specializations in the labor market , due to its great importance and great need, especially in large companies.
10. Digital forensics
Just as we need criminal security professionals to analyze crimes and track criminals, we also need someone to do this in the digital world.
This field is based on collecting evidence that refers to digital criminal operations such as hacking and various electronic attacks, and then trying to track them and reach the perpetrators.
This field is very much in demand in this period, and its specialists are appointed to bodies related to defense, national security and intelligence.
The demand for professionals in this field has increased a lot in the past few years, and now there are a lot of organizations looking for professionals to work for them for amazing salaries.
Conclusion
Cybersecurity is a very large and important discipline, and within it are dozens of smaller areas that benefit and save us in our lives every day.
In this article, we have talked about the 10 most important areas that you should know in the vast world of cybersecurity and their tangible benefit.
Tell us in the comments which areas caught your attention the most, and if you would like us to talk in detail about it in a separate article
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