Today, even the smallest organizations need effective cybersecurity tools and a robust security infrastructure to protect against cyber-attacks. It can be challenging to understand just how effective your security infrastructure is at preventing cyber-attacks and breaches without considering the nuanced differences between cyber defense and cyber security. Here, we take a deep dive into the differences between the two and their crucial interplay in effectively safeguarding against modern digital threats.
What is Cyber Defense?
Cyber defense is the active resistance of cyber-attacks, anticipating undesirable cyber actions and responding to cyber threats as part of a cyber security strategy. A proactive approach ensures you avoid cyber-attacks designed to disrupt business as usual. By deploying cyber defense tactics, you avoid disruptions despite facing ongoing threats and attacks.
What is Cyber Security?
Cybersecurity refers to the solutions that keep you free from cyber threats and includes cyber defense.
Cyber Defense vs. Cyber Security
Simply put, cyber security encompasses a broader spectrum of protective measures, while cyber defense focuses on actively countering and responding to threats.
How Do Cyber Defense and Cyber Security Work Together?
There is great synergy between these two disciplines that collaborate to establish a robust digital shield. The two are inseparable as cyber security can only be obtained when cyber defense is deployed, providing the tools needed to reach a state of cyber security. In other words, cyber security is the result of cyber defense in action.
What are Cyber Security Tools?
A robust cyber security strategy establishes preventive measures using cyber security tools such as:
Antivirus Software: Antivirus software helps monitor, protect, and disable/remove malicious software, viruses, worms, and malware. All these issues pose threats that can corrupt operating systems and destroy data either on a single computer or with the capability to spread from computer to computer or from computer to your network systems. They can replicate themselves and continue to become more damaging to either disrupt systems or collect sensitive information.
Encryption Management: Encryption management hardware and services are essential tools used in content and data management systems. They protect your content, intellectual property, digital payments, proprietary materials, and more by “scrambling” data. Scrambling converts human-readable plaintext to “ciphertext” that is incomprehensible to humans. The ciphertext can only be unscrambled with authorized access to your data management system.
Access Controls: Access controls use passwords and role-based authorization to control who sees what in your computing environment. It is cyber security 101 introducing access control policies that ensure users confirm who they are and then can only access data needed to complete their jobs.
Firewalls: Firewalls monitor traffic to or from your network and block traffic based on security rules and criteria you define. As a result, only authorized traffic can leave or enter the system.
What are Cyber Defense Tactics?
Cyber defense strategies prepare organizations to respond promptly to incidents, mitigate breaches, and recover swiftly. Examples of cyber defense tactics, such as installing hardware and software, protect systems and networks from unauthorized access that can lead to cyber crimes. However, you must also actively analyze, identify, and resolve system vulnerabilities using real-time solutions that can diffuse zero-day attacks. You also need to have protocols that allow you to recover from those partial attacks with a responsive threat monitoring tool.
To achieve the above actions, the most critical cyber defense tactics deploy threat intelligence tools designed to detect threats in real time. T-Intelligence is a threat-monitoring tool that offers the following capabilities:
- Actively blocking malicious traffic to enhance your security infrastructure
- Seamless integration with existing security solutions, ready to start defending your system in minutes
- Machine learning to constantly adapt to new threats and introduce new threat detection and disruption capabilities
- Proactively guarding against cyber threats to intercept the moment a malicious actor is detected
- Real-time capabilities that proactively block malicious traffic
How Do Offensive Cyber Security Strategies Promote Cyber Defense?
Active cyber defense uses offensive strategies to thwart attacks proactively. As the saying goes, the best defense is a strong offense. As a critical element of the Department of Defenses (DoD) approach to cybersecurity, active cyber defense takes power away from attackers. As a result, you impede their plans, so they can’t gain access to your applications, networks, and systems.
Not only are these attempts thwarted, but the threat is also neutralized. Using a solution like T-Intelligence also uses AI to garner threat intelligence data so the system learns how to prevent similar attacks proactively. As a result, you are effortlessly strengthening your attack response with every attempted attack.
Why are Cyber Security and Cyber Defense Important?
An effective cyber security system ensures the following:
Confidentiality is maintained: Confidentiality protects sensitive information from exposure, so both your customers’ and your proprietary information remains private. This ensures your team can perform their duties without the risk of disclosure of sensitive information.
Integrity of data is protected: Your team needs to feel confident that the information they access is current and consistent. By protecting data against unauthorized changes, either malicious or accidental, you ensure the integrity of your data and the entire data management system is protected. As a result, you always have access to reliable information to avoid dangerous mistakes and bad decisions.
Availability of data is retained: Your team also needs to access software systems and data to perform their jobs. Cyber security systems ensure information in your document management system is protected yet fully available through a protected infrastructure, where the applications and data are always available to authorized individuals.
Understanding the distinctions and synergies between cyber defense and cyber security in relation to modern cyber threats helps ensure you are using diverse tools and technologies to protect your data. You can achieve your security goals by adopting a comprehensive, adaptive approach that prepares you to discourage bad actors in the ever-evolving threat landscape effectively.
At MEDI, our team offers solid advice to help create a more robust cybersecurity strategy leveraging the power of AI and T-Intelligence. Click here to learn more about our services or to book a free consultation today.
