Challenges In Cyber Security For Business

Project objective

This text gives a proposal for doing research in the cyber security methods and outlines a research problem to do research on further (Sauter and Carafano 2012). The project objective and project scope is also given in the text. The research problem and questions are also given in the following chapters. The research design and approach to conducting the research in the field is also outlined in the following discussions. The data collection process and research limitations while doing the research is opined as suitable. Based on the research method and outlines activity the main tasks are scheduled in a chart below (Panneerselvam 2014).

The preliminary objectives of doing this project is

• To analyse the threats that comes from cyber threats in different function of operations and how to avert them
• To identify the most comprehensive critical information structure and provide suggestions to mitigate the risk that comes from cyber attacks.
• To be responsible for fusing instructions and information of different functions of business

The project lies in the recognising and mitigating the risk arises from the cyber attacks in different organisations. This also takes into consideration about the actions that are taken as target to destroy the cyber system of any business organisation. The cyber infrastructure must not be compromised for it will threaten all the system to collapse. The intrusions must be identified and viewed as a form of root to hacking the confidential data of a particular system. This is also helpful in supporting the smart grid infrastructure building for cyber security in an organisation. The also lies in identifying the threats associated with cyber security in today’s world (Sauter and Carafano 2012). The research will be helpful for companies to point out the problem and then take steps further to eliminate the risk that it poses to business.

Primary questions 

• What are the risks and challenges involved in cybercrime for an organisation and what is the responsibility of the owners of the business in mitigating the risk?

Secondary questions

• What is smart grid system and how it is useful for systems in organisations?
• What process can be adapted by companies in mitigating risk related to cyber-attacks in their organisations?

Cyber security has become a concern for all the industry that has became a part of the new internet world. The main area of operations are getting affected by the inventions in th technological world. Business is facing challenges in protecting their data from the hackers and the reason may be attributed to the cyber security issues (Mackey and Gass 2015). This can also be attributed to the activities in business that requires safeguarding confidential information. Networking has become essential for continuing with business operation and building data application, databases within the domain of procedural measures of security also became essential. However, these steps are not quite enough for maintaining the security of the business. The CIIP handbook is supportive in suggesting the companies that how they can build a secure infrastructure if posed against a problem in dealing with the cyber attacks (Jacobs 2016).

The statistics tells that 80% of the transactional data is nowadays saved in a computers and is vulnerable to online attackers. Improvement in the system of building firewall for the system is essential for the companies to protect the company from online attacks (Soomro 2016). These measures must be incorporated in the system. As the local perception goes, the cyber attacks are happens to be incidents by accidents but these is a challenge for business administrations. The calculated cyber attacks are result of cyber conflicts and are sensitive problem in companies’ perspective. The models that are full proof of the challenges must be used in this crucial part of protecting data from hacks. Another factor that works around here is the integrity of the business owner and the quality of goods or service is provided. To gain the personal and confidential data the online hackers uses the platform like Skrill, Payoneer and PayPal’s information which may not be secured at all (Jacobs 2016). To combat this kind of breaches Routine activity theory will be useful. To mitigate the risks business must take the responsibility to enhance the security measures and takes the following things in consideration. For example, firewalls and role-based access, Physical separation, encrypt data in HD, identity management and backing up the data. The most common step is to build a firewall, which is done by 94% of the organisations.

Project scope

Government regulations and laws also works in favour of increasing the punishment of Cybercrime, though sometimes complicates systems and reverting to the hackers becomes impossible. With careful intentions and stern steps one must be given careful thought on the investment of the company in building the cyber security infrastructure. (Sales 2012) The main thing is to build a strong team. For example, China is known as the user of sophisticated cyber criminal on large scale. They also prefer to protect the social order, while the social security is issued at the same time. The reliable power maintenance structure of technologies provides protection to all system in operation. A built in smart grid is efficient and to control the flow of information and can be reconstructed (Yan et al. 2014). Different countries are facing different barriers in using online platform for this security issues. Furthermore, the cost effectiveness is also beneficial for the small and medium sized companies. It has been proved by recent reforms in online security that the secure sockets layer certificates are needed for the websites related to sensitive data, especially the credit card information. Those who are hosting websites, they are demanding compliance to obtain such certificates from reliable corporations (Sales 2012). 

This method includes all the qualitative and quantitative way of doing research. The main criteria that must be followed is to consider the validity and reliability of the data gathered. The qualitative approach is known as getting the response in an attitude scale and generalizing the responds. The quantitative method is more numeric in nature (Panneerselvam 2014).

Reliability and validity in qualitative research

In any kind of research, be it qualitative or quantitative the most essential part is to maintain the reliability and validity of doing the research. Here the data collection process must be ensured of that. The reliability maintenance is known as the testing and evaluating the data collected primarily or secondarily (Mackey and Gass 2015). The factors that need to be considered are neutrality, credibility, applicability, conformability and quality of research and these are of grave importance in doing research. The two kinds of validity, that are known as the building blocks of research are the concept validity and construct validity (Panneerselvam 2014). To maintain the imperceptivity of conceptions concept validity must be considered at the initial stage.

The main research design of this proposal is to collect data from an identified company through secondary and primary data collection process. The research approach can be inductive and deductive in ways (Silverman 2016). Here for this research inductive way of conducting research is followed, which involves careful observation and going through the data and analysis of data. The theory selection and hypothesis testing is also part of inductive approach (Flick 2015).

Research design highlights the descriptive or the exploratory way of doing research. (Mackey and Gass 2015).This research requires more descriptive way of conducting the research. . Here in this research design, the focus is to collect primary data from the company and based on the fining and analysis the correct conclusion must be given.  

Research questions

Here the objective of this study requires to collect data on cyber attacks on different organisations and what are the safety procedures. The secondary sources will suffice to build the foundation of the research and a company will be identified which uses the smart grid procedure and follows the routine theory of activity (Silverman 2016).

The secondary data will be collected from different trusted journal sites and a sampling will be done probability-sampling method. The primary data will be collected from the company. A group of managers will be identified and the employees related to the information department will be questioned prepared in the structured questionnaires section. The survey and direct structured interview method will be followed (Flick 2015). The managers sample size will be six and employees’ number will be at least 30. The independent variable for observation will be cyber attacks rate and dependent will the variable related to security systems of the company (Panneerselvam 2014).

The budget and time are the main concerns of doing this project though a 10 weeks time has been given for this research. The journals used may not be recent or verified from reliable source. The resources to conduct an interview and gathering people for interview may not be as fruitful as needed. These constraints must be kept in mind and eliminated in the best possible way (Silverman 2016).

Source : created by author

Figure: project schedule chart

Conclusions

Therefore, from the above text it can be concluded that the cyber security has become a concern for companies that are vulnerable on this platform. Hence, confidential data that needs to be used further must be protected from online hacking. In addition, the method outlined for doing the research also takes into account of the process that needs to be followed. Based on this research method, the data will be collected from different sources and a schedule of research program is also given in the chart.

References 

Flick, U., 2015. Introducing research methodology: A beginner’s guide to doing a research project. Sage.

Jacobs, T., 2016, Industrial-sized Cyber Attacks Threaten the Upstream Sector, Journal of Petroleum Technology, 68(03), pp.42-50.

Low, S.P. and Ong, J., 2014. Research Design and Methodology. In Project Quality Management (pp. 69-77). Springer Singapore.

Mackey, A. and Gass, S.M., 2015. Second language research: Methodology and design. Routledge.

Panneerselvam, R., 2014. Research methodology. PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd..

Sales, N.A., 2012. Regulating cyber-security.

Sauter, M. and Carafano, J., 2012. Homeland Security: A Complete Guide 2/E. McGraw Hill Professional.

Silverman, D. ed., 2016. Qualitative research. Sage.

Soomro, Z.A., Shah, M.H. and Ahmed, J., 2016, Information security management needs more holistic approach: A literature review, International Journal of Information Management, 36(2), pp.215-225.

Taylor, S.J., Bogdan, R. and DeVault, M., 2015. Introduction to qualitative research methods: A guidebook and resource. John Wiley & Sons.

Tonge, A.M., Kasture, S.S. and Chaudhari, S.R., 2013, Cyber security: challenges for society-literature review, IOSR Journal of Computer Engineering, 2(12), pp.67-75.

Yan, Z., Zhang, P. and Vasilakos, A.V., 2014, A survey on trust management for Internet of Things, Journal of network and computer applications, 42, pp.120-134.

Yin, R.K., 2013. Case study research: Design and methods. Sage publications.