Stay safe, stay updated: best cybersecurity tools of today’s world

In today’s world, hardly anybody can stay away from technologies and the net world. Businesses are not the exception. In order to remain competitive companies seek to automate and digitalize processes that go on, use cloud tools to keep data, get in touch with customers via the internet, and so on. No wonder by now for most businesses cybersecurity has become one of the major concerns in today’s reality.

Cybersecurity involves a broad scope of aspects and issues: software composition analysis, protecting confidential data, shielding net from unauthorized invasion, encrypting communications, and so on.

Such a diverse set of concerns makes cybersecurity management challenging and costly. Cybersecurity costs were estimated at $114 billion two years ago and that figure is growing fast.

The digital world is evolving with the speed of light and that makes it crucial for cybersecurity specialists to stay updated and use security tools that correspond to the current time and the threats associated with it. Below are some modern cybersecurity solutions divided into few categories.

Take Care Of The Network Defence

Tools that professionals use to run network defense are essential for successful cybersecurity campaigns.

Let’s start with Aircrack-ng. This tool is designed for analyzing the vulnerabilities of the Wi-fi network. With the help of Aircrack-ng, it is possible to identify data packets that are being transmitted via the network for monitoring. Apart from that, this tool enables professionals to catch and enter data (which is useful in terms of evaluation of card performance).

There is also a special tool for the Windows system – Netstumbler. This solution is free and highly useful when it comes to finding up the open port of the network (via WAP search). All in all, Netstumbler is effective in terms of identifying network vulnerabilities.

Another up-to-date tool used for network defense is KisMAC.However, just as the previous one it is specialized –  this time for MAC OS X systems. One of the distinguishing features of this tool is that it might be too complex in use for non-professionals. For those who manage to use the tool, it opens up the opportunity to passively assess networks on Wi-Fi cards ( AirPort and AirPort extreme as well).

Argus also deserves to be mentioned as a commonly used open-source tool aimed at monitoring and analyzing network activity. The analysis that this tool provides is deep and full.

Another strong tool in terms of network security monitoring is Splunk. This one is helpful when it comes to monitoring and analyzing past network activity and the activity that is taking place at the moment.

Scan Web Vulnerabilities

Scanning web vulnerabilities is a basic part of the cybersecurity measures. One of the most used tools for that is Nexpose. This tool is known to be user-friendly and effective. In general words, Nexpose helps to identify vulnerabilities and prevent potential threats. Not only it identifies vulnerabilities, but it also enables users to correspond to them in a coordinated way via the priority assignment based on severity. Nexpose also provides users with actual information about the current activities on the network.

There is also an open-source tool called Nikto. This one is respected in the world of cybersecurity professionals for the effective identification and management of web vulnerabilities. Nikto uses the database that has 6400 types of threats to scan and assess vulnerabilities. This database is being repeatedly updated.

Detect Network Intrusion

A network intrusion is probably one of the main concerns in cybersecurity. Thus, specialists have come up with plenty of solutions that help to prevent the network from being intruded.

User-friendly and matching with all operational systems is Snort. It is an open-source tool used to identify intrusions and protect the network from intrusive attacks. Snort provides users information about potential intrusions and blocks suspicious malicious activity. This tool is designed to protect the network from various types of attacks (such as buffer overflow attacks, fingerprint attacks, and many more).

Another way to protect the network from intrusion is to configure SD-WAN in such a way that users are interdicted from getting specific information. The solution used for that could be Forcepoint. This tool also blocks activity that is suspected to intrude on the network and warns professionals of the potential threats that come from cloud servers.

Tools Used For Encryption

Bare-Metal Restore is a widely used tool that was designed for encryption. Users are enabled to encrypt critical and confidential information to get back to it when needed. Bare-Metal Restore also responds to threat situations with hiding files in the firmware.

Also, let’s mention Folder Lock for it uses encryption together with file lockage. It works simply: files are locked and encrypted and can be assessed via passwords. Though such double protection is highly effective.

There is also a tool that enables one to access the Internet privately. Tor routes the requests to different proxy servers and thus makes the users’ activity hard to detect.

Password Sniffers Or Cybersecurity Audition

Real-time analysis of the cybersecurity condition can be guided with the use of various tools. For example, there is Wireshark that analyzes the network protocols and detects vulnerabilities. For monitoring and recording, capturing, and filtering TCP and IP data one may use Tcpdump. This solution is comparatively easy to use and handy.

For Windows systems, there is also a specialized tool called Cain and Abel. This tool has a wide set of functions: password recovery, protocols analysis, VoIP communication recording, etc.

Simple as it sounds, but a lot depends on the secure passwords. John the Ripper helps users to identify weak passwords that can bring potential threats.

All in all, when it comes to cybersecurity a lot depends on how thoroughly goes audition of the current condition of the security: what passwords are used, what software vendors are chosen, where and how information is kept, what cybersecurity tools are used and who conducts the tools’ usage. In the best-case scenario, of course, cybersecurity management should be done by experienced professionals and those should keep up with the time to adapt their measures to the threats that are currently actual.

Summing Up – Stay Safe, Stay Updated

Cybersecurity is a challenge that we have to rise to today. We have taken a look at some of the cybersecurity aspects and tools that are currently used by professionals.

However, it is highly important to remember that the cyber world is changing rapidly and that brings up absolutely new challenges and threats every day from somewhere you would not expect them just yesterday. In such conditions, it is crucial to stay updated in order to remain safe.