Chapter 1. Cyber Threat Landscape and Security Challenges

The information has always been key to competitive advantage and sustainable success. Information is usually created when a series of high-volume and trusted data is used to answer a simple question. Intelligence is developed by collecting information to present a forecast that can be used for decision-making processes. Intelligence gathering is the most powerful and effective way to predict the future. From ancient intelligence to today's artificial intelligence, from the world wars to today's cyberwar, the goal is always to be a step ahead of our adversaries.

Let's look at the real world. The Chinese government and there military, the People's Liberation Army (PLA), have been accused of stealing technology and trade secrets, often from private institutes in the US. You may think that China wants to destroy the US, but that's not true. China simply wants to be the superpower and wants to be a technology leader. Eventually, it wants every single American, and even the rest of the world, to be technology-dependent on the Chinese market. This results in a continuous stream of Chinese spying operations targeting multinational businesses and government institutes to gather trade secrets. Let's switch gears now. Political parties gather information through advanced analytics from their own citizens to predict upcoming election results. It signifies that the world is having a profound impact on the internet.

The rapid transformation to cloud computing, IoT, cognitive computing, and mobility are now managing most critical assets of organizations; however, the increasing number of interconnected applications and technologies also result in an increase in the number of exploitable vulnerabilities. Organizations are deploying several security measures to locate and fix such security vulnerabilities; however, this is a never-ending job for security forces. Nevertheless, top vulnerabilities can be prioritized by sorting them out with the potential threat, but this needs a high degree of threat intelligence practice.

Cybersecurity is a 20-year-old phenomenon, but in the past five years, it has become more challenging for defenders to protect themselves against emerging threats, such as zero-day exploits, crypto-ransomware, terabytes of DDoS attacks, multi-vector malware, and advanced social engineering.

This book is prepared to adopt a paradigm shift in security perception. Despite adding another layer of security, this is an attempt to change the security mindset at a fundamental level. One of the most popular technologies named after the internet is the blockchain; however, what makes the blockchain truly revolutionary is its potential for applications beyond cryptocurrencies. Today, there are numerous startups that are using blockchain technology to disrupt existing business models and industry verticals such as cloud hosting, financial services, the supply chain, healthcare, cybersecurity, and many more. This book will be useful for security experts, security product engineers, and even blockchain enthusiasts. This book focuses on taking readers on a tour of the current security threat landscape and is a practical approach for overcoming some of the most critical security challenges with blockchain technology.

In this chapter, readers will learn about the following topics:

• The current threat landscape
• How defenders, including government bodies and businesses, are preparing themselves to defend their assets from adversaries
• Live attack simulation to perform data exfiltration from a remote machine