From time to time, they are used as “cyber space”, “cyber space” and “cyber environment” (and even the virtual world in colloquial language). The cyber environment, which is basically used by adapting the English word “cyberspace”; means “the environment consisting of information systems spread all over the world and space and the networks that connect them”.
While it is generally considered appropriate to give this name to internet environments, cyber environments should be considered as a universe that includes all information systems and those who use these systems, especially with the spread of cloud computing and industry 4.0 technologies.
Technologies that produce digital data have become used in the business world, public spaces, home and pocket, in short, at every stage of human life. Both corporate and personal data are transferred to cyber environments at any time by all elements of the cyber environment.
Today, as even individuals store their personal data in cyber environments, the technologies used must be safe, reliable, sustainable and at the same time flexible. Because now many crimes you encounter in real life have become committed in cyber environments, and cyber hackers use computer networks to achieve their goals.
Many cyber attacks, such as the capture and misuse of private data by cyber hackers, damage or destruction of important works, carrying out attacks that will bring huge costs to the economy, and seize or expose national secrets, continue to increase day by day. Preventing these cyber attacks will ensure the protection of cyber media components.
The cyber environment has also been on the agenda in international platforms and was defined as a new dimension by NATO in 2016. Cyber environment, defined in addition to land, air, sea and space dimensions, has become official as an operational area.
What is Cyber Security?
It is the protection of the information systems that make up the cyber environment from attacks, the securing the confidentiality, integrity and accessibility of the information processed in this environment, the detection of attacks and cyber security incidents, the activation of response mechanisms against these detections, and then the return of the systems to their state before the cyber security incident.
Cyber environments have now become the real life itself, and people spend most of the day in digital environments. Real-life threats are now seen in digital environments. The increasing number of cyber criminals and the exposure of people from all walks of life to cyber attacks have increased the importance given to the concept of cyber security. Data security in digital environments is one of the most important elements in providing cyber security.
As a result of cyber attacks, individuals, companies and institutions / organizations suffer both material and moral losses. One of the most important reasons for this is the inability to keep up with technology, while another is the lack of technology literacy. While cybercriminals are constantly improving themselves on this issue, users do not show the necessary sensitivity to cyber security.
Similar to the fight between real-life criminals and security forces, it also takes place in cyberspace. Just as measures are taken to keep living spaces, homes and workplaces safe, measures must be taken to keep data safe in cyber environments.
Companies around the world are trying to take measures to ensure cyber security. Undoubtedly, these measures, both software and hardware, have an educational dimension. Raising the awareness of users and employees is one of the most important factors in this regard. Because currently, most of the cyber attacks are caused by people’s unconsciousness.
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| Global cybersecurity spending 2017–2020 |
Cyber Security Risks
Cyber Attacks
Through information technologies, individuals, institutions, companies, systems, etc. These are attacks that target and disrupt the functioning of them, prevent them, access information without permission and disrupt information integrity.
By placing harmful viruses in programs via e-mails, sending them to targeted systems, obtaining personal information illegally using information technologies, capturing websites in order to lose the reputation of public and private institutions and organizations and to cause psychological damage, overloading the websites of public institutions and organizations, systems cannot work. the situation can be listed as.
Viruses: Computer viruses are computer codes that change themselves as one of the files or programs in the system. The critical point in understanding viruses is that they must be run by a user.
Trojans: Named after the famous Trojan horse tactic of history, this malware is actually computer programs that you have authorized to use a different feature, but that contain features that can harm the system in the background. Users can play music on the Internet, programs with broken licenses, etc. They can also unknowingly download trojans while downloading from sites. So they may have installed programs that work for hackers on their computers.
Worms: Malware, such as viruses, designed to copy itself from one computer to another. Its difference from viruses is that it spreads automatically over the network. Due to the automatic spreading, the slow operation of the computer network over time causes the internet pages to arrive late.
Rootkits: It is a very difficult to detect computer program that infects the computer, hides itself between running processes, provides full control of your computer remotely to malicious people.
Spyware : Spy programs are programs created to spy on a computer. Spyware is defined as the software that enables the collection of sensitive information belonging to users and the actions taken by the user without the user’s knowledge and to send this information to malicious people.
Phishing: In the most general sense, it can be defined as defrauding people on the internet.
Social engineering: This method can be defined as neutralizing or circumventing cyber security processes by taking advantage of people’s weaknesses.
Sniffing: It is the process of listening to the data stream while communicating using some software tools.
DoS and DDoS: These methods are attacks to try to prevent some online services from working properly. Attackers send too many requests to a website or a database to occupy the system, which can cause systems to stop working. DDoS occurs when these attacks are done from more than one computer.
SQL injection : Many databases are designed to comply with commands written in SQL, and many websites that receive information from users send this data to SQL databases. Attackers can take control of victims’ databases by exploiting SQL vulnerabilities.
Bots and botnets: Zombie computers or botnets can be considered the most dangerous of this threat group. The important point here is that the computer can be used to commit very serious crimes without the computer user knowing about it.
Social Media Data
Social media is basically a structure that allows users to share content. The word social is a word of French origin (Social) meaning “social, related to society”. In order to be able to call a behavior a social behavior, that behavior must have emerged with social interaction [1].
The concept of media is defined by the Turkish Language Association as the communication medium and means of communication. With the development of the Internet, websites that provide user interaction have emerged and it has become easier for data such as text, photo, video, and voice to become widespread on the internet. The number of social media sites and the number of people using social media sites are increasing every day in the world [1].
The connection of people with each other was expressed in the theory of 6 Degrees of Seperation in her short story Láncszemek, published in 1929 by the Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy [2].
According to Frigyes, there was a connection between any two people in the world through up to six people [2].
American sociologist Stanley Milgram supported this theory with his work Small World Experiment in 1967. Milgram gave cards to randomly selected people to transport to Massachusetts. He asked them to give it to acquaintances who they thought were close to the address he would reach. At the end of the study, Milgram saw that the cards reached the desired place in an average of 5.2 steps [2].
In the following years, the 6 steps theorem became increasingly important. In 1996, the site http://oracleofbacon.org/ was created by Brett C. Tjaden, who is studying at the University of Virginia, that places Kavin Bacon at the center and shows the ties between nearly 3 million actors and actresses. This site also contributed greatly to the spread of the theorem [2].
Finally, MSN, when examining the e-mail traffic of over 30 billion users of 180 million users, concluded that no two people are on average 6.6 degrees apart [2].
When people around the world interact so closely with each other, the effect of social media sites on mobilizing the masses increases. The world-famous Time magazine named Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and owner of Facebook, as the “Man of the Year” in 2010, as the “President of the 500 Million Virtual State”, “The Person Who Changes People’s Lives Creative and Optimistic”. Even this title has deep meanings and attention is drawn to the impact of social media on people [1].
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| Social Media and Application User Numbers |
- Approximately 40% of the world’s population is currently using the internet and there are approximately 1.8 billion Web sites.
- An average of 2.9 million emails are sent per second.
- An average of 81 thousand Google searches are made per second.
- The number of Twits per second is approximately 8.9 thousand.
- The number of videos viewed on YouTube per second is approximately 83 thousand.
- The number of photos uploaded to Instagram is an average of one thousand per second.
- Actively there are 2.5 Billion users on Facebook, 360 Million on Twitter and 285 Million users on Pinterest.
- …
It is certain that social networks have brought many changes since the days they entered our lives. Imagine what it would be like if they pulled this out of your life right now? What would our smartphones do that we didn’t drop now? Our smartphones, which we now want to check every 10 minutes, would only pass from calling to calling.
According to a study, a quarter of people reach a mobile device within the first five minutes. When this time increases to an hour, it increases to three quarters.
First of all, it should be noted that not every sharing you see on the internet and social media is information. There are several stages to reach the concept of knowledge. The most important element of these stages is data.
The concept of data is one of the most important concepts of the future for all industries. We are in a period when the world is rapidly evolving into Artificial Intelligence technologies. The most important source of assets of these systems is data.
Ready for the data revolution? Industry, industry, service, education, science, technology, health, sports, economy, agriculture, automotive etc. All the sectors you can think of will now use the data effectively. He has to use it. Anyone who insists on not using it will be behind the times.
As for why I speak so precisely, the answer lies in the data. The processes of predicting the future by looking at the past and the potential are now being made. With the development of computer systems, it has become possible to process large amounts of data.
Protection of Personal Data
Everything you share is data. Turkish Language Association defines data as the main element that is the basis of a research. Data lies at the heart of social media. People share treasure-like data on social media. Some of this sharing is conscious and some unconscious.
Unconscious data sharing takes place thanks to the membership terms, terms of service and the permissions we give when installing applications on mobile phones and tablets that we accept while signing up to social media sites.
Conscious data sharing is more like content sharing. These include content such as texts, photos, videos, music, sound recordings, location notifications. Moreover, these shares have reached such dimensions that new disciplines have emerged since it is not possible to access information with traditional methods. The size of the content shared on social media increases exponentially with the passage of time. Thus, data provision, which is a treasure for companies, is met voluntarily and free of charge by billions of users [1].
Your data is analyzed in various ways and in a way it reports about you, which is called information. So what does information do?
This is where the concept of knowledge comes into play. When we look at the dictionary of the Turkish Language Association, the information; The phenomenon that can be reached by the human mind is defined as the whole of facts and principles. In other words, knowledge appears as a mental concept. While information is a written, verbal or visual message, information includes personal inferences and facts.
People access knowledge through information. The future of companies is determined by the inferences they make from the information and the decisions they make through information management. After deducing when people living in a region started their day on average, thanks to the information sources, “What will this resource be useful for? and “what are we going to do?” Information on the subject comes into play. In another example, decisions about what the masses like and don’t like can have more crucial results [1].
Here, I would like to refer to the concept of social knowledge as well as the concept of personal knowledge. Social media is now full of true / false, real / fake news. It reaches such dimensions that people can sometimes present the information they obtain from a single source as if it were their own. Source verification habit is very little. Or, situations arise to immediately disseminate and disseminate information from unreliable sources.
As a result, people can be guided differently even in very sensitive situations. Moreover, some of them just specialize in these subjects. To create wars of perception. Perception management has become very easy thanks to social media. People’s perceptions can be changed in an instant. Criminals can be declared innocent and innocent criminals. Thanks to the boots we mentioned, the things that never happened can be brought up. This is where intelligence, that is knowledge, comes into play. I have called the concept of knowledge an event that happens in the human mind. You can overcome a lot of misleading through reasoning. Just ask.
Protection of Corporate Data
Turkey Presidency of the Republic studies conducted by the Office of Digital Transformation; Digital Conversion, Digital Turkey, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Cyber Security has been classified as. For big data from these studies [3];
“While the determinant of the last century was the production power and the added value obtained from it, today the determinant of the power is the data and the ability to process them. Therefore, in the digital age, we work in line with a governance approach that focuses not only on data, but also on generating value from data ”.
The basis of data economy is to process data and turn it into value. The transformation of the acquired data into a value that can affect all stages of political and social life, not just as an economic response, causes countries to develop new policies by affecting the struggle for existence. This new economic and social model, based on data and whose rules are not yet clear, reshapes every stage of life. Innovative technologies such as Internet of Things, Cloud Technology, Blockchain, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence constitute the most important links of this new value chain.
Transforming data into value is only possible with a local and national understanding. Just as every inch of our country’s land has a value for us at the cost of our lives, we look at each byte of our data with the same eye. In this context, it is of great importance that each byte of our data remains within our own borders and is protected. In order to produce value from data, the big data we have must be anonymized and transformed into a usable form.
The most important step for corporate data security is the Personal Data Protection Law №6698 (KVKK). Within the scope of this law, all your data is actually tried to be secured. No institution and / or person can share your data without your permission. Sanctions are also imposed on those who share. When you look at it from your point of view, it gives you confidence, right? What about your posts? Do you ever share images, photos or videos of others that do not belong to you? Moreover, without asking permission.
Things to do in this regard:
- Taking cyber security measures,
- Determining institutional deficits and taking measures,
- Preventing unauthorized access,
- Sharing is done by a professional team,
- Paying attention to the concept of Cyber Governance,
- …
REFERENCES
[1] Savaş, S., (2020), @ Sosyal Medya, Kutlu Yayınevi, İstanbul.
[2] Savaş, S., Topaloğlu, N. (2015), “Sosyal Medya Verileri Üzerinden Siber İstihbarat Faaliyetleri”, VIII. Uluslararası Bilgi Güvenliği ve Kriptoloji Konferansı — ISCTurkey 2015, ODTU, 30–31 Ekim 2015, Ankara.
[3] T.C. Cumhurbaşkanlığı Dijital Dönüşüm Ofisi: https://cbddo.gov.tr
