Cyber security is a term that most people recognize and have a reasonable understanding of what it means.
What may not be as familiar to many is the term cyber defense, which is a critical part of an overall cyber security strategy.
For businesses in need of developing or improving their cyber security plan, cyber defense companies stress the importance of understanding these two terms and how they work together to not only stop security breaches but to efficiently prevent them, too.
What Makes Up Cyber Defense?
The easiest way to explain cyber defense is to first define cyber security as the continuous process of defending against cyber threats that bombard a network with a variety of different types of attacks.
In this sense, cyber security is the process, whereas cyber defense is the methods used to defend against those attacks.
Cyber security addresses the identification and understanding of incoming, offensive threats and attacks, while cyber defense addresses protecting the network by locating security flaws and patching them before they can be exploited.
Why Is Cyber Defense More Challenging?
While both processes perform collectively under the overall title of cyber security, cyber defense is actually more challenging, as it involves greater research and analysis of a network’s current operations as opposed to just understanding how a threat works.
Therefore, it should be undertaken by experienced professionals with a much broader knowledge of cyber security and networking.
Cyber defense professionals point out that it is the goal of this part of the process to inspect and analyze business networks to understand their weaknesses, then find the most appropriate ways to resolve them so they can withstand an incoming attack.
Total Security Requires Cyber Defense Along With Cyber Prevention
For businesses to achieve the highest levels of network security, their cyber protection strategy must look not only at how to prevent offensive cyber threat attacks but also at how to protect against threats that might still reach their networks.
Based on how it operates, cyber defense is especially important for protecting against threats like ransomware, infected web pages, and malware attacks of various types using methods like firewalls, antivirus protection, and strong network architecture that reduces vulnerabilities.
What Is Your Cyber Security Strategy?
By treating each network as its data castle, businesses partnering with a cyber defense company can stay safe using a general cyber security strategy that offers both offensive and defensive methods to prevent access by malicious programs.
A strong defense, paired with an effective offense, is the best army a company can have to protect its sensitive data fortress and avoid becoming the next victim of a cyber threat!