The Cyber Security Handbook – Prepare for, respond to and recover from cyber attacks

CHAPTER 7: TECHNICAL THREATS

Most of the time, when people think about cyber security, they think of technical threats first. The media regularly features stories of vast data breaches that are eventually traced to some hardware or software vulnerability, both obscure and otherwise. In 2011–2020, malware increased by a staggering 1,634%.⁹ In less than two months, one million phishing emails were reported to the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) alone.¹⁰

Although the NCSC successfully blocked or took down thousands of malicious websites, undoubtedly many more new ones have since appeared in their place. Unfortunately, attackers often have the upper hand, having to find and successfully exploit just one vulnerability when defenders need ...