Cyber Security can be defined as the body of technologies, processes and practices designed to protect networks, computers, programs and data from attack, damage or unauthorized access. But just to be clear, Cyber Security does not necessary equal information security, which has a broader scope so much so that it encompasses cyber security, transaction information, and physical documents. From this perspective, cyber security makes up a subset of information security, nevertheless, a lot of information security deals with cyber security in a substantial amount. In this context, getting yourself certified under the ISO 27001 would entail great advantages to your cyber security structure.
Cyber Security is incessant and creates a huge problem for corporations and nation states everywhere – classified documents and sensitive information are either stolen or thrown into the public sphere because of the lack of an air-tight framework for guarding such acts of thievery. The ISO/IEC 27001 provides a management framework for assessing and treating risks, whether cyber-oriented or otherwise, that can damage business, governments, and even the fabric of a nation’s national infrastructure. In Dubai, the finance, insurance and real estate industries have been the primary targets for these criminals, and their favorite choice of committing crime is sphere fishing, where E-Mails are used to steal company or personal details, and their favorite targets are small companies who suffered 89 % of all phishing attacks.
What is alarming is the fact that these vile beings have an effective method to infiltrate the mobile devices as well, where they are able to extort tremendous amount of information per attack. They team up with each other to carry out dastardly attacks and disclose the information to specific individuals; this has caused the increase of ransom theft in the UAE – by means of a malware known as the Ransomware. They trick companies into infecting themselves by Trojanizing software updates to common programs and patiently wait for them to download, giving the attackers unfettered access to those major corporations.
Cyber Security is not just an IT challenge but it’s critical to running a successful business. The cyber problem will demand more robust technical and management solutions that require the improvement of the business processes to handle confidentiality, integrity and availability of information to improve the awareness and skills of staff and users to achieve protection. This necessitates a framework, namely the ISO 27001, whose many benefits for cyber include those such as:
- It induces a holistic and comprehensive thought process where people have to think holistically and everything has to be accounted for so that every single element of the cyber security framework is in proper working condition.
- The risk assessment philosophy of ISO 27001 makes it easy for any customization for the protection structure of the information security system according to the needs of each particular organisation.
- The recognition of the fact that emphasis on technology would not solve the problem, therefore creating a mechanism to focus on how to manage the relationship between the organisation (process, structure, policies, etc.), the people (employees, vendors, etc.) and the technology.
- Providing as a perfect reference for drafting law regulations and drawing legislation in many countries.
- Being the only information security standard against which an organisation can get certified, proving its efficiency to third parties.
With the cyber security market estimated to grow to 170 million dollars by 2020, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 9.8 per cent from 2015 to 2020, it is more important now more than ever that the industry develops with quality from the resources that can be created. The aerospace, defense, and intelligent vertical still remains the largest contributors to cyber security solutions, while revenue wise, North America and Europe leads with the largest revenue contributions to cybersecurity solutions.
World Economic Forum Global Risks 2015 Report has revealed that most 
cybercrimes incidents go unreported and that very few companies come forward with information on their losses. That is not surprising considering that there are stigmas that will develop around those do give out information, leading to a gradual loss of trust by the audiences. They also say that a significant portion of cyber security goes undetected, particularly industrial espionage, where access to confidential documents and data is difficult to spot. The banking and financial sector remains the biggest targets of cyber criminals over the first five years of the decade, followed by IT & telecom, defense, and the oil and gas sector.
Cyber risks cause much harm to online markets by compromising electronic transactions and inflicting costly damage. Companies dealing with supply of managed technology solutions and business services for electronic transaction often opt to be certified with the ISO 27001 for the perfect Information Security Management System while some larger firms would often get the IT Service Management System based on ISO 20000 in addition to the former, so that they could create an infallible information security management system.
One such larger firm is CINDA, a Chinese asset management company who is representative of the financial industry over there. They constantly improve their ISMS to meet business development and to adapt to the corporate culture; this has caused their audience base to be increased by multitudes. Another large firm, Fujitsu, uses the twin management system standards to cater to different clients from myriad backgrounds and enables a single management overview of the state of our security implementation.
ISO 27001 is now the preferred weapon of choice for combating threats to information security and for reaping outstanding success in the business community, reaching out to provide protection and benefits to organisations across all sectors, regardless of the size and the nature of business. Although the common objection of it being an expensive method to ensure the quality of the security framework in place, the benefits far outweigh the revenue costs at the initial stages. Thousands of organisations around the world use ISO 27001 to manage their information security risks. This is an epoch defined by the digital realm, and in a world where there are incessant cyber-attacks, any sort of compromises are weaknesses that these cyber predators can trace with their keen eyes, so, why take the chance?