Rajesh Kumar Goutam - Cybersecurity Fundamentals

Professor Brijendra Singh
Who encouraged me to write this book

Dr. Rajesh Kumar Goutam is an assistant professor in Department of Computer Science University of Lucknow. He has over 10 years of experience in teaching and research in the computer science field. He did his MCA from Uttar Pradesh Technical University, Lucknow, and earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow.

Goutams interest lies in developing the framework to detect the true source of cybercrime and to track the criminals across digital infrastructure. He has contributed to the Cybersecurity field through his several publications in various journals of repute. The author is an active member of various professional bodies too.

Vignesh Balasubramanian has over vast of experience in performing Vulnerability Assessments, Penetration Testing and Digital Forensics Investigations. Prior to becoming a cybersecurity professional, he worked as a Systems Integration Tester at Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited in Mumbai. He is now working independently on cybersecurity training and consulting projects.

First and foremost, I am thankful to Almighty God and my parents too for their blessings and enabling me to complete this book.

I would like to thank Professor Alok Kumar Rai, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Lucknow, who believed in my capabilities and provided me congenial atmosphere and necessary infrastructure to write this book.

I am thankful to Prof. Brijendra Singh, Head, Department of Computer Science, University of Lucknow, for his continuous encouragement, regular guidance and motivations during the entire period of writing this book. I am indebted to Professor Sanjay Kumar Dwivedi, Head of Computer Science Department, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow, who taught me the basics of research. I am also thankful to Dr Suresh Prasad Kannojia for his valuable suggestions on technical aspects of this book. We are fortunate to have Dr Sudhir Singh and his wife Mrs Ranjana who always encouraged me to do outstanding work in research and maintained healthy and convivial environment around me. I am grateful to the entire BPB publication team for providing me the opportunity to complete this book. I owe very special thanks to Dr Vignesh Balasibramanian for technically reviewing this book and to enhance the quality of chapters.

Finally, words fall short to convey my emotional sentiments from the deepest core of my heart to my wife Anupam Lata, brother Mr Rakesh Kumar, bhabhi Mrs Janki, and sisters for constantly supporting me and always being on my side whenever I needed their help.

Today, we have a virtual, parallel and essential world, commonly known as cyberspace, which enables us to perform our personal, social and economical activities online in an efficient manner and facilitates to store sensitive data over global network. Although the internet is considered powerful and indispensible tool for digital revolution, it is vulnerable and provides immense opportunities to criminals to earn illegal money and to get social and political benefits. Criminals launch attacks with their malicious codes to harass individuals, to breach confidential business data, to remotely control digital infrastructure, and to restrict legitimate access to devices. These attacks are rapidly growing in numbers across the world, are triggered by professionals in an organized manner to increase destruction coverage and for greater economical and societal damages. Cybercriminals are now presenting formidable risks for nations to protect their national critical infrastructures and pressurize the governments for their frail demands by paralyzing the functioning of their institutions and crucial sectors.

We are now living in digital age where the internet has a key role in our survival. The internet users, including school children, teenagers, adults and veterans are sharing cyberspace with criminals and publishing the crucial information over internet and are inviting risks. To avoid these risks, the internet users must understand its perils together with its benefits. It is time to be a smart user so that we can reap the benefits of information and communication technologies and can fail criminals malicious attempts without any inconvenience to our safe access to cyberspace and internet enabled devices. This book has been envisaged to meet these requirements and is delivered to spread awareness about the inherent risks with internet technologies among its readers.

Cybersecurity is not a state, instead it is a long-term process that protects our digital infrastructure with its inherent software, hardware, networks and database with appropriate procedural and technological counter measures. Unfortunately, we are still dependent on firewalls and third-party antivirus software for the protection of digital infrastructure, which is grotesque. To tackle with cybercriminals tactics to gain access to digital infrastructure and to make them failure in their malicious attempts, we need to devise our own defense strategies such as Intrusion Detection System, Prevention systems, and Response Systems that requires the fundamental knowledge of the Cybersecurity subject. This book has been written with these considerations and provides comprehensive knowledge of important topics ranging from basics of computer security to flooding attacks and Cyberwar. This book is useful for BTech/MTech, BSc/MSc, BCA/MCA students in Computer Science and Information Technology both disciplines. This book can be useful resource for researchers who are interested to pursue a career in Cybersecurity area of research.