Combating Cyber Crimes

The world is digitizing at a fast pace! From the time we used to go to banks and perform manual transactions to the time now where we sit at our home and just a click on computer will prove to be a boon. Is this really a boon? Let’s look at the other side of the coin. As rightly said "The excess of anything is bad" where technology has pacified our pain at the same time it has brought crimes to a bigger level. Cyber crimes have overtaken traditional crimes these days. According to National Crime Agency's Cyber crime assessment 2016, which was released on 7th July 2016 says that Information technology fraud is recorded to be 36% where as misuse of computer accounts for 17%. Specifically in India, From 2015 the rate of cyber crimes is expected to be doubled, main cause being increased use of smart devices for financial transactions. It is not that only financial institutions are in the hands of cyber criminals, retail business are even bigger victims. Cyber criminals have become more trailblazing and continue to design improved methods for infecting networks. They are also working on how social engineering techniques can help. According to Trust wave’s Global annual Security report 45% of is contributed through data loss and violation.

Additionally, SIEM( Security Information and event management) is widely used technology, it combines SIM( security information management) and SEM ( security event management).The SIM collects the data in a central repository to analyze the pattern and provides reports automatically. SEM deals with real time analysis, correlation of events and views. Most SIEM system works in specific hierarchy to gather security related events and views. But there is one danger using this technology, relevant content can be filtered out quickly. The main objective is to guard system configuration changes, manage log auditing and review response.

 Another successful approach is integration. Loss Protection technologies are a growing trend in retail market .Integration of security systems has been an intelligent choice as it permits multiple systems to be managed on single interface, This aims at reducing manpower and loss protection becomes efficient by assimilation of multiple interfaces to single one. Its benefit is that maintenance becomes easier. Market continues to fight problems like shop lifting, social engineering, commercial burglary, ORC (organized retail crime), return and refund frauds etc. There are detection systems which include alarms, thus minimizing theft and loss. One major drawback of these systems is non crime alarms. Too many alarms lead to false information which may turn authorities to behave in unresponsive way.

New security systems like using RFID (radio frequency identification) and GPS brought new hopes as they allow tracking the shipment and verifying if they are illicit or illegal. These technologies are mainly intended for preventing supply chain and cargo theft. To fight against refund fraud, POS systems are used. They have debit or credit card reader. When this function is not performed by system then retailer does it manually. Many retailers now a day’s use smart fixtures, locking cases, cables and cords etc. In recent years many improvements are being done in field of video surveillance. And a new technology video analytic is being developed. It tracks legitimate and illegitimate customer behaviors.

 In the retail sector where data is growing, known as big data. Big data is nothing but consists of 3Vs i.e. Volume, Velocity and Variety of data. Big retail organizations need secure systems to protect information from intrusion. This type of security cannot be handled by traditional methods; result was year 2014 or “The year of Security breach,” made experts to build hopes for bigger and better tools like Hadoop. This technology offers efficient Map Reduce based analytic jobs to visualize and transform dynamically structured data. Where Hadoop is able to handle Big data with efficiency there are several vulnerabilities that needs to be handled with care. The CDH4 enable hadoop to prevent malicious content. There are task allotted to master node, name node, job tracker and task tracker. Which performs the task in group so as to ensure data security.HDFS and Map Reduce enable control over user access to data like several vulnerabilities one of them has word readable files which allows local users to obtain passwords, another allows users to obtain the configurations. when the data encryption is enabled , it allows user to obtain sensitive information by reading the file. There are several areas in which Hadoop needs to be designed according to the business requirements. Big data experts and researchers are working on improvement in integrating with identity management and security systems