What Are Cybersecurity Tools? (With Types And Examples)

Updated 11 November 2022

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Career prospects in fields related to computers are expanding as the use of computer technology becomes increasingly popular in various industries. Cybersecurity specialists are experts at securing networks, systems, data and software from malicious attacks. Learning more about cybersecurity can be helpful in preparing you for a job in this field and advancing your career. In this article, we discuss cybersecurity tools, explore their importance and review a list of examples.

What Are Cybersecurity Tools?

Cybersecurity tools help you identify and assess potential security concerns. Companies and individuals use these tools to maintain their online privacy and security. These tools warn the user of potential risks within a computer system or network the moment it detects them. They are a technique for defending an organisation's network, system or intellectual properties against various forms of cyber-attacks, such as unsanctioned use of resources, hacker attacks and data breaches. They may also protect against cybercrime, such as identity theft and password trafficking.

Types Of Cybersecurity Tools

Following are different cybersecurity software that security experts may use:

Network security monitoring tools

You can use network security monitoring tools to identify external network threats. It can detect and prevent attacks that originate from the organisation's intranet. By evaluating past data to identify irregular or suspicious file share access, these solutions can prevent many insider thefts. You can even design a warning system to notify you of particular network behaviour or activities that may seem suspicious, using both network analysis and an intrusion detection system (IDS) engine from on-premise or virtual networks. It can also assist firms in preventing security breaches.

Web vulnerability scanning tools

Web vulnerability scanning tools are programs that continuously assess the potential security risks of web applications and reveal security flaws and vulnerabilities. They scan websites, analyse each file and display the website structure to find vulnerabilities within web applications. You can use it for web servers, proxy servers, web application servers and other web services to perform self-operating audits for security flaws by executing a series of online attacks. Organisations can use these to lower compliance costs, prevent fraud and reduce manual processing costs by detecting faults in software and recognising data breaches.

Network defence wireless tools

Network defence wireless tools can significantly improve security because they protect data and the network's usability and integrity. These tools control network access by using both hardware and software technologies. It identifies and prevents threats from infiltrating a company's computer network. Businesses can use wireless network defence to secure their sensitive information.

Encryption tools

Encryption tools encode or decode streams of data that are in transit or at rest, making them safe and unreadable by unauthorised individuals. It protects data and files by encrypting them using several encryption algorithms. They can also protect a business by safeguarding external drives and internal hard drives, making cloud storage secure, masking Internet traffic, encrypting email, locking lost devices and minimising staff errors by safeguarding file transfers.

Firewalls

Firewalls keep unauthorised users from accessing a private network connected to the Internet. It can take the form of hardware, software or a hybrid of the two. It filters all data packets entering and exiting the intranet. Firewalls evaluate each dataset and block the ones that do not fit the set security requirements.

Packet sniffers

Packet sniffers are an important cybersecurity tool for organisations. They let you discover apps that may create anomalous traffic, gather data for security analysis, identify network demand spikes and dips and debug application traffic. You can use it to determine network issues and debug websites and applications as it makes troubleshooting unusual network activities much easier.

Antivirus software

Using antivirus software, you can identify, block and remove viruses and other malware from your computer and other IT systems. It guards devices and networks against viruses, keyloggers, browser hijackers, rootkits, spyware, botnets, adware, ransomware and Trojan horses. Many antivirus software programs include an auto-update capability that allows the system to scan for new viruses and threats regularly.

Managed detection and response services

Managed detection and response services (MDR) are typically third-party services that help organisations examine and continuously identify, address and remove threats. By taking a proactive approach to threat detection, they can help firms to establish a general assessment of their cyber-security systems. It also helps identify the cause of a problem to prevent it from happening again. Using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, MDR can also auto-detect vulnerabilities and provide quick responses.

Public key infrastructure services

PKI services allow you to distribute and identify public encryption keys. It permits individuals and computers to communicate data over the Internet securely while also verifying the sender's identity. It can enable multi-factor authentication and access control, generate compliant and credible digital signatures, digitally sign and protect code and develop identity and trust in Internet-of-things (IoT) networks.

Penetration testing

Penetration testing aids in the detection of vulnerabilities in a company's network that malicious actors could exploit with the use of tools and tactics available to them. This allows organisations to assess the system's resilience to external security breaches by simulating the behaviours of a potential attacker and exploiting weaknesses in the system. This weakness can result from faults in the code, lack of proper settings, service configuration errors or operational flaws.

Why Is Cybersecurity Necessary?

Cybersecurity is vital because it comprises security tools and measures that can safeguard data from cyber attackers who may use it for malicious purposes. This may include classified data, government and industrial data, private details, personally identifiable information (PII), proprietary information and patient information. Organisations keep massive volumes of sensitive information in data warehouses, computers and other devices. Securing this data through cybersecurity is essential because misusing it may lead to compromise of personal information, corruption of databases, theft of intellectual property and financial loss.

9 Tools For Cybersecurity

Here are a few examples of cybersecurity solutions:

1. Splunk

Splunk is an extensive cybersecurity software that can monitor network security. It is used to conduct both real-time network monitoring and threat data searches. It possesses a streamlined user interface for acquiring, indexing and assembling data and generating real-time alerts, summaries, dashboards and infographics.

2. Metasploit

Experts use Metasploit to achieve a variety of security goals, like identifying system vulnerabilities, increasing computer system security, building cyber defence tactics and conducting security assessments. This tool can evaluate different systems, such as web-based apps, servers and networks. It can detect security problems as soon as they appear, ensuring that your security is always up to date.

3. John the Ripper

Cybersecurity experts may utilise this tool to test password strength. It helps them discover weak passwords that pose a security risk to a system. It can identify sophisticated cyphers, encrypted logins, hash-type passwords and weak passwords, all of which can pose a significant threat to a secure system.

4. BitDefender

BitDefender is a cloud-based antivirus network solution that protects your computer from a range of cyber threats. It comes with innovative security procedures and technology to safeguard personal data and online privacy. The software also includes anti-phishing and anti-theft capabilities for real-time data security, online privacy and advanced threat defence.

5. Kali Linux

This is a penetration testing tool that software testers employ to look for weaknesses in their IT systems. You can use this tool during IT system audits to assess the penetrability of a network or firewall system. Network administrators can use it as an administration tool to monitor a network system from a single device rather than installing the software on each device manually. It is a versatile program because it can observe the tools used on a network while also examining the hosts.

6. Wireshark

Wireshark is open-source network software that can analyse network protocols in real-time and improve security. It is a console-based password auditing and packet sniffer tool you can use to audit passwords, networks and packet pathways. Cybersecurity specialists utilise this program to collect data packets and analyse the properties of those packets, which aids in the detection of network security flaws.

7. Snort

Snort is an open-source network security software that can scan networks and prevent infiltration. Security professionals use it to conduct network traffic analysis designed to check traces of suspected breaches. It notifies users of intrusions and protects them by blocking malicious communications. It can also conduct protocol assessments, recognise attacks on a system and search for data gathered from traffic.

8. TotalAV

TotalAV Antivirus provides comprehensive protection for all of your personal and office devices in a single, easy-to-use computer and mobile application. It protects against ransomware, malware, spyware and adware in real-time. It also improves battery life by reducing background processes, improving startup time and clearing junk files.

9. Acunetix

Acunetix is an intuitive tool that enables businesses to protect their web applications from data breaches. It detects and monitors web security concerns and assists security experts in resolving them quickly. It is also possible to automatically detect out-of-band vulnerabilities and audit complex applications with this tool.

Please note that none of the companies, institutions or organisations mentioned in this article are associated with Indeed.