The use of computer and internet has extensively increased in past few decades. Almost all business, financial, educational and medical organizations depend on computers and internet to carry out their activities. With cloud computing technology being vastly used, data is no more contained within the internal networks of organizations. Further, social networking sites contain large amounts of personal information of people. Cyber security is a major concern.

The history of cyber crimes dates back to the 1980's even before internet found its wide use. Over the last decade or two, engineers have been trying to find ways to thwart attacks from perpetrators. Even with cyber crime laws and organizations heavily investing in security, we have seen breaches. LinkedIn and eHarmony were attacked in 2012, leaking more than 65 million passwords. Wells fargo experienced denial of service attacks the same year. Zappos.com was attacked and credit card information of 24 million customers leaked.

Crimes that primarily target computer networks or devices include Computer viruses, Denial-of-service attacks, Malware (malicious code).These affect confidentiality, integrity and availability of data.So it is very important for huge organizations and cloud providers to use good security practices like authenticating users, using good encryption algorithm, ensuring routers are installed with good firewalls, etc.

Though a lot of attacks on big organizations gain attention, most day to day cyber crimes target unsuspecting computer users. The modes of attacks seem innocuous like a malicious link in an email or impersonating a bank requesting for personal information like passwords, account information, etc.

                                  

So it is very important to inculcate good day to day practices like choosing strong passwords,not providing confidential information to an untrusted website,not opening mails from unknown sources,installing a good Anti-Virus software.