Cybersecurity and Cryptography Protecting Information in the Digital Age

In the digital age, safeguarding information against evolving cybersecurity threats is paramount. This research paper investigates the effectiveness of various cybersecurity measures and cryptographic techniques, focusing on phishing attacks, ransomware incidents, and data breaches, while evaluating the performance of AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) and RSA (Rivest—Shamir—Adleman) encryption algorithms. Our study reveals that phishing attacks, accounting for approximately 30% of cybersecurity incidents, have a significantly lower success rate in organizations with regular phishing awareness training (2.5% success rate) compared to those without (10% success rate). Ransomware attacks, which have seen a $\mathbf{2 5 \%}$ increase in incidence, exhibit a stark contrast in data recovery rates; organizations with comprehensive backup solutions achieve an 85% recovery rate versus only 20% for those without backups. Data breaches, primarily caused by software vulnerabilities, insider threats, and weak passwords, underscore the necessity of regular vulnerability management and multi-factor authentication, reducing breach risks by 50% and 40%, respectively. Our evaluation of cryptographic techniques highlights that AES performs efficiently for data encryption, with AES-128 and AES-192 offering faster speeds compared to AES-256, which provides higher security at the expense of performance. RSA, while crucial for secure key exchange and digital signatures, exhibits higher computational overhead, with RSA-2048 offering a balance between security and performance and RSA-4096 providing enhanced security with substantial performance costs. The integration of AES for data encryption and RSA for key exchange presents a robust cryptographic framework. This study emphasizes the importance of combining effective cybersecurity practices with appropriate cryptographic techniques to mitigate prevalent threats and enhance information security. Future research should focus on advanced cryptographic methods and the integration of emerging technologies to address evolving cybersecurity challenges.