A Systematic Review of Cybersecurity Threats and Defence Mechanisms

Cybersecurity is crucial to safeguarding data and systems against evolving attacks in an era when digital advances are prevalent. The effectiveness of modern defences must be critically examined in light of the growing complexity of cyberthreats. The perspectives on cybersecurity risks and defensive methods found in the diverse publications are reviewed in this article. This review emphasizes that cybersecurity threats have grown increasingly sophisticated, ranging from ransomware, zero-day vulnerabilities, and AI-driven phishing to IoT susceptibilities and adversarial machine learning attacks. Findings reveal that while emerging defense mechanisms, such as AI/ML-based threat detection, zero-trust architectures, blockchain frameworks, and deception-based security, have enhanced resilience, challenges persist in real-time detection, scalability, privacy preservation, and adversarial robustness. The study concludes that AI has revolutionized cybersecurity by enabling automation and predictive threat intelligence. However, achieving long-term resilience demands proactive, adaptive, and privacy-preserving strategies. Future research must focus on autonomous response systems, adversarial AI defenses, and scalable, user-centric security frameworks.