Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
What is the primary value of a firewall?
the advantage and disadvantages of setting up a firewall
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: What is the primary value of a firewall?
In the last ten years, there have been many software vulnerabilities that have caused thousands of dollars to businesses. Many of their resources have been breached, and those malicious attacks have gotten better over the years. Back in the day, the job of a system administrator sometimes involved dealing with malware and other infectious software. However, security threats have become heavier on businesses today, and they depend on these IT professionals to do more than just updating the network with the latest security patches (Belovich, S. 2010).
Consequently, having a strong IT security environment as well as having the experience to maintain it, is an important asset in most network infrastructures today. The evolution of the Internet
…show more content…
There might be some businesses that refuse to spend more money than they should to update their security system, but whenever something happens, they end up regretting it. So it is crystal clear that IT security is an essential asset that needs to be protected with the right equipment or software. Many businesses cannot avoid the realization that they have to interact with a growing number and wider variety of viruses, malware, threats, and other …show more content…
In large network architectures though, NAT is not enough. Hiding a company’s IP address is definitely not enough. Therefore, using firewalls is important because firewalls stop or at least try to stop any malicious threats from coming in the network. Unlike the basic task of NAT, the firewall actually takes a look at possible vulnerabilities from incoming traffic so that it can prevent them from coming in any further. One perfect example of the appropriate usage of firewalls is the big role it plays in VPN connections. The user can send any type of information in between this secured tunnel without any worries, because this information is properly encrypted. Now, there are different types of firewalls available today that can be quite costly, but Cisco has the best solutions so far in my opinion. Unfortunately, firewalls are quite expensive for large organizations, since they have to protect larger assets depending on how many users will be using the network (Stewart, J.
Whitman, M., & Mattord, H. (2010). Management of information security. (3rd ed., p. 6). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
Security helps the organization meet its business objectives or mission by protecting its physical and financial resources, reputation, legal position, employees, and other tangible and intangible assets through the selection and application of appropriate safeguards. Businesses should establish roles and responsibilities of all personnel and staff members. However, a Chief Information Officer should be appointed to direct an organization’s day to day management of information assets. Supporting roles are performed by the service providers and include systems operations, whose personnel design and operate the computer systems. Each team member must be held accountable in ensuring all of the rules and policies are being followed, as well as, understanding their roles, responsibilities and functions. Organizations information processing systems are vulnerable to many threats that can inflict various types of damage that can result in significant losses (Harris, 2014). Losses can come from actions from trusted employees that defraud the system, outside hackers, or from careless data entry. The major threat to information protection is error and omissions that data entry personnel, users, system operators and programmers make. To better protect business information resources, organizations should conduct a risk analysis to see what
The way forward lays in a security risk management (SRM) approach that protects your company from the most severe threats to critical IT systems and operational processes. SRM helps your organization understand its assets and analyze the vulnerabilities it must address. Security risk management also facilitates internal and external compliance initiatives. It enables your organization to enforce policies that relate to the integrity of customer data, the configuration of corporate applications and databases, and the accuracy of financial reports. Companies that take a systematic approach to SRM reap additional benefits: operational efficiencies that lead to better management of resources and reduced costs. It's up to all the parties involved in the IT operations and security mission to demonstrate that they can take on the demands of this new challenge.
IT Specialist and system administrator’s job duties are to test, patch and install the latest security updates and software fixes on an organization existing system. However, this task can become a race against time in trying to mitigate a security breach. Many times the system admin has to wait for the software vendor to produce a patch to fix the problem. This is most apparent when a company is infected with a Zero-Day Exploit.
The attacks highlight the shortcomings in the system, trace them and correct the problem. Almost all major IT firms, defense systems and Cyber related organizations imply these methods in their security prevention mechanisms.
Business owners will go to amazing lengths to keep their workplace safe while completely overlooking their IT security and their multifunction devices. IT security breaches cost the average company $800,000 in 2009 (Tattrie, 2009). Those figures represent a 97 percent increase from 2008. The $800,000 includes labor lost when a breach freezes systems, cost of repairing the damage caused by the breach, and the cost of replacing the faulty security. That is quite a large sum that is also highly avoidable. Due to escalation in Internet use, the amount of computer security breaches that businesses have experienced in the last year has increased at a rapid rate. Breaches can come from external attacks as well as within the walls of a company. External attacks are serious but the threat created by a company’s employees can be much worse (Robb, 2010). Last year 81 percent of security breaches came from inside the company. Employees can cause deliberate attacks, but more likely employee use can compromise your system without malice and unknowingly. Employees can abuse internet access privileges by downloading pornography, downloading music, and pirating software. Obviously, this is improper use of company time and resources but more importantly, it can expose your company to fines from the Business Software Alliance (BSA) and it also can make your computer network more vulnerable to access from outside troublemakers and industry spies. BSA has collected more than $70 million in penalties from companies where employees violated piracy laws.
Today process and technology alone can’t assure a secure organizational atmosphere. To compromise a satisfactorily secure organization, cybersecurity polices and procedures are inaugurated and expertise within an
The rapid technological change has brought with it a number of issues. One of the issues that it has brought is the issue of increased cybercrime conducted by black hats. Black hats target almost everyone, but we will mainly focus on attacks which occur in organizations. Hackers take advantage of the fact that more and more organizations are turning to the internet to interact with their customers, because of this the amount of critical data moving around systems is growing faster. The more information that is exchanged using technology, the more are companies putting themselves in danger of falling victims of such attacks.
Lastly, the application layer (Layer 7) supplies services to application procedures and threats are static passwords and SNMP private community strings (Holl, 2003). Organization will need to enforce encryption to limit the exposure of personal information, ensure that patches are installed for applications, patching and is performed on all network and hardware devices, hardening of operation system and implements secure authentication methods (Baker & Wallace, 2007). Additionally, a quality anti-virus is utilized on workstations, servers and other devices connected to the organization IT infrastructure. All types of attackers discussed in this paper are applicable. Black hat hackers and cyber terriorist will control exploit vulnerabilities in networks and application systems that are not properly patch as well as malware writer
Although cyber-attacks are quite common in the defense industry, Operation Aurora illuminated that even the once immune commercial sectors are no longer safe from cyber hacking. The world of cybercrime is quickly changing its focus to intellectual property repositories. With vulnerabilities out there, consumers will always be at risk for future attacks. Therefore, it is critical to protect their systems with latest updates and security protection programs such as McAfee. Countermeasures should be taken seriously to ensure system optimal against all threats malicious or not.
Businesses today must manage growing risks to their mission critical networks from attacks such as spyware, rogue wireless LANs, compromised remote/VPN users, DDOS attacks, system misconfigurations, and unpatched OS's, all of which increase the risk of a network breach and interruption to both sales and business operations.
As electronic commerce, online business-to-business operations, and global connectivity have become vital components of a successful business strategy, enterprises have adopted security processes and practices to protect information assets. But if you look at today's computing environments, system security is a horrible game of numbers: there are currently over 9,223 publicly released vulnerabilities covering known security holes in a massive range of applications from popular Operating Systems through to obscure and relatively unknown web applications. [01] Over 300 new vulnerabilities are being discovered and released each month. Most companies work diligently to maintain an efficient, effective security policy, implementing the latest products and services to prevent fraud, vandalism, sabotage, and denial of service attacks. But the fact is you have to patch every hole of your system, but an attacker need find only one to get into your environment. Whilst many organisations subscribe to major vendor's security alerts, these are just the tip of the security iceberg and even these are often ignored. For example, the patch for the Code Red worm was available some weeks before the worm was released. [02]
“Monitoring security would help organizations to minimize the window of exposure to risks and manage better their entire security process” (Priescu & Nicolaescu, 2008). Malware intrusion in businesses is costly and the outcomes are endless. One of the most efficient ways for businesses to protect themselves from malware is to have a prevention protocol. The first step in the recommended protocol is to identify vulnerabilities on networked systems. By doing this, internal and external risks are understood. This process must be continuous since vulnerabilities are changing constantly. Examples are software vulnerabilities, which are corrected by the vendors through the release of updates or patches, and incorrect system configurations like operating system-related or
Although VPN is very popular in the market for networking technology, it may raise some concerns for IT managers. VPN requires an in-depth understanding of public network security issues and proper deployment precautions. The task of choosing and deploying a VPN solution is far from being simple and may require the training of workers in at least the basics...
The first thing that we must consider about Information Security is that there is not a final destination at which we can arrive. IT Security is an ongoing set of processes and activities that requires attention and expertise on a daily basis. It is important to understand that systems are not secured by themselves and it is our responsibility to maintain and improve them periodically as required. It is of vital importance to establish the appropriate mechanisms and requirements in order to support the company’s CIA triad. The following report will provide you guidance about auditing and hardening techniques applied though the 7 Domains by utilizing IT Security Best Practices.