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Internet security
Internet security essay
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Introduction
A threat is anything that represents a danger to information assets. There are many various threats that represent a constant danger to individuals and organizations information assets. This report will cover four important threats and their countermeasures. These threats are network threats, wireless network threats, physical threats and web browsing threats
A network threat is any form of security breaches that may include any of the following: viruses, worms, Trojan horses, spyware, adware and spam emails.
There are three main types of viruses which are computer virus, macro virus and boot virus.
Computer viruses are harmful malicious codes which are attached to programs. Once the program containing these codes activities it begins to wreak havoc on the computer. What’s more is that just like real viruses these viruses try to replicate themselves to other computers using various means. Another type of virus is a macro virus, “which is embedded in automatically executing macro code used by word processors, spread sheets, and database applications” (Whitman& Mattord, 2012, p.47).The last type of virus is the boot virus which infects and targets only key files of the operating system in the computer boot section. Another threat similar to a virus is worms though unlike viruses worms do not need to be attached to other programs. Worms are malicious programs which automatically and constantly replicate themselves until they use up all available resources on the computer. The Trojan horse is also similar to a virus because it needs to attach itself to other programs to activate. However there is a difference in what it does. Instead of damaging the computer when it is activated it creates a hidden back door to the ...
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...rovide secure communication during online transaction. Next step after securing communication is identifying secure websites. Modern web browsers make it clear what websites are secure by showing green colour on the URL. Another method to identify secure websites is by checking what security certificate they are using. Usually secure websites use approved and recognized security certificate. On the other hand insecure websites use no certificates or unknown certificates.
In conclusion the danger of threats will always be present no matter how much security is implemented. However having the means to reduce and counter these threats can minimize their damage greatly.
Works Cited
Whitman, M. E., & Mattord, H. J. (2012). Principles of information security (4. ed., international ed.). Boston, Mass.: Course Technology.
Whitman, M. E. & Mattord, H. J. (2011) Principles of Information Security. Boston: Course Technology. (Whitman & Mattord, 2011)
Diffie, Whitfield. (2008). Information Security: 50 Years Behind, 50 Years Ahead. Communications of the ACM. 51(1), 55-57.
Network breaches are an ever-present and growing threat to network security. There are many ways that such breaches can occur, and the following material will analyze five case studies. The issues to be addressed will include, what went wrong, how could it have been prevented, and what measures could be instituted to prevent a reoccurrence.
Imagine this; you are sitting at your desk looking at a bunch of pictures. Just a normal scene, what could go wrong? Suddenly, you’re attacked by deadly things that are trying to steal your personal information like your credit card numbers, email address, all your passwords, everything. Could this be the work of ninjas? No (bet that is what you first thought though). What about the FBI? No. Then what was it? It was a virus. If you hadn’t figured it out by now, you were looking at pictures online using Google images (for all you Bing fans, I’m sorry but Google is much better). You were downloading pictures from Google and one of them happened to contain a virus and it was downloaded with one of the pictures. How do I know this is a virus? The answer is that I don’t. I didn’t give enough symptoms to diagnose this. To the pros at hacking and security, you may know that viruses are not the only threat. If you are new to the world of computers, you might not. The three types of malware that will try to harm your PC or your data in any way are Trojans, worms, and the most famous, viruses. These three are very different and all are terrible for you and your PC.
Whitman, M. E., & Mattord, H. J. (2011). Principles of information security. Boston, Mass: Thomson Course Technology.
I decided to read the book by David Harley called Viruses Revealed. This book goes into great detail about the different kinds of viruses and virus mechanisms, the solutions to these viruses, studies on different cases of viruses and then the social aspects of viruses. In the first part of the book, Harley talks about the problems with viruses. A virus is a program that infects other programs to modify them. “Infecting means that a virus will insert itself into the chain of command” (Harley). The virus structure was defined into three different parts: Infection, Payload, and Trigger. The infection is defined as the way or ways in which the virus spreads. The payload is defined as what the virus does besides duplicating itself. Trigger is defined as the procedure that decides whether or not the payload is necessary. Harley also talks about the difference between damage versus infection. The major difference between the two is that many users have infected documents or applications on their computer. Whether or not those applications are run is the difference between the two. In part one Harley also converses about Trojan Horses. Trojan horses are normally known as a virus, but he shoots that down. Harley says that Trojan Horses are normally not viruses, but just a worm that goes from computer to computer. After talking about different kinds of viruses and worms, he goes into Anti-Virus softwares. There are two different kinds of anti-viruses. One being virus-specific. Virus-specific means that every time a virus is found on your computer, it is identified but not detected. Generic scanners do the opposite. Generic scanners detect viruses but do not identify them.
Network Security is the protection of the computer’s network though out the entire infrastructure. It can protect very important information and computer files to help prevent theft, spyware, malware, viruses, and more. Depending on if you have a public or private network, can determine what type of security settings you need for your network. All people are different on what they want to have secured or not, but most people do not know how to prevent people or things from getting in their network. “You must have a general understanding of security terminology and specifications as it relates to configuring hardware and software systems.”(Roberts, Richard M. 599). That quote states that by knowing and understanding security terms and specifics, you can
A computer security risk is any action that could cause lost of information, software, data, processing incompatibilities,
Whitman, M., & Mattord, H. (2010). Management of information security. (3rd ed., p. 6). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
An attacker looks for poorly configured network devices to exploit. Common vulnerabilities include weak default installation settings, wide open access controls and unpatched devices. To gather information from the encrypted network traffic attacker places the packet sniffing tool on the network. Sniffing is the act of monitoring network traffic for data such as clear-texts passwords or other configuration credentials. Usually transmitted information carried along during an Secure SHELL session cannot be seen but other information such as sender’s and receiver’s IP addresses, DNS requests to resolve hostname, port numbers and the amount of data is visible. If the traffic along the network is encrypted by the attacker, the attacker can see which sites are visited, amount of data received and sent and the port numbers used for the connection. Using a simple packet sniffer, all plaintext traffic can be read easily. This becomes possible because of weak physical security or lack of encryption during the process of sendin...
This paper describes the basic threats to the network security and the basic issues of interest for designing a secure network. it describes the important aspects of network security. A secure network is one which is free of unauthorized entries and hackers
Apparently, there are numerous security threats that an individual on a personal computer is exposed to, provided they are connected through a local network or the internet (Barrett, 2009; Gregg, 2006). This is because information is crucial; hence, people and organizations are in constant search for it both for legitimate and illegitimate purposes. It is, therefore, necessary that an individual establishes a sufficient level of security on his or her personal com...
Computer viruses employ a magnitude of methods in order to spread, but they usually utilize three main tactics. Viruses spread through removable media such as USB drives, through Internet downloads, and through e-mail attachments. (“How Do Computer Viruses Spread?”).
Virus is one of the most common malware. Unlike spyware, virus is largely designed to harm useful programs or wreck down an entire operating system. There are many ways through which virus may enter a computer. The most common way is via email attachments. A...
Malware can survive in a number of ways say different sizes, shapes and also the purpose ranging from viruses to spyware and to bots. Malware in general is classified into two types. They are the concealing malware and infectious malware. In case of infectious malware, the malware code is said to spread all over which means that the software code shall replicate from one user to another and this goes on. In infectious malware, we need to consider two cases, which are called the viruses and the worms. Viruses are termed as the software that has executables within itself and causes the executables to spread when it is run. The second case called worms is a software which infects a computer and then spreads to others.