An IT security consultant - Essay Example

This paper will explain four methodologies and how they can be used to protect an organization’s system from being vulnerable. Firewall A firewall is the first in line of a network’s defense mechanisms, which can either be a software application or hardware device. It keeps unauthorized people from accessing the organization’s network by blocking selected outbound or inbound traffic (Vacca 2009). Depending on the implemented type, the firewall allows the network administrator to determine the traffic to be let out or in of the network, and also restricted to specific domain names or IP addresses.

There are four firewall mechanisms including application gateway, proxy server, circuit level gateway and packet filtering gateway. With the packet filter, traffic flow into or out of the network is intercepted and evaluated against the rules given by the administrator. Filtering is based on the criteria that the packet filter is able to access the destination and source ports, as well as their IP addresses (Christey 2007). The circuit level gateway bars all inward traffic to any other host, with the exclusion of itself.

The client machines within the organization and the circuit level gateway establish connectivity via software run on the clients’ machines. . The application gateway is a type of proxy server. After internal clients connect to it, it determines whether or not to establish the connection, then connects to the destination machine. All communications are routed from the client to the application gateway, then application gateway to destination machine. Since the gateway is the address viewed by the outside world, the internal network is kept safe.

Encryption Encryption is the process of converting information in a way that cannot be understood by unauthorized people (Ardi, Byers & Shahmehri 2006). The information is converted into an unreadable form called ciphertext, and decryption is required to convert it back into its initial for by the recipient. During encryption, the information is encoded into ciphertext using encryption algorithms. An encryption key determines the way the information is encoded. Encryption schemes require algorithms for key-generation in order to produce keys randomly.

By use of a decryption algorithm that needs the correct secret decryption key, the authorized party can decode the ciphertext. Key algorithms undo the encryption algorithms’ work. Encryption protects data both in transit and at rest (Zittrain 2008). Data in transit comprises that being transferred across networks like mobile phones or the internet. Data at rest includes files stored on storage devices and computers. Encryption makes it difficult to intercept data on transit, while securing that which cannot be physically kept from being accessed by unauthorized persons.

In the case of data at rest, it remains safe in incidents of laptop and back up devices theft. The safest practice is to apply encryption at the time of