Security on Computer Systems and Information Systems - Coursework Example

Computer security Insert Insert Executive Summary Security on computer systems and information systems is a critical matter toany organization. Organizations face numerous malicious attacks and threats every other time. What is essential to such an organization is to have is to have a plan on how to identify the risks and to be able to address them. The nature of the attack determines the way the strategies being put in place. They include the policies set at the administrative level. The tools authenticate by the organization also vary. Whereas some suite the purpose of one organization they may not address the wants of another adequately. It is also vital to bridge protocol in the organisation in case of an extreme emergency that would otherwise cost the groups dearly. The organization should have a means to prevent such attacks when they occur, for example, having a backup plan. Rooms with sensitive information like the server rooms should have steel doors and enabled biometric system to authenticate users to the room. They should also be locked with huge padlocks to avoid physical attacks by insiders. It is also necessary to have alert systems when there is any bridge being noticed in the organization. Implement as software that informs the administration in case power, for example, goes below the required amount. Failing systems are set with warning systems such as an imminent failure in the hard drives of the organization. It is also necessary to have corrective means to bring back a damaged or altered system back into its original course of action. For instance, the organization should have data recovery mechanisms in case of vital data disappearing. Data Security The history of any organization depends on facts gathered over time. Every process of the society is documented and stored as data. Such information is vital to knowing the organization’s current state, compare it to its past and to make correct future predictions. Data faces physical security threat where somebody walks into an office and transfers the information they want. Others break rooms to get these resources while others just need to be on the internet to access them. To maintain such data, we need physically to protect their locations. It includes the use of steel doors, heavy hinges and padlocks.It is also necessary to employ new means of identifying persons who have permission into these offices. We need to use biometrics to identify bonafide members (Bosworth & Kabay, 2002). Also, employ the use of encrypted passwords to unlock such doors. For instance using MD5, which is a very useful cryptographic function. They make it hard to crack passwords thus buying the organization to get alternative means. When sending highly sensitive information to persons outside the intranet of the respective institution, users can encrypt the information and send the decryption key. That can be done using alternative means that are more secure. The organization can further seek an insurance on its data from insurance companies so that the impact of the group. It is way better than carrying the entire burden on you as an institution. It involves holding somebody indemnity for damages caused to your body. Risk acceptance is a rather tricky to any institution that seeks to make profits. It entails bearing with the situation the way it has happened and move on to other stuff. To protect our data, we also need to use antivirus to avoid our data being eaten away by malicious programs. Some of these malware create a shortcut to the original document, write protect it or even make it inaccessible to the owner. Spyware software and anti-malware programs are inevitable. Maintenance of logs and malware Any organization that values itself should engage in keeping and maintenance of records about their staff and what they did. They should also track when they carried out an activity and for what reasons. Maintenance logs are vital in tracing where a previous problem occurred. They also help to locate hard to find activities through their symptoms. Commonly, they are used in troubleshooting frequent problems in a particular system. To address this, new service pack versions of the os is put to use (Etalle & Zannone, 2014). Most of them have new security patches and have minimal vulnerabilities. It goes forth to prevent people with malicious intentions to bring down the system. Some use malware that the system is not able to defend itself. Use of virtual private networks in the organization is useful in isolating the source of the problem. It also enables the technical personnel to protect other sectors of the system before the bridge gets there. Further, after isolating the cause of the menace on the network, it is easier to troubleshoot it other than wandering around in areas one is unsure. As a result, it saves time and also offers an added advantage of better security in such a network framework. Packets in an organisation need filtering. Most is to ascertain some activities before proceeding just to be sure. There are different ways of filtering packets depending on the advancement of such a network. To better the management of the system, it’s also necessary to monitor such systems through network intrusion detection mechanisms. They make it possible to advance a balance between the concerned application and the security of the organization. Encryption is also inevitable in avoiding strange persons logging into the system and doing things they are not allowed to. Such persons masquerade so that when things go wrong they are not held liable. Sometimes they even alter login details or personal details of other users leading to a denial of service. The Internet There are many protocols that operate through the internet leaving unclosed doors for third parties to access vital information from an institution. They include file transfer protocol, hypertext transfer protocol, voice over internet protocol and simple mail transfer protocol. Any public server faces DoS attacks because of the incoming connections. However, it is possible to decongest the system by minimizing their rate. It is virtually impossible to protect such a system fully against distributed denial of service. We can increase the security by creating a means of authentication to the SMTP server. It enables the user to stop spammers by completely blocking the concerned account of that user. FTP suffers from the bounce back effect. It is a situation where the person is attacking can request for ports indirectly (Talbot & Jakeman, 2009).The users machines play as the intermediary for making the request. They use what is called port commands to have such accessibilities. Currently, there is an improvement on the FTP that cannot allow authorities that would connect to other hosts except the source host. They thwart bounce backs from FTP. We can use banner grabbing to detect just what we need to know about the FTP and which operating system is being aimed. Passwords can be set to block the system after three failed attempts especially when using dictionary attacks or brute force. It goes together with having very powerful password policy. HTTP suffers from leakage of information. Login credentials should, therefore, be transferred using different interfaces. One can tell sensitive what information is confidential by just seeing. Consequently, headers like the server, the source, the intermediate and destination should be included. Thus, implementers should enable configuration of such header information to avoid further identification of the software of the server that could lead to more loopholes on the security of that system. More important is to encode the information on the page URIs (Wong, 2014). They should avoid mentioning of referrer head field when dealing with unsecured connections. Finally, it is important to prevent translation of HTTP requests for files and pathnames. References Bosworth, S., & Kabay, M. (2002). Computer security handbook. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Etalle, S., & Zannone, N. (2014). Understanding Computer Security. Frontiers In ICT, 1. doi:10.3389/fict.2014.00003 Talbot, J., & Jakeman, M. (2009). Security risk management body of knowledge. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Wong, M. (2014). Challenges of Security Assurance Standardization in ICT. Journal Of ICT Standardization, 2(2), 187-200. doi:10.13052/jicts2245-800x.226 Read More