Network Security Assessment - Essay Example

The paper "The Core of Hacking" is an outstanding example of an essay on information technology. Footprinting is the technique used in gathering information about a certain computer system and their entities. This is one methodology used by hackers if they wish to gather information about an organization. As a consultant of assessing the network security for a large organization, I must undertake various methodologies and use various tools in this assessment. Network scanning, on the other hand, is the process of identifying any active networks either to attack or assess them.

It can be conducted through vulnerability scanning which is an automatic process of identifying any vulnerability to determine whether the computer system can be threatened or exploited (Consultants., 2010). This type of scanning makes use of a software that looks for flaws in the database, testing the system for such flaws and coming up with a report on the same that is useful in tightening the security of the system.  In conducting footprinting, such methods as crawling may be used. Here, the network is surfed to get the required information about the targeted system.

Here, the consultant surfs on the website, blogs, and social sites of the targeted organization to get the required information about the system. However, open-source footprinting is the best method and easiest to navigate around and come up with an organization’s information. Tools used include domain name system (DNS) which is a naming system for computer systems connected to the internet. It associates various information gathered with their domain names that have been assigned to each participating entities.

It then translates the domain names to the IP addresses thus locating computer systems and devices worldwide. The specialist can use it in locating a computer system that they desire to scan. The specialist can also use the network enumeration tool where they can retrieve usernames and group’s information. It enables them to discover the devices of the host on a specific network using discovery protocols such as ICMP. They scan various ports in the system to look for well-known services to identify the function of a remote host.

They may then fingerprint the operating system of the remote host. Another tool is port scanning where software is used to probe a server for any open ports. It is mainly used in verifying security policies of their networks and by the attackers to identify any running services on a host to prevent its compromise (Dwivedi, 2014). The specialist may decide to port sweep where they scan multiple hosts to search for a specific service. The specialist can also make use of the SNMP which manages devices on the IP networks.

It is mostly used in network management systems to monitor the devices. it exposes any management data describing the configuration of the system. The main reason for these methods and tools is that the consultant has to find out the extent of threat or vulnerability to the system before scanning it and increasing the security measures. It is important for the specialist to gauge the extent of threat or vulnerability posed to the system before coming up with a lasting solution for the system to prevent such issues in the future.