Essay about Threats to Computer and Data Systems Today

Denial of service – Denial of service or DOS is an attempt to make a machine or network unavailable to its users. The services that were available to the user wouldn’t be available anymore. Although the result of a DOS attack does not lead to data theft. However a great deal of time and money can cost the company. An example of a service being stopped is email, or can be a loss of network connectivity. There could be no access to shared storage and no one would be able to access the internet while the DOS attack.

I am Professor Kirk Mooring and I will be your instructor for this class. In this class, you will learn the fundamental core theories of information and network security. In this course, you will learn and use technology skills that are in demand in today’s job market. With so many threats and vulnerabilities created daily that we have to learn to work as a team in order to protect our data with the appropriate security safeguards. You will study the concepts that will help you evaluate and mitigate risk by selecting the appropriate security controls and technologies.

In today’s IT world every organization has a responsibility to protect the information and sensitive data they have. Protecting data is not only responsibility of security and IT staff but every individual is involved in protecting the information. The risks to information security are not digital only, but it involves technology, people and process that an organization may have. These threats may represent the problems that are associated to complex and expensive solution, but doing nothing about these risks is not the solution.

Threat: Denial of Service is the interruption of service on a device that prevents legitimate users from accessing it. A common source of this type of attack is from malicious agents. This is a threat because of the importance of the server to this small investigation business. Since this is where clients upload their evidence, it must always perform at its optimal capability. With this in mind denial of service attacks becomes a great threat, as the opposing party in a case will benefit from evidence not being not being uploaded to the attorneys (OWASP Top 10, 2015).

Based on our experience with this project, it is clear that the risk of network attacks is very real and should be given significant attention by a company to prevent any serious damage resulting from such attacks. We have a few points that would make sense for a company to implement in order to reduce risk.

Denial of Service (DoS) attack is a very common cyber menace that renders websites and other online means inaccessible to intended users. There are various types of DoS threats and nearly all directly target the core server structure. Others abuse weaknesses in application and communication proprieties. DoS is also used as a cover-up for other wicked actions, and to take down security applications like web firewalls. A prosperous DoS attack is very obvious and impacts the entire online user base.

What are Denial-of-service attacks? According to the Homeland Security's website, it is an attack that prevents the user from accessing information or services, usually by overwhelming the system. "By targeting your computer and its network connection, or the computers and network of the sites you are trying to use, an attacker may be able to prevent you from accessing email, websites, online accounts (banking, etc.), or other services that rely on the affected computer." (McDowell) A distributed denial-of-service attack uses a main host to infect and overwhelm other computers on the same network. Of course, there is no way to completely prevent an attack, but there are ways to reduce the change of getting these attacks. Some good habits are to keep the anti-virus software updated, install a firewall, and to have strong email spam filters. Additionally, regularly keeping backups of important files is always a good idea. If a user falls under this attack, they can contact a DOS Specialist or contact the appropriate Internet Service

a significant amount of data security breaches are due to either employee oversight or poor business process. This presents a challenge for businesses as the solution to these problems will be far greater than simply deploying a secure content management system. Business processes will need to be examined, and probably re-engineered; personnel will need to be retrained, and a cultural change may be required within the organization. These alone are significant challenges for a business. A recent example of what is probably unintentional featured an Australian employment agency’s web site publishing “Confidential data including names, email addresses and passwords of clients” from its database on the public web site. An additional

The purpose of this security plan is to elicit the potential threats to an organisation physical and electronic information holdings. Organisations in general are starting to take information security more sincerely due to the proliferation of mobile services, VPN connections, terrorism and natural disasters. We must however acknowledge that this very technology advancement is regarded as efficient but is also leading to a higher level of security risks. These risks must be mitigated to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information assets. (The SANS Institute. 2007)

According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in the article Cyber Threats to Mobile Phones, phones are now sharing hardware and software similar to a PC and becoming each time more like a PC. Therefore, the risks of being hacked are increasing, allowing hackers to attack mobile devices the same way as if they were doing it with a regular PC. Personal and professional information are more often stored on mobile devices therefore it is imperative to have our data secure. Security solutions for mobile devices are not as broad or high-tech as those for PCs. The majority of mobile security relies on the proper use and smart choices that the user makes on a daily basis to be protected against cyber attacks. Even the most careful person can be attacked but the possibilities of that happening are less when you are proactive.

In the previous five years, cybersecurity has turned into the most looked for after calling around the world. More than 90 percent of respondents to an overview directed by the Ponemon Institute (2011) detailed being a casualty to cyberattacks amid the most recent year, costing all things considered more than $2 million for each association. This number keeps on ascending as the two programmers and security devices progress. As indicated by PwC, roughly 33% of all U.S. organizations are as of now utilizing digital protection (Lindros and Tittel, 2016).

Denial of Service (DoS) is a type of a computer security threat that is designed to attack a network and cripple it by flooding the network with useless traffic. A Dos attack exploits vulnerabilities in a TCP/IP implementation or targets specific operating systems or even specific computer applications. A DoS attack aims at ensuring authorized users do not have access to system resources. Common DoS attacks include buffer overflow, ping of death, smurf attack, TCP SYN attack and Teardrop attack (Gollmann, 2012).

Lately, a variety of information security threats have advanced. Denial of Service (DoS) attacks have been the most damaging according to security specialists. A Denial of Service attack is a way of blocking service from intended users. The severity of this attack varies with the magnitude of the target and the length of the attack. DoS attacks also include Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks which do damage on a larger scale. These DDoS attacks consist of many systems that work together to launch a massive attack.

Distributed denial of service is hard to block. Due to much traffic, system could not tolerate the unacceptable requests from different machines. A single user is attacked from the number of attackers. The millions of requests force the computer to shut down. The main purpose of denial of service is to disturb business of specific organization. The normal work is effected such as make server unavailable to its regular users. A single blockage of an IP address could not stop the attack.

One of the ways in which cyber criminals like to operate is by causing an interruption of service which can cause significant damage to all those effected. When a network comes to a screeching halt, so do all of the services that corporation or organization provides.