Saturday 28 April 2012

Security Policy

What is security policy ? Well, security policy is a documentation of rules for people who have access to the assets of a company that they need to follow in order for the company's technology and information to have confidentiality, integrity and availability.
Confidentiality refers to only authorized users have access to the information and assets. One way to find out if the user is authorized is to use authentication methods like having passwords and user-ID or fingerprint. These ways of authentication uniquely identify the users and control access to the assets.
Integrity refers to the state of the information whereby it is not modified by unauthorized personals, whereby the  information is reliable.
Availability refers to the information and asset that is needed is always readily available for use and access.

Organizations create Security policy for six different purposes.
In order to create a baseline of the current security posture, set up the framework for security implementation, give a standard of behavior and a standard of handling security incidents, determine necessary tools and procedures, and to communicate consensus and define roles.

There are 2 categories of security policy element: Network design factors which security policies is based, and basic Internet vectors which security policies are written to mitigate.

Network Security will be used as a continuous process around a security policy to keep making improvisations to it so that the security policy can be as secure as possible.


REFERENCE : http://it.med.miami.edu/x904.xml

Common Networking Attacks Threats and Solution

A network is always vulnerable to attacks. These attacks are commonly known as threats, which would cause damage to the organization, not only in terms of monetary but also in terms of the loss of assets.
There are two types of threats: Intentional and Accidental.

Network security threats have
- three main weakness: technology weakness, configuration weakness, and policy weakness.
- four types of security threats are: unstructured threats,structured threats, external threats, and internal threats.
- four classes of network attacks : reconnaissance attacks, access attacks, denial of service attacks, and worms, viruses and Trojan horses.

Reconnaissance attack
This attack refers to the gathering of information on a target network, enabling the hacker to be able to find the vulnerability of the network. Ping sweeps, port scans, packet sniffers, and internet information lookup,  are ways of reconnaissance attack.
Reconnaissance attack can only be mitigated and not prevented. One way of mitigating it is when a reconnaissance attack occurs IDSs at the network and host level can inform the administrator.

Access attack
This attack refers to unauthorized personals gaining access into the network. There are different types of access attacks, like password attack, trust exploitation, port redirection, and man-in-the middle attack.
One type of password attack is through the use of rainbow table.
Some ways to mitigate password attacks is having a more complicated password and having a certain number of login failure attempts.

Denial Of Service attack (DoS)
This attack prevents authorized personals from using the service. DoS is easy to execute but hard to eliminate. There are different types of DoS attacks, like ping of death, and SYN flood.
Most easiest way to control DoS is through the implementation of anti-spoof and anti-DoS.

Worms,Viruses & Trojan horses (Malicious Code Attack)
Worms not only executes codes but also in it's CPU's memory install copies of itself which can also cause other CPUs in the network to get infected.
Virus are spread from one computer to another through program files. A way to prevent is through anti-virus software.
Trojan horses is a virus that is programmed to look like a software and when the user download it, the virus will attack the CPU. One way to prevent is anti-virus and remember to keep the anti-virus up-to-date.


REFERENCE : http://www.orbit-computer-solutions.com/Types-of-Network-Attacks.php
                        http://www.orbit-computer-solutions.com/Network-Access-Attacks.php
                        http://www.orbit-computer-solutions.com/Denial-of-Service-%28DoS%29-Attacks.php
                        http://www.orbit-computer-solutions.com/Malicious-Code-Attacks.php