CMGT 400: Common Information Security Threat

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Common Information Security Threats Paper CMGT/400 University of Phoenix January 27, 2013 In this day and age, technology has grown so fast that most of us are playing catch up to the people who were born in the “computer era”. As technology continues to advance, so do the threats; especially to businesses. Instead of having an upfront attack or robbery, they have chosen to go the electronic way. The one business that I would like to cover would be the banking industry. This institution is constantly being attacked, on a daily basis, with various methods. The main threats that I will be covering would be: Mobile banking attacks, insider threats, and Malware. These threats, if and when they are successful, would have possible…show more content…
Malware is the clustering of all malicious software known. This list includes viruses, worms, Trojans, spyware, and zombies. A virus is a program that has the ability of self-replication. This allows the program to overwhelm a computer either in a certain time frame, or when a certain event has occurred. A worm is basically a virus that is network aware. It can move over the network and infect multiple computers in a matter of seconds. The Trojan program is based off of the Trojan horse story in Greek mythology, it appears to be a legitimate program, but usually hides a virus or worm. When the program is started, it will “drop” a virus or worm into the system and then the system will be infected. Spyware is almost exactly as it sounds, a spying program. This type of malware will record the users input and transmit it back to the hacker to access at his leisure. This type of spyware is called a key logger and can capture interesting information such as user names, passwords, credit card numbers and email addresses. The more advanced versions of spyware can siphon off network data that will allow the hacker access to files, encryption keys, and other sensitive information. The final malware I will cover is the zombie. The zombie malware works kind of like a spyware program. The infection is the same, but instead of sending out information, it waits for commands…show more content…
Companies such as this are required not only legally, but ethically to protect the customers’ private information or be held accountable by law. It is also bad practice to allow this sensitive information to be disseminated and stolen by cyber criminals. Since this kind of data must be protected at all costs, certain regulations were put in place so that standards for information security could be monitored. One of these standards is that all personal information is to be encrypted when being sent over the internet and also on the servers. This will make it much harder for the hacker to access the information easily. This is why you should see HTTPS whenever you are dealing with an online transaction. The S in HTTPS stands for secure which is a 256 byte encryption of the transmission. Additional system security requirements are secure user authentication, secure access control, reasonable monitoring to detect unauthorized access, reasonably up-to-date firewall protection, reasonably up-to-date security software (including current patches and virus definitions), and education and training of employees. By following these protocols, the banking industry has the ability and means to protect the customers’ information and
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