data mining

Data are the major resources of every organization that are transmitted through the networks throughout the world. In this scenario, every organization has deployed diverse security measures to protect their regularly dealt confidential data; still, such security threats affect the organization at its extreme level (Potrino et al., 2019). The paper sheds light on the detailed explanation of the reputed IT organization, IBM, which has experienced a severe data security challenge. Their business data has been compromised due to a data tampering attack. Accordingly, the paper also portrays the analysis of challenges that IBM has experienced due to this particular security issue associated with data. The effective solutions for mitigating this issue from IBM’s core infrastructure have also been precisely demonstrated throughout the paper. The utilized dataset and data tools are also be evaluated in this paper, where the deployment of the advanced data security measures have also been significantly depicted. Lastly, the paper concludes with a detailed overview of the challenges and solutions incorporated by IBM, with a proper recommendation for achieving further success that has also been drastically analyzed in this paper.

IBM is now becoming the leading organization that expanded its root from the United States to worldwide by expanding its quality-enabled delivery of services, even the cloud computing platform. Apart from selling the cloud platform, IBM is able to manufacture and sell the hardware, software, including offering a variety of consulting services. Clients are the base of IBM in continuing business and acquire the highest position in the market (ibm.com, 2021). IBM belongs to the IT industry, having the major competitors in the IT environment where the business owners provide value to IBMers that significantly influence the enormous success in the business growth. IBMers have developed the latest generation of hybrid cloud technology that enables the users to deploy once and manage from anywhere in the world, completely transforming the existing business tasks into the new era, saving millions of clients’ time. This reveals the major proliferation of IBM’s revenue, and in 2020, the revenue acquired by IBM was $7787 crores. The constant evolution in the product and service delivery reveals that IBM would acquire the crown of the highest position within a few years.

Concerning the expansion of IBM’s root, the clients’ data have also been dispersed over the network, so there is a significant probability of data integration issues while transmitting data or data are in rest position (Pandi et al., 2020). IBM’s security administrators have deployed diverse security measures to preserve their data at the databases, even implementing advanced security controls over the network to protect those transmitted data. In this scenario, data tampering has been the major security issue experienced by IBM for the last few months. Through this act, the clients’ data have been deliberately modified and manipulated through unauthorized channels, leading to severe risks for IBM that executes the major limitations in acquiring more clients or retaining clients to this organization. Sometimes, the lack of proper investigation in the globalized expanded network reveals the major loopholes that the intruders take advantage of it because, through these executed security loopholes, the malicious infection has occurred within IBM’s databases even over the network.

This executes the deliberate modification of the clients’ data where IBM’s valuable data has been altered through this data tampering attack that supports intruders to expose those confidential data in the public domain. This data tampering risk is considered the major security risk for IBM’s data-centric applications where IBM’s data integrity beneficial scopes have become put at the question (Yamada et al., 2019). Accordingly, without any authentication and authorization, this act can deliberately be intruded within databases, so for targeting IBM’s database, the intruders have mostly preferred this security threat where the professionals deployed advanced security measures cannot be aligned with this constantly changing data tampering act. For this reason, the diverse clients have become tend to other competitors of IBM, revealing the major failure for this data tampering security issue because, through this act, IBM’s valuable data has been publicly exposed, and some files’ contents have also been deleted at the intermediary stage due to the certain gap of the advanced security measures’ implementation (Rauf et al., 2020). Accordingly, IBM’s professionals also identify that unauthorized data transmissions have occurred in some of their databases without acquiring anything about this instance, and the entire activity is processed due to data tampering.

From the last few months, unauthorized data alteration has become the constant and leading threat for IBM because malware intrusion action has become the most prevalent and continuously emerge with technological proliferation. In this scenario, the professionals do not determine the root cause of this data tampering threat and the threat infiltration paths, resisting data security risk mitigation. IBM’s cyber professionals have not identified this data tampering issue faced by IBM because the intruders constantly change the ways of attack, influencing the major challenge in deploying the data security measurements. However, due to the continuous differentiation of the technological applications by intruders, the exposed challenge cannot be determined and eradicated; instead, the data tampering issue has penetrated at the core of IBM’s databases. This leads to the severe breach of the deployed security measures in databases where data transmission channels are also be affected due to this occurred issue; this is considered another reason for existing this challenge till today. Besides, the security professionals also have some failures because they cannot properly investigate the exposed threat, powering the intruders’ opportunities in better infiltration and data alteration or destruction in IBM’s databases.

In order to determine this threat and align with the occurrences of this threat action, there has been utilized Malicious URLs dataset. This dataset has specifically contained millions of malicious URLs, so by utilizing this dataset, the professionals have effectively identified the malicious intrusions and the path of conducting this data tampering action over IBM’s databases (Siddhartha, 2021). This dataset implementation can also act as the preventive control for IBM in the future because by identifying the malicious URLs; this dataset can effectively pause the penetration of malware and the further data alteration actions.

The major and constructive solutions have been deployed within IBM’s databases and other data-centric applications for resisting the further intervention of data tampering threats in their databases.

Over the past few months, the constraints that IBM has experienced are the severe concern for the business professionals in the context of clients’ retention and gaining a competitive advantage (Mishra et al., 2020). In this scenario, there is the requirement to train professionals and be concerned about the proper investigation’s requirement in the organization’s network periphery and requires incorporating the investigation facilities while data-in-transit or at-rest positions. This has supported IBM in scrutinizing each corner of IBM’s data-centric applications and databases by resisting further data tampering attacks that also proliferate the scopes of clients’ retention in IBM.

The proper utilization of data tools for ensuring database security must be needed for IBM because there have certain loopholes due to the constant attack ways’ changes. From this perspective, IBM requires deploying the data tool HashiCorp Vault within its data-centric applications. The transmitted data and data-at-rest position can be encrypted, resisting unauthorized data alteration from the databases. Accordingly, by deploying this tool, IBMers have needed to align with certain compliance that executes better results in deploying data security. This platform lets IBMers protect data in the cloud platform so that data alteration or destruction from databases cannot occur. Besides, tokens can also be utilized concerning the usage of this platform, revealing the most authentic security implementation within IBM’s databases.

Data tampering issue in IBM’s databases becomes a severe threat concerning the enhancement of malware intrusion, influencing the data publicization and data integrity breaches (Iqbal & Matulevičius, 2019). In this scenario, to mitigate and eradicate this security threat from IBM, the professionals have deployed encryption mechanisms at the core of its data-centric applications by which the encryption facilities can protect the clients’ transmitted data over the networked channel, and without decryption keys, those valuable data cannot be accessed and publicized. This implementation supports IBM to eradicate data tampering attacks from the database by which data integrity has been securely and efficiently maintained throughout the data-centric applications. Accordingly, the blockchain-based data transmission is another important security measurement deployed by IBM that reveals the entire transmitted data cannot be accessed at the intermediary phase by people because of its decentralized nature (Zhao & Mannan, 2019). This blockchain implementation protects IBM’s sensitive data from misuse or alteration, eradicating the data tampering technique that is mostly affected by the entire organization.

Deploying these two security measures in IBM’s databases and data-centric applications offer reliable benefits in protecting the clients and their own data in the databases where data tampering has completely been eradicated. Due to the encryption mechanisms, the entire stored and transmitted data cannot exist in readable format until the decryption keys are used for decrypting those data (Mbarek et al., 2020). Better security premises have been developed throughout the organization’s databases, where the blockchain deployment supports transmitting those encrypted data without involving any third parties. Accordingly, this implementation of blockchain technology seems promising for deploying security in databases and other data-centric applications because data transmission through blockchain is completely secured and reflected optimum results in IBM by completely eradicating data tampering.

IBM is the leading organization in today’s digital world, so the deployment of these security measures in order to develop the existing security facilities and eradicate the data tampering issue and any other security threats reveals the most beneficial consequences (Kudva et al., 2021). The probability of the occurred data security breach has completely been minimized and eradicated after these implementations because the vulnerable areas’ execution has also been bridged. Due to the blockchain implementation, the data transmission procedure becomes most successful and authentic. The intruders have not acquired the scopes of incorporating malicious software to destruct IBM’s valuable data and publicize them.

However, as these data security measurements are at the optimum level and concerning technological advancement, these can cooperate with the professionals to align with the advanced security measurements that can efficiently resist the latest malware intrusions-enabled data tampering technique (Dai et al., 2019). From this perspective, this has been determined that IBMers have acquired the most beneficial consequences concerning implementing these two security measures, influencing the trustworthy environment about IBM and the rate of intruders’ intervention over IBM’s globalized expanded networks reduced multiple times.

Figure: Trends of data tampering attack hit in the US compared to other countries

The above figure [Refer to Appendix 1] sheds light on that the United States is mostly affected by data tampering attacks that the majority of organizations have already experienced. Compared to other countries, in the US, the rate of this attack has constantly been proliferated, and as a part of US organization, IBM has continuously experienced this issue by which data at the intermediate transmission stage or at-rest position has been altered or destructed. This graphical presentation reveals that the deployment of various security measures is not accurate and effective for defending this data tampering because of the intruders’ constantly evolution of technological applications. From this perspective, this data tampering attack has been continued until the deployment of accurate security measures at the core of the data-centric applications, corrupting the organizations’ functionalities.

Figure 2: Trends of the blockchain usages in mitigating data tampering security risk

The figure mentioned above [Refer to Appendix 2] illustrates that concerning the incensement of data tampering attack that becomes the most common for IBM and other organizations, the blockchain implementation reflects the enormous opportunities to the organization. Concerning years, blockchain deployment ensures the gradual proliferation of the organization’s revenue because of the certain minimization of data tampering attacks, including the destruction of the clients’ data. This also influences the clients’ retention and the gradual incensement of the stored data security in IBM’s databases.

After the certain strike of data tampering at the core of IBM’s data-centric applications and databases, the business owners have initiated deploying such effective security controls that align with their core business objectives (Ayinala et al., 2020). After identifying the constant attack, the security professionals have defined their objective to mitigate the security threat and offer a better and protective database with other data-centric applications towards the clients with zero impact. In this scenario, these deployed security measures prevent the further occurrences of security risk by which data protection scheme in IBM at its extreme level that also influences the customers and clients’ satisfaction level about the organization. After deploying these security measures, complete control over the external security threats has been accessed that supports executing a better consequence (Stodt et al., 2021). By analyzing the overall consequences, it has been revealed that IBM has sincerely aligned with its objectives for deploying the highest security measures throughout its networks and databases.

In order to eradicate the data tampering attack, IBM has deployed the two advanced security measures to protect their entire data transmission and data storage actions over the networks. This attack becomes the most dangerous and publicizes IBM’s enormous confidential data; even unauthorized conversation has occurred through this database, revealing the major security breach in the organization (Sah et al., 2021). From this perspective, the encryption and blockchain deployment power the organization’s security measurement capabilities because unauthorized access, even the malicious intrusions, cannot be possible over the network, and the transmitted data have transferred securely through the networked channel. Accordingly, blockchain is the secured technology offering data integrity and anti-tampering, so IBM’s performance with its databases has been completely monitored under a secured environment. Blockchain encrypts the entire transmitted data prior to the transmission, and those data are difficult to destruct or modify due to the consensus mechanisms existing within the blockchain that are connected over the peer-to-peer network (Li, 2017). From the chart analysis, this has also been identified that constant proliferating of data tampering attack, specifically in the US has sincerely been reduced concerning the deployment of the blockchain technology. IBM has also acquired success after the implementation of this technology, along with encryption mechanisms.

In order to resolve the exposed challenges in IBM, the blockchain implementation becomes successful and reflects significant opportunities in resisting tampering (Roy et al., 2019). Still, the usages of blockchain have such limitations and risks that are addressed while resolving the challenge. Blockchain is still in its infancy, so the developers have not executed its major drawbacks. This leads to a severe challenge for IBMers because, concerning their applications, any disturbance through blockchain usages have led to major risks for the organization instead of protecting IBM’s data. Accordingly, there have not many blockchain applications for evaluating the security where the detection of the vulnerability occurrence has not been possible that also creates another concern concerning solving this data tampering issue in IBM’s database.

The globalized expanded IT organization IBM has delivered its advanced services and products to its reliable clients. IBM’s cloud computing platform is now becoming the heart of its diverse delivered services. In this scenario, IBM has sincerely experienced the data tampering issue revealing the most generalized security risk faced by organizations where IBM’s stored and transmitted data have deliberately been altered and destructed. This leads to major deficiencies in the projection of their regular functionalities and clients’ retention. Due to the constant modification of the attack ways, IBM’s security professionals have not been interpreted this attack, resisting the proper security measures’ deployment. From this perspective, IBMers deploy the encryption mechanism and the blockchain technology apart from providing training to the professionals. Each of these mechanisms is very constructive for securing the organization’s data and resisting the malware’s infiltration, even the certain action changes of that malware. The deployment of the blockchain solution records the individual transmitted data within the tamper-proof immutable ledger, stabilizing IBM’s actions over the network; even the data-centric applications have become secured after these implemented solutions.

In order to recommend for IBM to achieve greater success in the IT environment, there must be a necessity to deploy more security measures at its basic level by which from the base to the topmost position, IBM can become efficient to perform and represent its services. However, as IBM’s entire functionalities conduct over the networks, digital certificates must be utilized to authenticate the individual end of the communication stream. This would let IBMers ensure that both senders and receivers are authenticated, and the entire transmitted channel is encrypted, revealing the most beneficial for automatically distributed data over IBM’s networks. Accordingly, instead of sending information through channels without proceeding with any verification, IBMers should communicate with the requestor manually to verify whether the sent request is valid, and after the confirmation, a further procedure would follow. These multiple checks should eradicate the prone of data tampering and execute a better environment with deploying advanced data security. These entire activities would be the most beneficial and considerable in IBM’s enormous success because, concerning the reduction of security risks within the database or data-centric applications, the organization might have proliferated the path of achieving success in the broad IT environment.