M2 Assignment 2 Capstone

Information Security

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The past century has experienced exponential growth in the technology sector. There have been major technological advancements in the 21st century when compared to the advancements in the past. The internet has been one of the main technology advancements that have hugely impacted the current world. IT advancements and technology solutions are now used as the backbone to drive businesses and other social processes. The technology solutions have had a big impact on the way business performed in the modern market. Also, these systems have been implemented in health institutions where they have been used to automate the treatment processes for various ailments and surgeries. These systems have proven to increase efficiency and productivity in the processes. They have also proven to be fast and accurately able to handle large data processes that would otherwise take too long when performed by human beings. These systems have been set up to be integral in all the important processes that make the service delivery to be efficient. However, with the reliance on these technology systems, their failure to perform leads to huge losses. These systems are faced with ever-looming security threats that are used by malicious attackers for their malicious activities (Kostopoulos 2013).

Security threats to technology systems are the major problem that is faced in these industries. This is because these systems are relied upon to perform and solve business problems with great efficiency. When these systems are affected or attacked they affect the rest of the business processes that rely on the optimal performance of these systems. Malicious attackers can use modern attack vectors where they can identify new vulnerabilities in these systems and launch attacks to these systems to steal crucial data or perform denial of service attacks to these systems. These renders these systems unusable in the various fields, therefore, affecting the processes resulting in huge losses.

Security threats according to research are always present especially in these technology systems. This is because the systems use technology and processes that can be attacked by the malicious attackers. Even when the systems are tested and their vulnerabilities identified, attackers, are still able to identify zero-day vulnerabilities that have not yet been identified by the testing teams during production. Therefore, they can launch attacks on these systems to achieve their malicious objectives. Data theft has been a major loss to organizations whose systems have been attacked. The information may include private information such as credit card information, patients’ records, and login credentials that these attackers can steal and demand huge ransoms from the organizations(Subramanian 2008).

These research aims to identify the main security attacks methods and security threats that are used by the attackers to affect the systems. These will include identification of the top attack methods such as how SQL injections can be performed by the attackers to steal data from the backend database. Also, the research will discuss the need to have security policies and measure to counter the security threats that face these systems. The countermeasures can be classified as local measures or regional/global measure that should be undertaken to ensure that the activity of these hackers is limited and reduced by a big percent. Further, the research will identify the need to train employees within an organization as research has proven that the employees are always the primary target that these attackers use to infiltrate the systems in the organizations. The employees can be manipulated into clicking malicious links through various social engineering attacks which give the attackers access to the systems.

In conclusion, IT security is a major concern for any industry that has implemented and used technology solutions. Also, it also affects normal internet user across the world that are also targeted by the malicious hackers. It, therefore, requires that the security of the systems is prioritized before the system can be compromised to result in huge losses.

References

Kostopoulos, G. (2013). Cyberspace and cybersecurity. Boca Raton, Fl: CRC Press.

Subramanian, R. (2008). Computer security, privacy, and politics : current issues, challenges and solutions. Hershey PA: IRM Press.