Computer Science

Topic: Tech companies prepare for cyber-attacks using common cybersecurity resources. Select one of the resources listed and explain how you could implement that particular policy to prevent an attack: 1. monitoring and assessment, 2. policies and controls, 3. hiring, 4. software, 5. firewalls, 6. authentication and access, 7. encryption

Read and respond to two students discussions. (100 words on each response)

#1.Posted by Ashok

As the cyber-attacks are growing in number, it is the responsibility of the organization to take the necessary steps to counter-act the attacks. One of the best ways to protect the data of an organization is to encrypt the data. The first thing that companies ought to do is to identify the vulnerabilities present in their network and systems. The staff should be well aware of the attacks and their implications. The ways that a hacker tries to get access should be known.

For those companies, which possess secure data, measures have to be taken to protect its data through encryption. We should keep our information safe by using full disk encryption tools which are default to some operating systems. These tools take a very less time to encrypt the data and they do not cause any effect on the drives. The hackers tries to attack a system if there is no log in and log off option or if the user forgot to log off the system. So your system should be such that it logs off in 5 minutes if not in use.

So encryption is a compulsory thing to do because even if the hackers get the data, they will not be in a position to alter it.

#2. Posted by Bhavya

Encryption is the method in which information is converted into secret code which hides the true meaning of the information and the science of encrypting and decrypting the information is called cryptography. When information is not encrypted then it called as plaintext and when data is encrypted it is known as cypertext, and to encrypt and decrypt the information algorithms are used these algorithms are called ciphers or encryption algorithms. When someone unauthorized tries to intercept a encrypted message then the person should guess the cipher sender used to encrypt the message and has to guess the keys which are used as variables. The time which takes to guess this information is what makes encryption a secured tool.

There are two types of Ciphers which are symmetric and Asymmetric ciphers, Symmetric ciphers which is secret key encryption uses a single key which is sometimes used as a shared secret because the entities which do the encryption should share the secret key information with all the entities that decrypt the message. Symmetric key encryption is much faster than the Asymmetric encryption, Asymmetric ciphers which is also known as public encryption used two different but linked keys. This often uses prime numbers which is difficult  to factor large prime numbers and reverse engineer  encryption.