RiskandThreatAsse.docx

Risk and Threat Assessment Report

Anthony Wolf

BSA/ 520

May 11th, 2020

Jeffery McDonough

Running head: RISK AND THREAT ASSESSMENT REPORT

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RISK AND THREAT ASSESMENT REPORT

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Risk and Threat Assessment Report

The rise of innovation and technological advancement has affected the aspects of technology in different ways. Improvement of software and operating systems gives hackers a reason to strive and develop more complex forms of overweighing security measures on those applications. Traditional application security best practices and secure coding are often recommended in protecting different applications against runtime attacks.

Runtime application self-protection is an emerging application in the protection of software applications, data, and databases. The increase in attacks has triggered the development of security technology that is linked or build into an application runtime environment. Besides, database deployment is safeguarded by run time application self-protection that can control the execution of applications, detecting, and preventing real-time attacks. The threats and risks associated with operating systems, networks, and software systems are significant concerns to users.

The internet has changed how people do their businesses. With the growth of e-commerce and other online transactions, there has been a subsequent increase in internet risk threats that are commonly occasioned by hacking and malware attacks. There are different types of e-commerce threats and might be accidental, deliberately done by perpetrators, or occur due to human error. The most prevalent threats are money theft, unprotected services, credit card fraud, hacking, data misuse, and phishing attacks. Heats associated with online transactions can be prevented or reduced by keeping the credit cards safe. Consumers/customers should be advised to avoid carrying their credit cards in their wallets since they increase the chances of misplacement. Each buyer should be cautious when using their you’re their online credit information.

The advancement in technology has seen an increase in online transactions. The practice of doing business transactions via the internet is called e-commerce. Their growth has subsequently lead to the rise in internet risk threats that are commonly occasioned by hacking and malware attacks. E-commerce is the activity of conducting transactions via the internet. Internet transactions can be drawn on various technologies, including internet marketing, electronic data exchanges, automated data collection systems, electronic fund transfer, and mobile commerce.

Online transaction threats occur by using the internet for unfair means with the aim of fraud, security breach, and stealing. The use of electronic payment systems has a substantial risk of fraud. It uses the identity of a customer to authorize a payment like security questions and passwords. If someone accesses a customer's password, he will gain access to his accounts and steal money or change everything and own the account. Hackers can use stolen credit data to make online purchases.

Privacy issues are also common as the personal data for a customer could be compromised and employed in unsolicited marketing, identity theft, and spamming. System reliability is a great issue in online transactions (Kure & Islam, 2019). There are high chances of the internet service provider crashing. The e-commerce plugin could also have bugs, and the online payment system could she errors. The risk of payment conflict is commonly experienced in online transactions. Technical glitches and anomalies in electronic payment systems may result in a conflict of payment.

E-cash is a paperless cash system that is commonly used in e-commerce to transfer funds anonymously. It has several threats related to it, including backdoor attacks, which give attackers unwarranted access to a system by bypassing the set authentication mechanisms. Denial of service attacks is a common security attack where attackers take actions that bare the right user from accessing the electronic device.

Networks security faces a lot of threats that compromise its operations. A computer virus is a network security threat. Computer viruses are parts of software that are designed with the capacity to spread from one to another computer. These viruses are often downloaded from a particular site or sent as email attachments to infect a computer. Viruses corrupt and steal data from a computer. Rogue computer software is another threat. It is malicious software that can mislead computer users to believe that a computer virus has been installed on their computer. Adware and spyware are software that is designed to tracks the data of one's browsing habits with their consent.

Data availability, integrity, and confidentiality are the primary security threat in an operating system (Mhatre, Pegna & Brdiczka 2018). Malicious and accidental destruction of data files, modification of data files, unauthorized reading databases, or data files are of concern on the security of the operating system. Malicious software or malware hijacks an operating system to perform some tasks for an attacker. Spyware, Trojans, and viruses are the most predominant form of malware with each operating to undermine the security controls of an operating system. Hackers turn compromised computers to zombies or bots and force them to join a network of other systems to launch large scale attacks on organizations.

Software threats commonly associated with system software are malicious pieces of applications and computer code that can compromise or damage a computer and steal financial and confidential information. Antivirus programs and other comprehensive security software also aid in preventing the impacts of software threats. Bluejacking is among the software threats and is intended to share contact data to send unwanted and anonymous messages to other users. Mobile devices and their applications are also infected by viruses that spread through the mobile network. The viruses are identical to other computer viruses.

Database deployment in a distributed environment enables heterogeneous or homogeneous computers to act as a computing environment. Deployment is a great concern for databases, and various challenges impede database deployment. There are both internal and external risks and threats treated to database deployment in a distributed environment. One of them is excessive database privileges. Database users may abuse the privileges in different ways, i.e., unused privilege abuse, legitimate privileges, and extreme privilege abuse.

Excessive privileges in database deployment lead to unnecessary risks. This can be curbed by deploying and upholding strict accesses and privileges control policy (Visbal 2019). Company employees should not be given excessive privileges. SQL injection is an attack that occurs when malicious code is embedded in a web application and then transferred to the backend database. The SQL injection enables criminals to have unlimited access to any data that is stored in a database. The NoSQL injection targets bug data databases while the SQL injection targets the traditional databases.

Database backups exposure is a common risk in database deployment in a distributed environment. It is always recommendable to backup a proprietary database at a defined time. The problem emerges since most of the database back up files are often left unprotected from attack leading to several security breaches that occur through database backup leaks. Database vulnerabilities and misconfigurations. This happens as most of the databases are left unprotected due to misconfiguration. Professional IT specialists and hackers use configuration parameters and default accounts to exploit database misconfigurations and vulnerabilities to attack an organization. Denial of service attack slows down as a database server and can even hide it from all users. DoS attacks can cost the victims considerable time and money. However, it doesn’t disclose the content of a database.

Reference

Kure, H. I., & Islam, S. (2019). Assets focus risk management framework for critical infrastructure, cybersecurity risk management. IET Cyber-Physical Systems: Theory & Applications4(4), 332-340.

Mhatre, H., Pegna, D. L., & Brdiczka, O. (2018). U.S. Patent No. 10,050,985. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Visbal, A. (2019). U.S. Patent Application No. 16/256,862.