Question

Network Analysis and Theory

a) In your opinion what are the biggest threats to a network in terms of security and why?

b) Describe what you would do to protect a network from attack, mention any appliances or products you can recommend.

Answer 1

-With an increasing amount of people getting connected to network ,the security threats that cause massive harm are increasing also .

-Network security is a major part of a network that needs to be maintained because information is being passed between computers etc.and is very vulnerable to attack.

-over the past five years people that manage network security have seen a massive increase of hackers and criminals creating malicious threats that have been pumped into networks across the world.

and cybercriminals use many different methods to lure you into parting with your confidential personal or business information .As a small company doing business on the web,you need to be aware of these methods so you can be extra vigilant when online.

Follwing are the biggest network threats:-

1)trojan horses-

A trojan horse is a program in which malicious or harmful code is conatined inside apprently harmless programing or data in such a way that it can get control and do its chosen form of damage ,such as runing the file allocation table on your hardisk ..

in a network if trojan horse is installed on comoputer and tempers with the file allocation table it could cause a massive amount of damage to all computers of that network.

2)viruses and worms-

a viruse is a pieace of code that is loaded onn your computer without your knowledge and runs against your wishes . a virus can cause a huge amount of damage to computers .

an e.g- avirus would be if you open email and a malicious pieace of code was downloaded on your computer causing your computer freeze .in relation to a network ,if avirus is downloaded then all computers in a network would be affected because virus woeld make copies of itself and spread across networks

A WORM is similar to virus but   aworm can run itself where as a virus need a host program to run

3)SPAM-

spam is a flooding the internet with many copies of the same message in ana attemptto forse the message on the people who would not otherwise choose to receive it .a spam wouldn't be the biggest risk to a network because even through it may get annoying and plentiful it still doesn't destroy any physicalelements of the network.

spam filters are an effectiev way to stop SPAM ,these filters come with most of the email providers online .also you can buy a variety of SPAM filters that work effectively..

4)phishing -

phishing is one of the worst security threats over a network because lot of people that use compueters linked up to a networks are amateursand would be very vulnnerable to giving out information that could cause situations such as theftof money and identify theft.

phishing filters to filter out this unwanted mail and prevent threat.

5)packet sniffers;-

a packet sniffers is a device or program athat allows eavesdropping on traffic travelling between network computers .packet sniffers will captured data that is addressed to other computers ,saving it for later analysis.

in a network packet sniffers can filter out personal information and this can lead to areas such as identify theft so this is major security threat to a network.

6)maliciously coded websites;-

a websites across the net contain code that is malicious . a malicious code is programming code that is capable of causing harm to availabilty ,integrity of code or data .it can detectinfected sites and try to prevent the user from entering the site.

7) Rootkit-

A Rootkit could be installed on your computer by a cyber criminal exploiting a vulnerability or security hole in a legitimate application on your PC and may conatin spyware that monitors and records keystrokes .