Cybersecurity risk

• Security effectiveness is defined as a combination of:

  • Confidentatiality, level of access individuals have to information
  • Integrity, user's must be able to trust the software
  • Availability, individuals are able to readily access the software with interruption
• Hackers

  • White hat, act for good like testing vulnerabilities within a software
  • Grey hat, not malicious but actions may be illegal or unethical
  • Black hat, generate malicous code to corrupt or steal information
  • Script kiddies, use downloaded code
• Spies


  Computer espionage targetted towards stealing data
• Insiders


  Most effective attack by someone within the organisation used to steal data
• Cybercriminals 


  Hackers aimmed towards stealing information to sell
• Cyberterrorist 


  Motivated by an ideological belief and are often unpredictable
• Physical Security

  • Deterance, measures that pose difficulties for attackers
  • Delay, impede or slow attackers
  • Detect, identifies unauthorised actions or individuals
  • Respond, prevent or mitigate an attack
  • Recover, restore operations to normal levels
• Layering involves having multiple zones with increasing layers of security. Used to deter, detect and delay attackers
• Malware, malicous software that enter a computer that can corrupt, control or modify data

  • Virus, malicous code that reproduces on the same computer
  • Worms, self-replicating code that can spread across computer systems
  • Trojans, software disguised as being safe, requires user installation
  • Logic bomb, placed by individuals in a system that activates when a condition is met or the timer is over
• Security procedures

  • Firewall is a hardware device or software that blocks unauthorised access.
  • Preform security updates to patch possible vulnerabilities.
  • Quarantine affected equipment by removing it from the software.
• How software and data can be protected

  • Version control, records each stage of the development process, so that previous points can be returned to
  • User-authentication, involves multi-factor authentication, monitor IP location and resetting passwords
  • Encryption, ensures that the data is encoded making it unintelligible to outsiders
  • Software updates, involves patches that install or updates vulnerabilities
• Software audits, involves conducting a review on the system to identify vulnerabilites, legal and ethical issues and to find ways to improve the system
• Data-breaches

  • Man-in-the-middle attack, is a type of eavesdrops where communications and data is exposed to an authorised party, where it is intercepted and possbily altered
  • Social engineering, attacks rely on the manipulation of human nature to gain information
  • Cross-site scripting, is when attackers inject client sided script onto webpages
  • SQL injection, is when attackers inject malware in a database allowing them to destory or manipulate information
  • Botnet zombies is a coordinated network of compromised computers used to transmit or cause a Ddos attack (overwhelming a webserver)
• Social engineering involves

  • Phishing, which is when someone decieves people into reavealing information or installing malware
  • Pharming, redirecting users to false websites
  • Spoofing, tricking users by using false identities
• Characteristics of data integrity

  • Accuracy refers to the accuracy of the functions (completeness and correctness) and appearance (consistency and calrity) of the data
  • Authenticity is when the data and informaton comes from a reliable and trusted source
  • Reasonable, checks that the raw data is logically possible
  • Relevance, measures how closely a resource corresponds to that person's desire for that information
  • Timeliness, data must be able to be produced efficiently to provide usable information