Information Security : IMFORMATION SEGURITY

Security Threat

Any action/ inaction that could cause disclosure, alteration, loss, damage or unavailability of a company's/ individual's assets.
Is discipline that is responsible for protecting the integrity and privacy of information stored in a computer system. In any case, there is no technique tu ensure the inviolability of a system.
Evry day more and more malicious people try to acces data from our computers.

The unauthorized top acces computer network or to th equipment that is in it can cause serious problems in the great majority of case.

There are three  components of threat:

Targets : Organization's asset that that might be attacked 
Information (its confidentiality, integrity, availability), software, harware, network
 service, system resource, etc.

Agents : people organizations originating th threat employees, ex-employees, hackers, commercial rivals, terrorists, criminals, general public, customers.

Events: type of action that poses the threat misuse of authorized information, malicious / accidental alteration of information, malicious / accidental destruction of information,
etc.

The most important issues:

Intentional, if deliberately trying to produce damage, the spread of malicious code and social engineering techniques.
Unintentional, where there are actions or omissions of actions that while not seeking to exploit a vulnerability, put information assets at risk and may cause harm.

Each organization must prioritize its threats based on:

its business priorities e.g. what are the company’s main assets:

(a) web servers (e-commerce company), performs a specific task or set of tasks, and is described by a sevice description in a standard XML notation called WSDL (Web Services Description Language). The service description provides all the details necessary to interact with the service, including the message formats ( wich detail the operations), the transport protocols and the location.
or
(b) data (software company)?
Web services can be used individually or together with other web services, to carry out a complete aggregation or a business transaction.

Conditions under its web assets operate e.g are there any wireless links/access points?
Organizational strategy regarding risk e.g cost/time of encrypting every file/email us. Worker productivity.

Example: Companies and their threats.

Wich of the three threats is most critical dor which of the three companies?

Amazon Hospital

TD Bank

Threat Events

Hardware and Software Failures and Errors

Cannot be controlled or prevented by the organization.
Best defense: keep up-to- date about latest hardware / software vulnerabilities.

Main Hardware and Software Faults:

The main harware failures are the following:

Memory failures.
Processpr Heating.
Hard drive failure.

The main Software flaws are the sollowing:
Operating System failures.
Presence of viruses.
Conflict between programs.

HOW TO PROVIDE SOFTWARE FAILURES: When you install a program on your computer, make sure it comes from a secure and reliable site, whether you download it from the Web or purchase it by other means. Do not download files or programs from strangers and even friends who come by email, are the largest virus spreaders. NEVER run files with. EXE extensions that come in any email, distrust everyone, except that you are really waiting for it.
HOW TO PROVIDE HARDWARE FAILURES: When you want to update or replace any internal component of the equipment (cards, chips, processor, etc.), do it if you are fully sure of how to do it, otherwise, leave this wirk in the hands of an experienced technician.
Never open the computer, because with just touching a component you can damage it due to the static electricity that we always have in our body. If you need more memory, another hard drive or some other component for your equipment, always make sure to acquire the one that is the one indicated for your equipment and do not create conflicts with another element.

Forces of nature.

Fire, food, earthquake, hurricane, tsunami, electrostatic discharge, dust contamination.

Organization must implement controls to limit damage as well as develop incident response plans and business continuity plans.

Who is the biggest threat to your organization?

Computer security in the company is no longer a specific issue, which refers to serving common contingents, but strategic, since it allows the sustained maintenance of the business and its continuity in the medium and long term, and is an important added value to guarantee the quality in production systems and the development of services. In addition, suffice it to recall that in Spain during 2014 have been managed 18,000 incidents related to attacks on computer security, to understand that the threat is real and understand why, according to Gartner, spending on computer security was 70,000 million dollars last year and it is expected that for sectors such as banking, energy and defense reach 109,000 million dollars by 2020.

More recently, Computing referred to a report by Atos that identified, in turn, several areas in which computer security will be critical:

The human threat: lack of knowledge, carelessness, or failure of the human performance are the first risk and therefore, the priority. Training on the one hand, and awareness, on the other, are key to reducing the risk in the daily use of tools and devices.
The industrial threat: they had never converged like today's industrial processes and information technology, with so many objects and machines connected to each other, or through the Internet; for this reason, and since it is crucial to maintain continuous communication between machines, systems and devices, it is essential to shield their security and avoid possible sabotage or theft of information through any of them.
The organized threat: although computer attacks perpetrated by individuals abound, often with no greater interest than the breaking down of security barriers, there is also an organized attack, with a harmful, destructive or profit motive, by taking advantage of information theft, example. This is the nature of the Zero Day, technology marketed by bands organized to detect software vulnerabilities in companies, unknown by the manufacturers or distributors themselves; or the cession of networks of botnets (zoombie computers) for massive attacks that generate errors of denial of service in the servers (DoS) of the companies; and, in a more global context, the so-called Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), attacks planned carefully and in advance to achieve very specific objectives and, often, imperceptibly, to go unnoticed.
The mobile threat: with its proliferation and massive use, mobile devices have become another target of cyber attacks; In addition, they tend to be more vulnerable because they have fewer security systems, and were not considered, until now, a gateway for viruses or malware. However, they are, and allow massive theft of data, phishing and other types of criminal practices.

The phantom threat: in parallel to the generation of software, hardware, and the development of systems or networks, every day new vulnerabilities arise in infrastructures, supports and tools; is the threat to future security, which is being born today, and which should be anticipated, as far as possible, with flexible, scalable and multi-site security systems, both locally and in the cloud, both internal and external; this will also allow us to anticipate current attacks and further protect the computer security of our organization.

Act of Human Error or Failure.
Organizaton's own employee's are one of its areatest threats.

examples:

Entry of erroneous data.
Accidental deletion or modification of data
Failure to protect data
Storing data in unprotected areas.

Much of human or error failure can be prevented
Preventive misure:
training and ongoing awareness activities
Enhances control techniques.
require users to type a critical comand twice
ask for vertification of commands by a second party.