Preventing Vulnerabilities
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What is the purpose of a penetration test?
• To review the system’s security to find any risks or weaknesses and to fix them.
Internal penetration tests:
• Done to see how much damage could be done by somebody within the company with a registered account.
External penetration test:
• Are for white hat hackers to try and infiltrate a system from outside the company.
Blind penetration tests:
• Are done with no inside information, to simulate what a real attacker would have to do to infiltrate the system.
Targeted penetration tests:
• Conducted by the company’s IT department and the penetration team cooperating together to find faults in the system.
What is anti-malware software used for?
• To locate and delete malware, like viruses, on a computer system.
How does anti-malware software work?
• The software scans each file on the computer and compares it against a database of known malware. • Files with similar features to malware in the database are identified and deleted.
Why must anti-malware software be updated regularly?
• New forms of malware are created daily so we need to keep systems secure.
Other roles of anti-malware software:
• Checking all incoming and outgoing emails and their attachments. • Checking files as they are downloaded. • Scanning the hard drive for viruses and deleting them.
What does a firewall do?
• Manages incoming and outgoing network traffic.
How do firewalls work?
• Each data packet is processed to check whether it should be given access to the network by examining the source and destination address. • Unexpected data packets will be filtered out and not accepted to the network.
Other roles of a firewall include:
• Blocking access to insecure / malicious web sites. • Blocking certain programs from accessing the internet. • Blocking unexpected / unauthorised downloads. • Preventing specific users on a network accessing certain files.
Secure Passwords:
• Usernames must be matched with a secure password to minimise the chances of unauthorised users accessing a system. • Passwords should contain a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, punctuation and numbers. • Passwords should be of a substantial length (>= 8) and should be regularly changed.
What are access levels used for?
• Used to only allow certain users to access and edit particular files.
Read-Only Access:
• When a user can only view a file and is not allowed to change any data. • e.g a teacher might set read-only homework instructions.
Read and Write Access Levels:
• Allows a user to read and edit the data in a file. • e.g teacher might set an online workbook as read and write for students to fill in.
Why are user access levels important?
• So only authorised users can view and change the data. • The more users who have access to a file, the more likely it is to be compromised.
No Access:
• Can’t view or edit a file.
What is encryption?
• The process of scrambling data into an unreadable format so that attackers cannot understand it if intercepted during transmission.
How does encryption work?
• The original data (plaintext) is converted to scrambled ciphertext using an encryption key. • Only at the correct destination will the encryption key be used to convert the ciphertext back into plaintext to be understood by the receiving computer.
Physical Security Methods:
• A lock can be used to prevent access to server rooms or locations that store confidential data. • Only authorised people with a matching key will have access. • Biometric devices require the input of a human characteristic (like fingerprint, iris, voice). • The biometric data is checked against previously inputted data in a database. Only a match will allow access to the user. • Keycards, security staff, CCTV cameras, alarms