Varying Network Security Methodologies and Their Effect on Attack Frequency
John D Prather
College of Southern Nevada

Abstract
This paper will examine the efficacy of the current methods to assess network security intrusions, and their associated losses. The only true security in an ever-more interconnected world is complete anonymity … the more robust one’s network security is, the bigger the target for unintended use. While unintended use can be benign, it can also be malicious. Years ago, if a computer network was compromised as part of a criminal act, it was often tertiary to the crime itself. Today, the data is the target, and the network intrusion the crime.

Billions of dollars have been invested in security products such as firewalls, strong authentication, intrusion detection, and encryption over the past decades. However, system penetration attempts continue to occur. As a consequence financial losses continue to skyrocket for organizations. According to the 2012 CSI Computer Crime and Security Survey, average losses per respondent topped $2,500,000 for the year, with some intrusions causing losses topping $25,000,000!! (Richardson, 2012) It is not that security countermeasures are ineffective for companies that employ them correctly … it is that the pool of perpetrators, from basement teens to nation-states, is so large and the chance of being punished so absurdly small, that the cost-benefit-analysis to the criminal mind swings heavily in the direction of attack. Once that attack takes place, now what? Were money or secrets stolen? Will the publicity of those losses worry share-holders affecting further losses? Was the data top-secret? Would the admission of such a breach be an admission of the existence of the data and be a national security breach in and of itself? All of the aforementioned questions have baring on the accurate reporting of