...survey or audit can also be referred to as a vulnerability analysis. A security survey is an exhaustive physical examination whereby all operational systems and procedures are inspected thoroughly (Fischer & Green, 2004). A security survey involves a critical on-site examination and analysis of a facility, plant, institution, business or home to determine its current security status, its current practices deficiencies or excesses, determine level of protection needed, and ways of improving overall security levels are recommended. A security survey can either be done by in-house personnel or by external security consultants. However, outside security experts are preferred their approach to the job would be more objective and would not take some parts of the job for granted therefore resulting to a more complete appraisal of current conditions. A security survey/audit should be carried out regularly so as keep improving to and up to date especially with the growing rate of technology. Overall objectives of a security survey are: determination of current states of security, location various weaknesses in the security defenses, determination of level of protection required and finally give recommendations for the establishment of a total security program (Fischer & Green, 2004). Some weaknesses identified in the process of a security survey may be: vulnerability to injury, death or destruction by natural causes, vulnerability of corporate assets to outside and within criminal...
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...The two factors that will be discussed that can decrease human vulnerability to natural hazards are Wealth and Age. The wealthier a person is the less effected they are by natural hazards. This is because of many reasons such as, when a natural hazard occurs like an earthquake, the class a person lives in may influence how a person is affected by natural hazards. If a person lives in a lower economic group the more vulnerable they are to natural hazards. The lower the class, the less wealthy they are and the more susceptible to natural hazards like earthquakes and volcanoes. The poor are unable to pay for new housing if there houses get damaged. They have less access to medical assistance and more than likely no education this means that they...
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...security protocols you have in place. You will need to update and change with the times. By securing your network with software, appropriate adjustments to strengthen them and equipment is called is called "network hardening." True hardening must be done on the inside as well as the outside. Remember, many attacks occur internally so equal consideration must be given to that possibility. At the heart of the network hardening concept is the need to be consistent in evaluating your network layout and configuration. Consistency also implies staying ahead of the curve so to speak. Ensuring that you're never in a position where you're struggling to keep up with current security trends or technologies. Security threats thrive on exploiting the vulnerabilities of environments with out-of-date hardware, software, and security protocols. The proper evaluation of your current network requires detailed research and a sense of urgency. You must be purpose-driven and methodical as you determine which components and/or practices need to be "hardened." It would not be cost effective to use a shotgun approach and upgrade everything at once. This approach would not only be inefficient but extremely risky as proper testing is essential before you implement new components or practices into your environment. A botched upgrade could actually weaken security rather than harden it. Don't be hasty and skip the testing phase! Since the concept of network hardening calls for consistent and frequent evaluation...
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...Graduate School of Management July 24, 2015 Table of Contents Executive Summary 1 Company Overview 1 Security Vulnerabilities 3 A Hardware Example Title 3 A Software Example Title 4 Recommended Solutions 5 A Hardware Example Solution 6 A Software Example Solution 8 Impact on Business Processes 9 Budget 10 Summary 11 References 12 Executive Summary The executive summary can’t really be completed until the course project is completed. This is because the section should summarize BRIEFLY the entire paper. There should be one or two sentences about the purpose of the report, a one to two-sentence description of the company and then a quick summary of the two vulnerabilities and the two solutions that you have identified. Company Overview Here you should identify which of the two company scenarios you are using and briefly summarize the organizations products or services, and business processes. Two Security Vulnerabilities Software Vulnerability Remember, you need to choose only two vulnerabilities from the three categories: hardware, software and policy. It is recommended that you make them limited in scope and very specific. Also, before starting on this section, be sure you have a very clear idea of the definition of the following terms: threat, vulnerability, risk, and consequences. A vulnerability is a weakness such as an unpatched Web server, but it need not be a “weakness” per se. It can simply be an asset exposed to risk...
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...Lab #1 – Attack & Penetration Test Plan Answer Sheet Hacking and Countermeasures 6/28/2013 MR. Walker Ramon B Kreher Jared Long Part 1: Table of Contents 1. Introduction 2. Authorization 3. Preliminary 4. Scope 5. Goals & Objectives 6. Test Plan Reporting 7. Test Plan Reporting 8. Projecting Plan and Schedule Part 2: Sample Authorization Letter The Undersigned hereby testifies that they have proper authority and agrees to offer authorization to perform the work that is specified in the statement of work for the penetration test to be conducted by Security Consulting Inc. The systems to be tested shall not be compromised and any vulnerabilities that are discovered shall be kept confidential unless federal, state, or local law requires that they be disclosed or the statement of work specifies otherwise. This Document also certifies that the undersigned testifies that the Client has sufficient disaster recovery systems and insurance in the event of an incident during or after the test procedures. Part 3: Penetration Test Client Questions If black box is selected, do not fill out question 3 or following sections. 1. Black Box | White Box (please circle one) 2. Intrusive | Non-Intrusive (please circle one 3. Test Credentials: (fill in as many as needed) Username | Password | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | E-Commerce Web-based Application Server 1. Authorized to View Source? Yes | No (please...
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...Eric Mcknight 7/6/2012 Unit 2: Assignment 1: Calculate the window of vulnerability. To calculate the window of vulnerability (WOV) we will first need to know the amount of time It will take to get a working solution. In this case, we need a patch to solve the issue. We already know that it will take Microsoft 3 days to get a patch out to us. So, we can start with three days. After that, we need time to test the patch, and publish it out to the active directory update servers. This will usually take a few days according to the book. After it is all tested on the equipment, we need to push out the update to all of the client computers and servers. This will usually take a day or so. Also, depending on if the IT staff works on the weekends to solve the problem that will add another two days to fix the problem. So, to add it up, It takes three days to get the patch, Up to five days to test the patch, and another day or two to publish the patch out to all of the client computers. All in total, this will take around a week to solve this issue. My personal opinion is any IT personal that takes a WEEK to solve a major security breach should be fire. Personally, I would put immediate measures in place to solve the issue such as blocking the mac address, immediately writing scripts and programs to detect intrusions in the hole, and block out the attacker. Taking more than a day or two for testing is major overkill for fixing a major hole. But, that is my...
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...6 StepS to prevent a Data Breach For companies that have critical information assets such as customer data, intellectual property, trade secrets, and proprietary corporate data, the risk of a data breach is now higher than ever before. To monitor and protect information from hackers, malicious and well-meaning insiders, organizations should select solutions based on an operational model for security that is risk-based and content-aware. Here are six steps that any organization can take, using proven solutions to significantly reduce the risk of a data breach. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Stop incurSion By targeteD attackS The top four means of hacker incursion into a company’s network are through exploiting system vulnerabilities, default password violations, SQL injections, and targeted malware attacks. To prevent incursions, it is necessary to shut down each of these avenues into the organization’s information assets. Core systems protection, IT compliance controls assessment automation, and endpoint management, in addition to endpoint, Web, and messaging security solutions, should be combined to stop targeted attacks. iDentify threatS By correlating real-time alertS with gloBal intelligence To help identify and respond to the threat of a targeted attack, security information and event management systems can flag suspicious network activity for investigation. The value of such real-time alerts is much greater when the information they provide can be correlated in...
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...How to Secure Your Systems Networking Security Fundamentals CIS 333 July 28, 2012 How to Secure Your Systems When we think about technology we think of all the capabilities it gives us and also the headaches it brings. In today's technological world there are many vulnerabilities to the computer networks that we have. If there is a malicious attacker exposes these vulnerabilities can affect the company in many ways. We know that your business could be interrupted causing you thousands of dollars in damage. Not only could you lose business by your network going down, but you can also lose consumer confidence, and ensure the possible penalties imposed on you by the government for not properly securing your customers imperative information. This is why we will be looking at different measures that we can take to be proactive and prevent this from happening. There are several methods or should we say concepts available to the network administrators to help them in securing the networks or should we say the concept of defense-in depth, which is a concept that uses multiple defense strategies. This is a concept that all network administrators and security personnel should practice. Using this method will add several layers of security to your network. Two of those concepts or solutions are DMZ’s (Demilitarized Zones) and IDS’s (Intrusion Detection Systems). DMZ is a physical or logical sub-network that contains and exposes an organization’s external services to a larger untrusted...
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...of the window of vulnerability (WOV), the LAN administrator needs to get the patch from Microsoft. Upon contact Microsoft has determined that it will take up to no less than three business days for the patch that we requested to be made available to us. Once we receive the patch we would need approximately several hours to download and then test out the patch to be certain that the patch will work and that this is the correct action to take to fix the Window of Vulnerability and seal the security breach on the Server Message Block server. Upon completion of testing the IT staff would need to hold a meeting to assess the quickest and most correct course of action to take after the patch has been installed to determine how to apply the patch apply it to the server and also to client computers depending on the process the IT staff decides to take it can take anywhere from one to three business days for the completion date to be met. If the IT staff were to work around the clock for overtime in shifts and the security breach was reported on a Friday with three days for the patch to be made and a week to troubleshoot and test the patch. The Window of vulnerability would be close to two weeks of time where their system can breached again and my recommendation if I were the administrator to remedy this gap of time I would attempt to have around the clock staff working on this in order to prevent further breaches of security until the (WoV) Window of Vulnerability is closed off and...
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...the standard and are affected by "Internal Use Only" are the User, Workstation and LAN domain. The user domain is made up of the people who can access the information with an AUP. This domain is considered one of the weakest and most affected for several reasons, but mostly the lack of user awareness. The second is the workstation domain. This domailn is made up of the devices that employees use to connect to the IT infrastructure. This domain requires a strong security and controls because this is where users first access the system. If you can have unauthorized user access situation; make sure you have a strong password and screen lockout policy in place. If you have any software vulnerabilities or software patch updates that are needed; make sure you have the workstation OS vulnerability window policy in place so to it can be consistently monitored and updated. And the third domain is the Local Area Network domain. The LAN Domain is a collection of computers connected to one another or to a common medium. All LAN domains include data closets, physical elements of the LAN, as well as logical elements as designated by authorized personnel and requires a strong security and access controls. This domain can access company-wide systems, applications, and data from anywhere within the LAN. The LAN support group is in charge maintaining and securing this domain. The biggest threat to the LAN domain is Un-authorized access to anything (the LAN, the systems, & the data) on...
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...VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT WHITEPAPER Automating Vulnerability Assessment This paper describes how enterprises can more effectively assess and manage network vulnerabilities and reduce costs related to meeting regulatory requirements. Automated Vulnerability Assessment / Vulnerability Management (VA/VM) solutions are supplementing and in some cases replacing manual penetration testing with an overall improvement in network security without increasing costs. New advances have eliminated the high management overhead and false positive rate issues that plagued open source and early market VA/VM entries. This whitepaper discusses: Speed of change in networks, equipment and applications plus the speed of exploit deployment is revealing weakness in corporate policies specifying relatively infrequent manual penetration testing. Perimeter defences (anti-virus, firewall and IPS/IDS) are vital, but can be bypassed by determined effort to reach and exploit known vulnerabilities that reside just inside the fence. The introduction of an automated network scanning mechanism and consolidated reporting to identify and track mitigation of known vulnerabilities is establishing a higher overall security level often using already existing budget and manpower. Table of Contents Introduction................................................................................................................................................... 3 The Challenges of Network Security Assessments .......
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...gateway to allow the attacker access to the compromised server, without intervention or further initiation from the unsuspecting user. This may have been one possible highway that was used by the attackers to gain access to and delete data from the customer website. Open Ports & Services – By default, many server type operating systems leave a large quantity of ports open. This allows greater configurability and compatibility for software and server based services. However, leaving these default ports and a multitude of default services in operation, increase the attack surface and overall vulnerability of the server. These vulnerable ports allow for attacks such as ‘Denial of Service’, and this may have been factor in the latency and slowdown experienced by employees and customers alike. Missed Patches – Every day new attack vectors are discovered, and operating system and software vulnerabilities are identified. Many server type operating systems come with a robust security suite, however these security measures fail to identify new threats if patches are not being kept up to date and installed on a regular interval. By missing updates, hackers utilize the new attacks against the server. Backdoor Access – Often installed alongside a rootkit or Trojan, backdoor’s leave a permanent route of ingress unknown to the end-user. This access allows the hacker to gain access to the system and remote...
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...Securing Windows applications requires hardening each application to protect it from potential vulnerabilities. Your job is to select the best control to address each of the anticipated vulnerability. You have been given the task of reviewing security policy and recommending the best security controls to respond to vulnerabilities the security team has identified for the new enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. You can select from a short list of security controls to detect or prevent each stated threat. For each vulnerability, select the best control to ensure Ken 7 Windows Limited fulfills the stated requirements to secure its application software. Select from these security controls: a. Place a firewall between the Internet and your Web server. b. Place a firewall between your Web server and your internal network. c. Remove the mail server service. d. Require encrypted connections for all remote ERP clients. e. Apply the latest security patches. f. Use a packet sniffer to view the contents of network packets. g. Require all personnel attend a lunch and learn session on updated security policies. Identified ERP software vulnerabilities: a | 1. The ERP software vendor reports that some customers have experienced denial-of-service (DoS) attacks from computers sending large volumes of packets to mail servers on the Web server computers. | | 2. | g | 3. Users that leave their workstations logged in during long durations...
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...For YieldMore Executives, We here in your IT department have recently audited our infrastructure for our company’s network. Upon the review we did find several threats and vulnerabilities. First off is the fact we do not have a backup system in place for any natural disaster to our headquarters. This is an exploit found in the systems and application domain that can cripple our whole company. A second system found in one of the production center could be able to be installed in case of said disaster to our corporate headquarters. Our second issue is the possibility of our sales force using their own computers to remote access into our network. There could be malware installed in their hardware at home and can be sent to our network to infiltrate our system. Good practice to this is to supply company laptop to sales and have restrictions to known websites with malware downloads to help avoid infections and malware to our system. This area is on the remote access domain and needs to be looked at on a constant basis. The third issue would be in the user domain. Any terminated or disgruntled employee can load issues to our system and need to be expelled from our system as soon as they are gone from the company. A fourth issue would be password safety. We must assume that passwords are not secure since most of our labor is found outside of our three building units. A policy to have the user change his or her password on a frequent basis will in fact...
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...The biggest difference is that with a Vulnerability assessment you know your network security has issues and you want someone to help you locate and remediate those issues. The company will come in an scan the network looking for problems. The goal is to find all of them so the more they can give you the better you will be in the future. Once they find all the vulnerabilities they will help you to prioritize them into a list of most important issues to address first down to the least important issue. When you are ready and feel your network is running pretty well and you have the majority of the security issues fixed you are ready for a Penetration test. A Pen test will be done, generally, by an 3rd party. The 3rd party will have very...
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