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Sunday, October 10, 2010

Computer Security and Threat:


Computer Security and Threat:

Recently seventeen years old teenager from Britain was able to hack into sensitive White House and State. The only thing that happened as a result was the student will never be allowed to visit the U.S. If even the highest defended sites can be infiltrated, what does that mean for the rest of us? How safe is the average person from these types of attacks? Computer security is a hot topic these days. It is one of the most important in information technology. Although the ability of computers to receive, transfer, and store data from one corner of the world to another corner is impressive, it could be a dangerous and sensitive matter for privacy. Basically, the Internet can be a powerful tool but can have negative consequences if not used properly. It can be a tool for good or a tool for evil. Most of the time people do not care much about computer security, until they become a victim of hackers. Now hacking can be quite benign. You might get computer crashes or freeze-ups, but not a whole lot of harm done to the system. The second type of hack is more dangerous; for example, when someone is looking for financial information, stealing passwords and getting into bank accounts. In fact that just happened to a friend of mine who is quite careful about protecting the machine. She has the entire right systems in place. To prevent that from happening, she never opens up e-mails, never goes to sites like You Tube or Facebook, and still her information was stolen. She had to get all new credit cards and had to make many phone calls to many different places to find out what can she do to retrieve what she lost already but what gone is already gone. She basically has PTSD about this incident and does not trust networking anymore. To protect individuals, companies, and major industries, governments in many developed countries have passed privacy protection laws. In the past, people had to worry about physical threats, but today we have to worry about protecting our privacy from strangers through information technology which involves several of cut networking methods like wireless Internet and cellular networks. Password protection for each type of networking has been highly recommended to protect from Internet hackers. To be protected from hackers, an Internet router offers different types of encryption options, which helps to prevent unauthorized access of the data in our computers. There have been thousands of hacking cases, and millions of innocent people have been victim of hackers. According to ‘75,000 reasons to ramp-up your security. (2010, May). CFO & Controller Alert, 16(351), 4. Retrieved September 30, 2010, from Accounting & Tax Periodicals. (Document ID: 2033083721). “Over 75,000 computer systems at over 2,500 companies around the world were recently hacked with an intrusion named the Kneber bot. The malicious software gave hackers the ability to take over users' computers and steal login credentials, passwords, etc. This means those who are using these companies’ services information could be in hacker’s hands. And it is also not easy to deny using any services that big companies have to offer.
The U.S. government also has a big problem with hackers. Cyber terrorists are all over the network trying to access government data. According to Wall Street Journal, many countries are curious about the United States, and twenty four hours a day and seven days a week they are trying to break into U.S. networks. The United States of America is going through a great depression at the moment because of economic crisis and high unemployment rates. This is the time that the United States needs to be more alert about any networking activities and cyber terrorism. The U.S. Economy is depending on others big countries’ economies. China and Russia are two countries that U.S. needs to worry about because China is one of the financially wealthy countries that is supplying billions to trillions of dollars the U.S. And Russia has always been watching and waiting for a chance to take the U.S. down since WWII. To prevent any attack from foreign or domestic hackers, the U.S. government has the Pentagon’s Cyber Command, which was established to block cyber attacks by cyber terrorist. And they have highly trained computer forensic scientists watching over the network and blocking hackers from their network. The current administration is very focused and working hard day and night on this matter.
Development of Information Technology:
Information Technology has become common almost everywhere, like for example in schools, libraries, homes, restaurants, offices and even in grocery stores or gas stations. Many airplanes even have wireless Internet on board so passengers can use the Internet while flying up in sky. For the past few decades, the use of information technology has increased widely and affected nearly everyone. New information technology is developing day by day at rapid speed: for example, new Apple’s invention of the iPhone, iTouch and iPad, pleases consumers who want the very latest thing. Apple has become number one in technology by leaving other technology industries behind. Apple introduced its new and very hot product iPad in April 2010 and sold more than 3 million within 3 months. The iPad is one of the new tablet computers introduced by Apple. iPad is very small and hot technology in the market at the moment.It is only 25 ounces and can be used for music, games, and books or to surf online. Since everyone relies on technologies these days, they want to have the technology in the palm of their hand. Apple seems to be in everyone’s pocket to fulfill their desire and need.
Current laws and acts pertaining to computer security:
In reality, there is no clear and enforced law with clear boundaries between nations in regards to cyber security. That means that anyone with knowledge and computer access can easily hack into other nations’ computers or government networks. Because there is no borderline for the Internet and networking, information security threats could come from anywhere around the world.
The very first computer security problem was seen in 1988. One student named Robert Morris from Cornell University created a worm that infected hundreds to thousands of computers.This worm was named after him and is known as “Morris worm”. This worm was able to access unauthorized computers and disable their systems. Another similar incident also happened in the same year. A guy named Kevin Mitnick broke into the computer network of Digital Equipment Corporation and stole a lot of information. Both Robert Morris and Kevin Mitnick went to jail for their crimes.
To prevent or to minimize and stop hackers, there has been an organization established dedicated just for to this act and the name of this organization is called United States Computer Emergency Response Team (US-CERT). Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) is a highly trained and knowledgeable expert group that handles incidents related to computer security.
In the past year, cyber attacks have accompanied a host of geopolitical scuffles. India and Pakistan are attacking each other in cyberspace almost daily, attempting to take down websites with denial-of-service attacks. Russia was affected by serious cyber attack in 2007 and in 2008 there was another serious cyber attack in Georgia. After that, U.S. officials came to conclusion of that cyber attacks are now a staple of modern era’s warfare. Cyber terrorism has crossed their limitations and was able to steal sensitive information that caused individuals, companies and big industries to file for bankruptcy and this has been a very serious issue in United States.
Not only the United States of America, but also many other countries in the world have also developed organizations to protect their sensitive information. Many cyber weapons are being developed to protect the information because technology has gone above and beyond the expected limitation. Countries like Israel, Russia, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, China, and North and South Korea have developed sophisticated cyber weapons, which are capable to repeatedly end and have the ability to destroy computer networks use and cyber-security. These methods of stopping hackers are very important and these should be widely used.
Being Protected from Hackers: Security strategies that have been in affect have so far done a great job by protecting sensitive information. The best way to protect ourselves would be by limiting the unnecessary information we put on computers, phones or any other electronic devices. But this is definitely not an easy task because everyone relies on technology these days. Reporting a case to the appropriate agency is another effective way and it is also the right thing to do; however, once we lose our information there is no guarantee that the hackers have not or will not use the information they stole. So, although reporting is the right thing to do, what is gone is already gone. Therefore everyone should protect him or herself from cyber terrorists by protecting the information he or she shares on the computer. A firewall is another network security option that can be put in place to prevent malicious connections from entering one's computer system. Max Alexander wrote, “The predominant online crooks today are straight-up organized crime, making millions of dollars a day and have big budgets.The new scammers practice many cons, some new and some just variations on tried-and-true rip-offs. The big difference today is the use of social-networking sites to reel in victims. Once crooks gain access to a computer (often by enticing the user to click on a link and unwittingly download spy ware), they mine it for passwords to Facebook, Twitter, and other accounts and pose as members, gaining the trust of friends and family. The nefarious networking quickly snowballs into millions of hacked computers, ripe for cons”. So protecting ourselves and our information on any social network like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc. is also very important.


REFERENCES:
Loose clicks sink ships;. (2010, June).The Economist, 395(8686), 10. Retrieved September 30, 2010, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 2057512761).
75,000 reasons to ramp-up your security. (2010, May). CFO & Controller Alert, 16(351), 4. Retrieved September 30, 2010, from Accounting & Tax Periodicals. (Document ID:2033083721).
Cyber Attacks Test Pentagon, Allies and Foes. (2010, September 24). Wall Street Journal (Online),Retrieved September 30, 2010, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 2145959791).
Computer Systems; Researchers from Deakin University describe findings in computer systems. (2010, October).Computers, Networks & Communications,592. Retrieved October 4, 2010, from Sciences Module. (Document ID: 2149821761).
http://mutex.gmu.edu:2048/login?url=http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=2099974511&sid=15&Fmt=2&clientId=31810&RQT=309&VName=PQD
Alexander, M.. (2010, August). CYBER THIEVES! Reader's Digest, 177(1058), 92. Retrieved October 4, 2010, from General Interest Module. (Document ID: 2099974511).
John Markoff. (2010, September 27). A Silent Attack, but Not a Subtle One :[News Analysis]. New York Times (Late Edition (east Coast)), p. A.6. Retrieved October 6, 2010, from Banking Information Source. (Document ID: 2147117571).

Web Safety Tips

Computer Security: Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages:


1) Protects system against viruses, worms, spyware and other unwanted programs.

2) Protection against data from theft.

3) Protects  the computer from being hacked.

4) Minimizes computer freezing and crashes.

5) Gives privacy to users.


Disadvantages:


1) Firewalls can be difficult to configure correctly.

2) Incorrectly configured firewalls may block users from performing certain actions on the Internet, until the firewall configured correctly.

3) Makes the system slower than before.

4) Need to keep updating the new software in order to keep security up to date.

5) Could be costly for average user.