🔖 Topic- 14: Why are information systems vulnerable to destruction, error, and abuse?

Security refers to the policies, procedures, and technical measures used to prevent unauthorized access, alteration, theft, or physical damage to information systems. Controls are methods, policies, and organizational procedures that ensure the safety of the organization’s assets, the accuracy and reliability of its records, and operational adherence to management standards.

13.1.1: Why Systems are Vulnerable

When large amounts of data are stored in electronic form, they are vulnerable to many kinds of threats. Through communications networks, information systems in different locations are interconnected. The potential for unauthorized access, abuse, or fraud is not limited to a single location but can occur at any access point in the network. Figure 8. 1illustrates the most common threats against contemporary information systems. They can stem from technical, organizational, and environmental factors compounded by poor management decisions. In the multitier client/server computing environment illustrated here, vulnerabilities exist at each layer and in the communications between the layers. Users at the client layer can cause harm by introducing errors or by accessing systems without authorization. It is possible to access data flowing over networks, steal valuable data during transmission, or alter data without authorization. Radiation may disrupt a network at various points as well. Intruders can launch denial-of-service attacks or malicious software to disrupt the operation of websites. Those capable of penetrating corporate systems can steal, destroy, or alter corporate data stored in databases or files.

Internet Vulnerabilities: Large public networks, such as the Internet, are more vulnerable than internal networks because they are virtually open to anyone. The Internet is so huge that when abuses do occur, they can have an enormously widespread impact. When the Internet becomes part of the corporate network, the organization’s information systems are even more vulnerable to actions from outsiders. Most Voice over IP (VoIP) traffic over the Internet is not encrypted. Hackers can intercept conversations or shut down voice service by flooding servers supporting VoIP with bogus traffic.

Wireless Security Challenges: Wi-Fi transmission technology was designed to make it easy for stations to find and hear one another. The service set identifiers (SSIDs) that identify the access points in a Wi-Fi network are broadcast multiple times and can be picked up fairly easily by intruders’ sniffer programs (see Figure 8. 2 ). Wireless networks in many locations do not have basic protections against war driving, in which eavesdroppers drive by buildings or park outside and try to intercept wireless network traffic.

An intruder who has associated with an access point by using the correct SSID is capable of accessing other resources on the network. For example, the intruder could use the Windows operating system to determine which other users are connected to the network, access their computer hard drives, and open or copy their files. Intruders also use the information they have gleaned to set up rogue access points on a different radio channel in physical locations close to users to force a user’s radio network interface controller (NIC) to associate with the rogue access point. Once this association occurs, hackers using the rogue access point can capture the names and passwords of unsuspecting users.