Management 14
All data of your company is concentrated in tow databases. All employees use PCs or laptop computers, and all use a corporate network. You are to prioritize protection of the following eleemnts of your company: Pc's and laptops, the databases, the corporate networks. Which element should you be most concerned about?
1. You should be mostly concerned about the databases. Corporate data are the most important resources. Hardware and applications can be replaced.
What is an audit trail? What audit trail information would you have for a shipping record?
10. An audit trail is a series of documented facts that help detect who recorded each transaction, at what time, and under whose approval. In a shipping transaction, the following details should be recorded in addition to the details of the shipped goods and their destination: 1. The name and ID number of the person who authorized the shipping 2. The name and ID number of the employee who actually entered the transaction 3. The date and time of approval 4. The date and time of shipping
This chapter gives an ex. of an atomic transaction. Give another ex.
11. Example 1: When receiving purchased goods. The transaction will not be complete unless both these files are updated: the inventory file and the accounts payables file. Example 2: A purchase should not be recorded at all if not recorded in all of the following files: purchases, inventory (as imminent supply), and accounts payable (if the payment should be made immediately). Example: The hiring of a new employee should not be accepted unless recorded in all pertinent files including employee record, payroll, benefits, and employee tax reporting file.
What is the difference b/w authentication and confidentiality?
12. Authentication is the act of verifying that the party claiming to be the one with which you are communicating is indeed that party. Confidentiality is the situation in which information communicated between two parties does not reach a third party.
What are biometric access controls? How are they better then passowrds?
13. Biometric access controls work by identifying an individual by physical characteristics of that person such as retina scans or fingerprints. It is believed that these patterns cannot be falsified. Biometrics relieve people of memorizing passwords or maintaining a keyfob such as SecurID.
What is a firewall, and how does it work?
14. A firewall is a network device that acts as a filter or barrier that keeps unwanted network traffic from crossing it. It can be implemented using software or hardware based technologies.
What is a DoS? How is it executed, and what is the purpose of zombies in a DoS? What can organizations do to prevent a DoS attack
15. A DDoS attack attempts to flood a victim Web site with more inbound network traffic than it can handle, thus effectively stopping its productive work and preventing legitimate use by others. The attack uses a number of distributed computers called "zombies" to launch the attack simultaneously. The use of properly configured firewalls and network routers can help mitigate the effect of such attacks. There are also devices sold commercially that can filter out much of a DDoS attack, but these devices are expensive.
What is the purpose of business recovery plan?
16. Business recovery plans establish a method for recovering from disasters, such as earthquakes, weather-related power stoppages, or criminal/terrorist activities.
A growing number of companies have implemented business recovery plans, but many still have not developed such plans. What may be the reasons for that?
17. Business recovery plans cost money, especially when they include payments to companies that offer alternative sites. It is impossible to show ROI for such plans, because they are preventive measures rather than initiatives for new revenue. Also, few CEOs fully understand the grave threats to ISs and networks.
Data alteration and destruction are dreaded by many IS managers more than any other mishap. Why? Is there a threat of Web site defacement as serve as data destruction or alteration? Why or why not?
2. Data alteration and data destruction are so dreaded by IS managers for two reasons. Data are a major resource (and often, the only significant resource) without which the business cannot function. And it takes significant time and money to detect what was destroyed or altered.
Some companies still amke a duplicate copy of disks or tapes and transport them to a remote site as a precaution against loss of data on the original storage media. What is the preferred method of keeping secured copies of data nowadays? Give at least two benefits and one possible drawback of the more recent approach.
3. The preferred way is to use telecommunications and transmitting to a remote site that holds the storage medium (such as disks) for duplication. Also, in recent years companies have signed reciprocity contracts whereby each company hosts the storage devices of the other at its location.
Comment on the following statement: If your computer is connected to an external communication line, anyone with a similar link can potentially acess your systems.
4. The statement is true. Once a computer is linked to a public telephone network, it is technically feasible for anyone with a computer and a modem to access it, unless proper measures are taken. The moment a computer is connected to a network, it becomes part of the computer network. Gaining access is then only a matter of figuring out access codes.
What is a honeytoken and how is it used by companies?
5. A honeytoken is a bogus record in a networked database, placed there on purpose to detect intrusion by a hacker. The record may be made especially interesting to induce the intruder to retrieve it. When that happens, a special code alerts security officers who can immediately take action.
What is a honeypot and how is it used by businesses?
6. A honeypot is an extra Web server not used for business operations and containing the same applications and databases as a production server. If a hacker intrudes, a security officer can learn the weaknesses in the way the server is configured to close security holes.
What is the difference between a virus and a worm? Which is potentially more dangerous and why?
7. A virus needs some measure of human intervention, such as opening an e-mail attachment. A worm spreads in a network without human intervention, and therefore is potentially more dangerous. A growing amount of malicious code is of this type.
Why is encryption that uses the public key method so important in electronic commerce?
8. Public key encryption is important because a symmetric (secret-only) key is impractical in Web-based commerce. When new consumers decide to purchase online, they do not want to wait until a secret key arrives in their mail or e-mail. They want to purchase it immediately, yet be confident that the transaction is kept confidential and inaccessible to a third party. The public key method allows the vendor to transmit a secret key to the customer, confidentially. Once the consumer's browser receives the secret key, it can be used for future transactions.
Assume that you are charged with developing an app to record basketball performance stats. What limits owuld you include to ensure that the info entered is reasonable?
9. Note that only students with knowledge of the baseball game can list all the required limits reasonably. The limits would include: 1. A team's name can be only one of a provided list. 2. The name of a player can be only one from a provided list. 3. A ratio must be between 0 and 1. 4. The number of games in a player's career cannot exceed 3,000 (or another reasonable number of games a player can play in a lifetime).
What are the goals of security measures for ISs? Explain
The goals of security measures are: (1) To lower the level of risk that systems and organizations may cease functioning (2) To maintain information confidentially (3) To ensure the integrity and reliability of data resources (4) To ensure the availability of data resources (5) To ensure compliance with national security laws and privacy laws
