Network Security

Information and system Security is important to individuals and organizations because it protects every important digital aspect of our life. Things like passwords, photos, documents, and so much more would be at stake if security were weak. Weak data security can cause for valuable information to become lost or stolen, create a poor customer experience and harm an organization or individuals reputation and personal info could be exposed. As the world continues to evolve around the digital side of things, people become more familiar with systems, habits, and continue to find vulnerabilities in order to attack technology through data breaches, fraud, and cyber-security attacks. With the use of computers comes information footprints. According to text "The footprint consists of all of the information that a user posts or that others post about the user, the hidden data attached to those posts by the services used, the record of a user's online activities, and also the inferences that can be drawn from putting that collective information together" (Vahid, F., & Lysecky, S. (2019). Once a footprint is discovered by a hacker then the threat becomes easier to gain access to. As a part of the Week 3 Traveling Through a Network discussion forum, I was able to use ping commands to better understand networking. I researched two type of attacks that could be executed using ping commands and security incidents which were Security holes/vulnerabilities and computer viruses. Computer systems are vulnerable to each kind of threat because there is so much going on within a computer that an error could occur. The text suggest "A security hole, or vulnerability, is an aspect of a computer that can be used to breach security" and "A computer virus is a program that runs on a user's computer without permission, and spreads itself to other computers, often via email" (Vahid, F., & Lysecky, S. (2019). The symptoms and damages that each breach can inflict after compromising a system are unusual traffic or damaged systems with harmful actions. According to text “computer viruses possess different functions, which can cause huge losses or damage software and hardware resources, including invading the financial systems and stealing finances, tamper data, and misleading administrators” Ju, H., Wang, J., Zhu, E., Zhang, X., & Zheng, F. (2022). Two recommendations for protecting a computer system or network from each type of security breach would be to ensure you have the anti-virus software available to look for threats that may rise. The other recommendation would be to have a strong firewall to block certain network traffic.