week 11

Learning Aims and Objectives:
Aim: In this week's page, students will learn .

Objectives:
1. By the end of this week's page students will be able to

2. By the end of the week's page students will be able to

3. By the end of the week's page students will be able to

4. By the end of the week's page students will be able to

5. By the end of the week's page students will be able to

Possible threats to data

Due to the very nature of data being transferred across the Internet data is at risk of attack. These attacks can come in different forms.

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Opportunist Threats

Opportunist threats where people use opportunities to intercept or gather data. These sorts of attacks can come when a user leaves their computer system logged on and then physically move away from the terminal for another person to then sit at the terminal and for them to look at the data that is open. This data could be changed, duplicate and removed or deleted from the users area. The user may be completely oblivious to this attack until it's too late.

Computer viruses

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computer viruses are small programs that have the ability to replicate themselves and for them to spread themselves are crossed a small or large network and even over the Internet. These systems can change personal files and key computer system files this could then result in a computer system not working correctly. Some computer viruses use e-mail to send themselves to other people that you may have communicated with.

Malware

this sort of threat is usually found when a unsuspecting user downloads or opens a program that has been created to look like a trustable application, file, image or video that upon opening enables malicious programs to install themselves onto the system in some cases without the user ever knowing. Some of these examples include annoying features added to Internet Explorer or web browsing software, pop-ups that are selling on required materials.

phishing

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This is a common threat to users these days as more and more e-mails and telephone scams are trying to gain access to sensitive data about you so that they can then use this information in some cases fraudulently or in some cases to steal identities. Some of these experiences can be an e-mail that looks like a request from your bank to update your personal information through a link that they have provided that takes you to a webpage that looks identical to the original bank webpage, some users will not notice small differences in the appearance of the webpage as it can be very convincing. Users inputs sensitive information into these fake websites and the owners of the websites then use this information to either gain access to your accounts or for them to use it to set up credit cards and loans in your name without you knowing. A good way to ensure that you are protected against this issue would be the use of software provided by the bank to be installed on your web browser. Always look for the closed padlock symbol in the web browser as this will show that the website you are navigating to is a secure one and that you are able to check the certification of that website.

Accidental damage

there are other non-underhand threats to data and this can come in the form of accidental damage. These salts of occurrences can happen when data is destroyed due to mechanical failure such as corruption of a hard drive, or it could come in the form of natural disasters such as a computer being on the floor of a room that is susceptible to flooding. A method of ensuring that this potential loss of data is reduced would be to create a number of different backups of the data and to store these separately from the location of where the original is.

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Importance of security

As we've mentioned in the above area data is valuable data can be taken from any system that is not protected with sufficient security software or measures. No computer is 100% safe so caution should be considered when dealing with sensitive data. Companies and organisations that deal with online data has to do buildup a good reputation of being able to keep data safe and secure, the source companies will pay hundreds of thousands of pounds to ensure that all the data it holds is kept securely. However it is worth remembering the issues that some of the large companies have experienced recently with loss of security to their systems, one such example was the access by hackers to the talk talk customer database. This system was hacked by 15 and 16-year-old boys that ended up being arrested a number of days after the issue was brought to light. Other such instances would be the attack on Sony's PlayStation network where personal data was stolen including bank account details user account IDs and other sensitive personal information.

Preventative and remedial actions

so as mentioned in the previous area we need to ensure that we protect our data by using preventative measures and software. Some of these are listed below.

Physical barriers.

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A physical barrier to protect information could be the use of a set process that requires anybody that his leaving a computer system to be aware that they are to lock their machine whenever they move away from the terminal. In the case of environmental threats it would be wise to take backups of Baker on a regular basis, if the location of the system could be changed to move the system to a safer location, this could be in a first-floor room within the building rather than in the basement of a building.

Access levels.

Users are able to set the access or privileges of a user so that they are unable to gain access to information that is not relevant to them so you are therefore removing the ability for someone to steal data that is not necessary for the user to know.

Firewalls

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Files are devices that can be hardware and software that monitor all information that is coming into a network or over a network from devices this device or software stops anything that it deems to be harmful so that it can reduce the opportunity of a virus or Trojan horses gaining access to the system. This software and hardware also enables a company to restrict the access to known websites that are of potential threats to the company's systems these could be things like torrents.

Backups and recovery

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It is essential that this any company and individual create backups of all of their data onto external devices so that if a virus or the threat of corruption to the original data happens that they are in a position where they can restore this information on to another or the same system. Backups are often taken by large corporations and organisations and in some cases these can be done hourly in other situations they may be taken daily ,these backups can be held for as long as the company or organisation or person Dean appropriate. It is well worth remembering that a backup gives an opportunity for a person to rollback to certain versions of files operating systems and programs to allow them to get to a version that may not have been affected by a virus or Trojan, this then reduces the amount of data lost. So as I say to all my learners trying keep free versions of your work this then means that if you have a version that is lost you can roll back to the next version before that if that version was infected by a virus you know that you can restore to a 3rd copy which may not be as advanced as the other 2 but were unable you to have a point where you have not lost all of your work. Backups can be run by assistance that will do a number of different forms of backup, these are,

a full system backup, this is where all information on the computer hard drive is copied and backed up to another device.

Incremental backups, this is where a system will have had taken a full backup and is now checking the system for any updates to files or even the addition of new files and adding them to a version of the full backup. A good example of this is Apple's Time Machine.

Any backup taken can be stored on a number of different types of media these could be CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray or tape media, some companies and organisations may now be using cloud-based backup systems to back up their data.

Last Updated
2024-08-30 10:16:44

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English

Maths

How 2's Coverage

Anonymous Assessment - Learners assess an anonymous piece of work containing deliberate mistakes against given success criteria.

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