Common Is Risk

Common Information Security Risk

Jonathan Kwawegen

CMGT 400

August 14, 2014

In the last fifteen years, the ability for people to exchange of information has grown at an incredible rate. The development of the internet has made exchanging data over networks and systems easier and faster than ever before. Companies are now utilizing the internet to conduct all major types of business operations. Online banking and shopping has revolutionized the way people shop. Millions of online transactions are being performed every day and the amount of amount being processed is staggering. Whenever a large amount of money is involved there are always people who will try to take advantage of the system in order to conduct fraud. There are many ways for someone to attack the computers and networks used to perform these transactions. Companies like Wells Fargo Online Banking must be prepared to defend against a wide variety of attacks. Denial of Service Attacks such as: SYN Flooding, Ping of Death, and Distributed Denial of Service Attacks like a Botnet are three security threats facing Wells Fargo Online Banking. These attacks take advantage of vulnerabilities within the organization in order to gain unauthorized access to the network and obtain sensitive information used for malicious intent. Proper risk management techniques like a cost benefit analysis and quantitative risk assessments are used to develop strategies for risk management in order to implement better security practices. (Dr. Wm. Arthur Conklin, 2012)

Denial of Service Attacks (DoS) are created prevent a service or system from functioning properly. DoS attacks attempt to block authorized users from accessing information contained within the network or the entire network itself. DoS attacks will exploit known vulnerabilities in an application or operating system, or attack features in a specific protocol or a weakness in a service itself. Two common ways to do this is by either crashing the...