Week 5 Hw Risk Management Anlysis for Intrusion Dection Systems (Ids)

Risk-Management |

Analysis for Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) |

on behalf of United Credit Corporation |

Kim Lobasso-for Beyond Alternative Designs |

3/30/2012 |

|

United Credit Corporation has suffered two security breaches that has raised customers concerns and diluted their trust and faith that the company can secure their confidential data and financial assets. The first instance, a vulnerable wireless connection, allowed an outside attacker to access the company’s intranet server and download customer’s credit card information. The second instance, weak-access control policies allowed an employee to obtain and steal personal data of customers and other employees. Accordingly Beyond Alternative Designs Enterprise (BADe) advises the following steps be taken to implement the needed security protocols and regain the trust and faith of their loyal customers again.

After investigating the shortcomings of the current security protocols with regard to wireless access points it was discovered that the attack was made possible because an employee’s unsecure handheld personal digital assistant (PDA) was connected to a workstation. This device provided the attacker direct access to the company’s intranet whenever it was connected to the employees computer. Intrusion Detection System (IDS) hardware needs to be installed and monitored to prevent and detect such unauthorized access from reoccurring. For the second attack the computer security logs proved that an unauthorized employee used an unlocked human resources computer station to gain access to the employee and customer databases. The information was copied to several USB flash drives in a matter of minutes and the thief simply closed the connection and the computer station appeared the same as it was left when the human resource employee return to his station. To strengthen the access-control lists and polices, setting Windows Registry key settings to disallow access to USB flash drives from...