Network Security

The Information Technology world is ever changing, with more and more information being shared online through different websites and applications.  All of this information can be tracked and traced back to you.  It is always important to be aware of the information being shared due to the digital footprint being forever and ther is a lot of criminal traffic online looking for the next way to make money off the information available online.  A couple of the ways criminals can get ahold of information is through security holes or vulnerabilities, and the other is by a scam called phishing.  

Security is the attempt to prevent unauthorized access to a computer system, viewing, changing, or destroying data on this computer.  This unauthorized access is call a breach of the computer system.  The comuter system has these vulnerabilities in some of the applications or operating systems that may have holes that during the developing process weren't discovered.  When Microsoft was made aware of these holes, they initiated something called patch Tuesday, which was for patching up these holes by software developers.  Other vulnerabilities or weakness may be routers, desktops, or servers.  When the security holes are breached sensitive information can be obtained by criminals, this breach can cause a los of revenue and high cost for fixing the breach by software engineers.  Sometimes this makes it easier for criminals to gain access later by using reverse engineering to find the same vulnerabilities.  Two ways that can help with protecting systems is by keeping operating systems up to date that has fixed the vulnerabilities, and by using different passwords for logins and changing them frequently.

The next mode of criminals breaching security is by using a phishing scam.  This is a scam that sends out emails that are listed from reputable companies that generally say that you have won something, or an item has been sent to you and you just need to update your information to recieve this item.  This scam is dangling an item in front of you to get you to open the email and fill out your information so that criminals can have access to your information.  Or they might even have sent a virus in the email that can infect the computer system if opened.  Computers are vulnerable to these attacks as all data is traced and email can be easily drawn up and sent with an item that has been of interest.  The symptoms of a phishing scam can be relentless spam calls using the information gathering from the phishing, if it's a virus that has been uploaded from the email then the computer system might run slower or freeze up frequently.  The informaiton gathered might originally be for money, but criminals may use this information more maliciously for extortion.  Two recommendation for decreasing phishing scams are education on phishing and understanding what looks like fake email and how to tell, such as wrong HTML's.  The second solution is to delete emails regularly and unsubscribe to spam.  

As the methods of breaching security systems evolve, more education is needed to be able to prepare for breaches and minimize damage by frequently updating software to close holes and changing passwords to decrease risk of breaches.  To avoid phishing scams, it is necessary to be educated on current scams cycling through, and deleting emails on a regular basis.

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