In the contemporary IT world, there is increased use of technology and this has caused an exponential increase in cyber insecurity. Of late, many personal websites, email addresses and even government sites have been hacked into showing a great weakness in IT security systems. This has led to rapid shift of IT skills towards internet security as a whole. The following is a sample research carried out on internet security by an anonymous organ engaging in cyber/ internet security (John, 2009).
Thesis statement
As stipulated above, there are many threats to which computer systems are vulnerable to when working in any network. This aspect forms the basic thesis in my paper which is: network security and its treads in the contemporary world. However, to have a coherent flow of information throughout the paper, I have also incorporated some facts about internet security and measures mostly employed in the contemporary technology world.
It might appear inadequate for a person to discuss move directly into security measures used in internet and other forms of networks without having to look at some commonly used words in this sphere. Some of these words include:
Internet/ network insecurity: It is the threats offered on personal computers and other network devices involved in distribution of information. It is mainly encountered in corporate world where several remote access Trojans are used to collect information about the organization without the organization knowing of it. It is also viewed as the process by which a person intrudes into a network device and probably does some malicious activity.
Hacking: Form of internet insecurity which aims at exploiting some weaknesses in the computer security of a system. While internet insecurity is aimed at specific computer systems in the network, hacking points mostly at certain websites. This is also done to certain internet connection whose security measures are tampered with to give access to the network resources (Robert, 2005).
Cyber crime: It is a criminal activity conducted online or by the use of internet. This is mostly done will ill intentions mostly to get data on people, pass threats and possibly extortion of some people by any form of malicious means.
Having looked at these words and evaluating them, it is clear that they all point towards the need for a network design to have some security measures. This means that lack of adequate or up to the technological requirements security is a major threat to internet users.
Security measures
- Passwords
This is one of the oldest ways of trying to keep a system of use by unauthorized personnel. This security measure has been installed even in small portable electronic devices so as to try and ensure security of the device and prevent unauthorized access in case the device gets in the wrong hands. With this measure in the networking technology, it was at first one of the most secure means but in the current world it is being overtaken by technology. This is due to the widespread knowledge of people in hacking into networks using some software tools. For example, a software piece like wire-shark can be used to sniff packets in a network and with time gain the password used to secure it. However, this measure still accounts for more than 30% of the total security measures installed on networks today and some websites as well (Roberts, 2009).
- Encryption.
This is a means of encoding data into a format that can be understood only by the sending and the receiving systems. This means that the systems using the security measure must have what operates like a look-up table for fast and easier encoding and decoding. Keenly looking into this security measure, can claim that it is very effective in ensuring that data cannot be understood by the unintended parties. However, this does not protect that data from getting into unauthorized people while in transit. The only advantage is that the unintended people cannot alter the original message or even understand what it is about. However, these malicious characters can alter the flow of packets thus making it difficult for the recipient system to decode and make out the intended message easily. They can also include some additional frames or remove some frames from the message causing an error in the received message (Andy, 2011). This method is mostly employed in transmission of very important data and uses several standards depending on the content of the message.
Encryption is also gaining use in password encryption in wireless networks. The main encryption formats include WPA, WEP and AES (Julie, 2002).
- Encoding.
This format of data security is more like encryption but instead of converting the message code to decipher code as it is the case in encryption, it takes the data code and maps it (encode) on signal elements. This makes the signal elements to be the ones sniffed in case a packet sniffer is used in the network instead of the actual message. Since only signal elements are sniffed, decoding of any intercepted data is very difficult since the source and destination systems have been synchronized and also contain some mechanisms for decoding and encoding the message that cannot be easily understood by other computer systems. This mode of network security accounts for about 30% of messages sent via the internet and is quite simpler compared to encryption (Roberts, 2009).
In conclusion, I can claim that internet security is not still at its best. This is due to the ability of hackers and other intruders to develop programs which can monitor and easily break into security systems of a network. However, this should be viewed as advancement in technology that can be utilized to make the internet secure (Jonathan, 2008).
References
Andy O. 2011. WPA security in wireless networks, retrieved from http://netsecurity.about.com/od/secureyourwifinetwork/a/WPA2-Crack.htm
Roberts E. 2009. Encryption login methods, retrieved from https://pangea.stanford.edu/computing/resources/network/security/safeguards/kerberos.php
Julie R. 2002. Password encryption as a network security measure in the journal Network Technology and security infrastructure, Oxford University Press
John R. 2009. Computer and information security handbook, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers
Robert C. 2005. Secure Coding in C and C++. Addison Wesley Publishers
Jonathan Z 2008.The Future of the Internet, Penguin Books,
Adrian F. 2007. New hacking technique exploits common programming error. US department of Defense
