Risk and Threat Assessment Report Anthony Wolf BSA/ 520 Ma ✓ Solved

The rise of innovation and technological advancement has affected the aspects of technology in different ways. Improvement of software and operating systems gives hackers a reason to strive and develop more complex forms of overweighing security measures on those applications. Traditional application security best practices and secure coding are often recommended in protecting different applications against runtime attacks. Runtime application self-protection is an emerging application in the protection of software applications, data, and databases.

The increase in attacks has triggered the development of security technology that is linked or built into an application runtime environment. Besides, database deployment is safeguarded by runtime application self-protection that can control the execution of applications, detecting, and preventing real-time attacks. The threats and risks associated with operating systems, networks, and software systems are significant concerns to users. The internet has changed how people do their businesses. With the growth of e-commerce and other online transactions, there has been a subsequent increase in internet risk threats that are commonly occasioned by hacking and malware attacks.

There are different types of e-commerce threats, which might be accidental, deliberately done by perpetrators, or occur due to human error. The most prevalent threats are money theft, unprotected services, credit card fraud, hacking, data misuse, and phishing attacks. Threats associated with online transactions can be prevented or reduced by keeping the credit cards safe. Consumers should be advised to avoid carrying their credit cards in their wallets since they increase the chances of misplacement. Each buyer should be cautious when using their online credit information.

The advancement in technology has seen an increase in online transactions. The practice of conducting business transactions via the internet is called e-commerce. Its growth has subsequently led to the rise in internet risk threats that are commonly occasioned by hacking and malware attacks. E-commerce is the activity of conducting transactions via the internet. Internet transactions can be drawn on various technologies, including internet marketing, electronic data exchanges, automated data collection systems, electronic fund transfer, and mobile commerce.

Online transaction threats occur by using the internet for unfair means with the aim of fraud, security breaches, and stealing. The use of electronic payment systems has a substantial risk of fraud. It uses the identity of a customer to authorize a payment like security questions and passwords. If someone accesses a customer's password, he will gain access to his accounts and steal money or change everything and own the account. Hackers can use stolen credit data to make online purchases.

Privacy issues are also common as the personal data for a customer could be compromised and employed in unsolicited marketing, identity theft, and spamming. System reliability is a significant issue in online transactions (Kure & Islam, 2019). There are high chances of the internet service provider crashing. The e-commerce plugin could also have bugs, and the online payment system could experience errors. The risk of payment conflict is commonly experienced in online transactions.

Technical glitches and anomalies in electronic payment systems may result in a conflict of payment. E-cash is a paperless cash system that is commonly used in e-commerce to transfer funds anonymously. It has several threats related to it, including backdoor attacks, which give attackers unwarranted access to a system by bypassing the set authentication mechanisms. Denial of service attacks are a common security attack where attackers take actions that bar the rightful user from accessing the electronic device.

Network security faces many threats that compromise its operations. A computer virus is a significant network security threat. Computer viruses are parts of software designed with the capacity to spread from one computer to another. These viruses are often downloaded from particular sites or sent as email attachments to infect a computer. Viruses corrupt and steal data from a computer. Rogue computer software is another threat. It is malicious software that can mislead computer users into believing that a computer virus has been installed on their computer.

Adware and spyware are software designed to track the data of one's browsing habits with their consent. Data availability, integrity, and confidentiality are the primary security threats in an operating system (Mhatre, Pegna & Brdiczka, 2018). Malicious and accidental destruction of data files, modification of data files, unauthorized reading of databases, or data files are of concern regarding the security of the operating system. Malicious software or malware hijacks an operating system to perform tasks for an attacker.

Spyware, Trojans, and viruses are the most predominant forms of malware, each undermining the security controls of an operating system. Hackers turn compromised computers into zombies or bots and force them to join networks of other systems to launch large-scale attacks on organizations. Software threats commonly associated with system software are malicious applications and computer codes that can compromise or damage a computer and steal financial and confidential information. Antivirus programs and other comprehensive security software also aid in preventing the impacts of software threats.

Bluejacking is among the software threats and is intended to share contact data to send unwanted and anonymous messages to other users. Mobile devices and their applications can also be infected by viruses that spread through the mobile network. The viruses are identical to other computer viruses. Database deployment in a distributed environment enables heterogeneous or homogeneous computers to act as a computing environment. Deployment is a significant concern for databases, and various challenges impede database deployment.

One of the risks is excessive database privileges. Database users may abuse these privileges in different ways, which can lead to unnecessary risks. This can be mitigated by deploying and upholding strict access and privilege control policies (Visbal, 2019). Company employees should not be given excessive privileges. SQL injection is another attack that occurs when malicious code is embedded in a web application and then transferred to the backend database, granting criminals unlimited access to stored data.

The NoSQL injection targets bug databases while SQL injection targets traditional databases. Exposing database backups is a common risk in database deployment in a distributed environment. It is always advisable to back up a proprietary database at defined times. The challenge emerges since most of the backup files are often left unprotected from attack, leading to security breaches occurring through database backup leaks.

Database vulnerabilities and misconfigurations occur as most databases are left unprotected. Professional IT specialists and hackers exploit configuration parameters and default accounts to attack an organization. Denial of service attacks slow down database servers and can hide them from all users. DoS attacks can cost victims considerable time and money, although they do not disclose the content of a database.

References

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