This course provided a good introduction to system security. For those with an IT background this course may not be necessary but I thought it was useful.
Notes
Appropriate procedures to establish host security
Application Security
Anti-Malware -takes care of viruses, worms, and trojans
-software has been designed to find the specific signatures of the malware on a system; track, identify, deactivate
-regularly update the signature/definition files to keep the anti-malware software effective
Anti-Spam -organizations will use spam filters on emails and messages to prevent spam from getting to the users inbox
-prevents/limits servers from congestion
Anti-Spyware -spyware can track your activity online by reviewing your cookies
-anti-spyware eradicates tracking cookies from your system
Pop-up blockers- pop ups are usually how you get adware, you can turn on pop-up blockers by going to your internet options page
Host-based firewalls -a firewall that resides on a computer system that protects traffic coming in or leaving the system
-this is something to monitor periodically to prevent intrusion into the system and to facilitate the generation of alerts
Patch management -patches are produced to fix flaws that exist within software
-individuals in an organization should be responsible for validating the source of a patch, testing it for sufficiency, and migrating the patch to the production systems once it has been found to be robust
-never download a patch and install it directly on your real system
Hardware Security
-cable locks- prevent rearrangement of the infrastructure you have; most likely used for laptops
-safe -lock away spares, documents
-locking cabinets -used for servers, switches, patch panels, and server racks to prevent unauthorized access and modification
-unauthorized access could change config = loss of integrity
-mobile device -screen lock, strong password
-devices should support encryption so that keys are required before anyone has access
-this way if you lose your device, you know that nobody else has access to the content
-encryption is the best form of security for mobile devices
-another option is remote wipe which allows your providers or device administrators to send a script to the phone that can either erase or cause damage to the content on the phone so that it cannot be accessed anymore
-devices should be returned to IT before they are shared between users; sanitization is very important
-voice encryption is another best practice
-one voice solution is VoIP (Voice over internet protocol)
-a malicious person can packet sniff our transmission, when we use voice encryption our packets are encrypted as they move on data lines which prevents eavesdropping
-another best practice is GPS tracking on mobile devices
-if GPS is disabled, you can still sync the picture content with your email to try to identify the location of the device
Virtualization
-a hypervisor is the software environment within which we build virtual machines
-it shares resources with your host PC such as memory, processor, ports etc
-virtualization is different from multi booting where you have multiple operating systems on the host PC, but can only run one at a time
-with virtualization we can run all the machines at the same time provided there is sufficient memory and a reliable processor that supports virtualization
Benefits -allows for maximum utilization of hardware, cost saving (buy less machines, less space, less licenses)
Data Security
-data loss prevention -financial, medical, trade secret, PII(personal identifiable information)
Data in motion -email, network, chat sessions
Data at rest -database, file sharing, desktop or laptop
Data in use -copiers, printer, removable media, screen, clipboard
storage area networks -devoted to storage and useful during disaster recovery situations
handling big data -some companies now employ security incidents events managers so that data that is of concern can be put on one management interface
Data Encryption
-this is required to ensure confidentiality
-encrypting data changes it from plain text to cipher text
Full disk encryption -you encrypt the entire content of the hard drive, unless unauthorized users provide encryption keys, they don't have access to the data
Database encryption -unless keys are provided, no access to database
Individual files -moving a file off an encrypted disk can make it vulnerable, if you want to sent one file or a group of files, encrypting them ensures that they are still encrypted while in transit or storage
