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Security

Achieving a goal against an adversary

IDK

Whenever you’re designing a system, everyone should have the least amount of privileges as possible.

Aspects

Policy

CIA

  • Confidentiality
  • Protection of data
  • Integrity
  • Maintaining the data as it is
  • Availabiltiy (Capacity Planning)
  • Making information available when required

Thread Model

Assumptions about adversary

Better to be over-cautious about adversary than casual

Mechanism

Hardware, Software, Algorithms to enforce policy against the threat model

This process is iterative, as you are trying to achieve a negative goal, so you need to keep updating the system.

A good mechanism is one that enforces the policy using as few components as possible. The more endpoints you have, the more vulnerabilities

Cyber Security Awareness

Not a science

It is an evolving list of best practices

Instilling knowledge to people about these practices

Cyber Security Threats

These are very easy for hackers

  • Web Application
  • Software Vulnerability
  • Credentials Theft
  • ‘Strategic Web Compromise’
  • DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service)
  • Malware/Ransomware
  • Phishing
  • Social Engineering

Threat Creators

Skill Goal Example
Script Kddies Low
Hacktivism Varied Public show against unethical organizations ‘Anonymous’
Crime ORganizations Medium \(\iff\) High
Nation State Actors Very High
Insider Threat Low Edward Snowden

Cyber-Security

Protection of important information and related systems. All fields require cyber-security, especially financial and govt institutions.

For eg, we can generate a large digital footprint of a person’s social media tracks.

You should know your roles and responsibilities, which varies based on the strategy of the organization.

Highly influenced by military.

Never hack into a system you’re not authorized to do so, not even a scan.

Career Scope

Skilled cyber-security professionals are in shortage. The issue is not number of people; the issue is skilled.

Basic Requirements

  • CLI (Linux)
  • Powershell (Windows)

Fields of Cyber-Security

Risk-Management

  • Security Strategies
  • Risk Assessments
  • List out the possible outcomes
  • Security Architecture
  • Compliance Reviews
  • Risk & Governance
  • Policy
  • Awareness

Offensive

  • Vulerability Assessment
  • Penetration Testing
  • Bug Bounty
  • Netowrk Instrusion
  • Hacking

Defensive

Mostly white hat hackers do this

  • Data Protection
  • Log Monitoring
  • Incident Response
  • Threat Intelligence & Detection
  • Using indicators, like fraud detection in data mining
  • Cyber Forensics

Types of Hackers

  • White Hat = Ethical Hacking
  • Black Hat = Cracking/Unethical Hacking
  • Grey Hat = Mix of both

Parts of Cyber-Security

Vulnerability

Weakness in the system

  • Bugs
  • Misconfiguration
  • Poor process or control

Threat

Circumstance/event with potential harm

  • Cyber criminals
  • Nation State Actors
  • Internal Threats

Cyber Controls

Types

Defence-in-depth is followed, using a collection of these types

  • Administrative You cannot proceed to the other types without first addressing this
  • Compliance to regulators
  • Standarsds
  • Policies
  • Precedures
  • Legal contracts
  • Service level agreements
  • Preventative
  • Firewalls
  • Web Proxy
    • Internet Content Inspection
  • Email Gateways
  • Anti-Virus
  • Patch Management
  • Detective
  • Vulnerability Scanning
  • Log Monitoring
  • Security Reviews
  • Honey Bot
    • Enticement of hackers, to detect how they would attack your main system
    • Not lure/entrap (that is illegal)
  • Corrective
  • Incident Response
  • Cyber Forensics
  • Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery
  • Deterrent Control
  • Just to deter any possible hackers; Doesn’t provide security
  • Such as a ‘Beware of Dog’, without actually having a dog

Examples

  • Firewall is like Locks
  • Log Monitoring is like CCTV

Risk

Materialized threat exploiting a vulnerability $$ \text{Inherent Risk} + \underset{\approx \text{ Brakes}}{\text{Cyber Controls}} = \text{Residual Risk} $$ The organization should decide the residual risk it can tolerate.

4 ways to handle risk

  • Risk assessement
  • Risk transfer
  • Risk mitigation
  • (one more thing)
Last Updated: 2024-01-24 ; Contributors: AhmedThahir

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