Financial Analysis : Mason Financial Llc

The purpose of this paper is to touch on the issue of Hacking. It will go into detail about the history, evolution, future and prevention of Hacking. In addition, this paper will discuss different types of hackers and their motivation behind hacking. This paper examines the major impact caused by malicious hackers and give modern examples of such attacks. To conclude, it will predict how hacking will be in the near future and give the precautionary measures Information Security professionals can take to mitigate the risk of being victimized.

A hacker attacks an easy target first, and then uses it to hide his identity and traces of launching attacks at more secured sites. The aim of an attack is to gain complete control of the system (in order to edit, delete, install or execute any file in any user’s directory), often by gaining access to a “ super-user” account. This will allow both maximum access and the ability to hide your presence.

Web application security is a form of security that deals specifically with the security of websites, their applications and web services. At advanced levels, web application security touches on the principles of web application security but applies them directly to Internet and Web systems.

Our IT department has to place a firewall on the web application such as Mod Security that is free and open sourced this is available for Apache, Microsoft and nginx web servers. This web application firewall will defend the users by catching the SQL injection before they can attack. I will recommend that the IT staff to apply any software patches on the database, so we would minimize the vulnerabilities on the server. Furthermore, they should use SQL variable binding with statements on the web application instead of constructing full SQL queries. Also, minimize the error messages when the student user is logging in with their credentials and get the password wrong then is displays that the password was wrong, but not the username. Above all, this plan will help the Aim Higher college prevent any SQL injection attacks in the future, so the users will feel safe in our when exchanging private data with our school information

System/application attacks fall within three categories: denial or destruction, alteration, and disclosure. This paper will cover some common system/application domain vulnerabilities: unauthorized physical and logical access to resources, weaknesses in server operating system and application software, and data loss.

As technology grows and information has become a critical asset companies currently are devoted their resource and money to protect their data as important as their finance and human resource assets.

While all of these technologies have enabled exciting changes and opportunities for businesses, they have also created a unique set of challenges for business managers. Chief among all concerns about technology is the issue of information security. It seems to be almost a weekly occurrence to see a news article about yet another breach of security and loss of sensitive data. Many people will remember high profile data breaches from companies such as T.J Maxx, Boston Market, Sports Authority, and OfficeMax. In the case of T.J. Maxx, a data breach resulted in the loss of more than 45 million credit and debit card numbers. In many of these incidents, the root cause is a lack of adequate security practices within the company. The same technologies that enable managers can also be used against them. Because of this, businesses must take appropriate steps to ensure their data remains secure and their communications remain

Session hijacking and man-in-the-middle attacks are ones that go after and try to intercept TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), ‘a standard that defines how to establish and maintain a network conversation via which application programs can exchange data (Rouse).’ Once the TCP connection is intercepted, the attacker inserts itself and modifies the data in the intercepted communication. Session jacking can be done by taking the id# of a session server or using cross-site scripting to create a malicious link, giving the attacker access to the current session.

These are strike years so we will ignore them. In 1994, ROE is less than that of last three years. Overall its not good sign, but its explanation will be given in upcoming ratios.

The greatest area of vulnerability and potential for damage or data loss of web applications and

It has been noticed that, the number of flaws has increased in the security frameworks of the organization. It will continue to grow, and hence, the key agenda for several organizations will be security of these systems. The major vulnerabilities include cross-site scripting errors, SQL injection, authentication issues, and authorization errors. The malicious code also gets entered inside the system from external sources, since the system itself is outsourced or designed in a way to receive the data from the other end-users.

Attackers abuse vulnerabilities within the software of webservers to compromise our website security. We have network security measures in place such as our firewall but we still need to strengthen our webservers which can be access from anywhere as long as there is an internet connection. (Kumar) Strengthening our web server security will help protect against known vulnerabilities that bypass the firewall system and can compromise our web applications.

Safety of information is the most valuable asset in any organization particular those who provide financial service to others. Threats can come from a variety of sources such as human threats, natural disasters and technical threats. By identifying the potential threats to the network, security measure can be taken to combat these threats, eliminate them or reduce the likelihood and impact if they should occur.

Almost all kind of large and small organizations might face increasing number of attacks into their network or intellectual property. This may lead to data disclosure, data destruction, and damage of organization’s reputation. There are numerous threats in the cyber space which might be capable of stealing, destroying or making use of out sensitive data for financial and non-financial gains. As the amount of computer, mobile and internet users increases, so does the number of exploiters.

In today’s highly connected digital ecosystem, our lives, businesses, communications, and a lot of activities depend on the websites and web applications. All websites contain sensitive data and deliver business-critical information services to the targeted audience. Due to the rapidly increasing use of websites and web applications, vulnerabilities have become quite rampant. Even the smallest security loophole can give cybercriminals a chance to destroy the web-based business, damage customer confidence, and brand reputation in a short time span.