Cybersecurity Project Report: MS Course, UCD, Cyber Threat Analysis

This project report, submitted in partial fulfillment of an MS degree at the University of Colorado Denver, addresses the critical issues within cybersecurity. The report begins by outlining the problem of cyber threats in the digital era, emphasizing the need for robust security measures to protect information. It presents a project statement focused on developing a virtual world secure from cybercrimes. The inductive approach is used to collect data from IT professionals, analyzing their experiences with security breaches and vulnerabilities in cloud computing and web applications. The report explores key concepts, including application, information, operational, and network security. It proposes a system that monitors open ports and evaluates system vulnerabilities, sending signals to operators and target systems to test firewall effectiveness. The methodology includes data collection and assessment, with the results and analysis focusing on the potential impact of cybercrimes and recommendations for future security enhancements. The report concludes with recommendations for securing data and mitigating cyber threats, emphasizing the importance of continuous improvement in cybersecurity practices.

CYBER SECURITY

CYBER SECURITY
A <project report> submitted in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
<Master of Science>
By
<Your Name>
<where your highest previous degree was awarded, e.g., University of Colorado
Denver>, Year
<Your highest previous degree, e.g. Bachelor of Science. in Computer Science>
Month Year – contact GradSchool for correct month and year
University of Colorado Denver

ABSTRACT
Cyber Security is one of the most important concerns of people as the entire
working system has evolved to involve in a virtual working platform. The problem has
become one major threat to security aspects of people in real life manner. Use of internet
and web based services have come to a place where the perspectives of security is the
most significant one and moreover, the business processes are connected through cyber
web, which is why the significance of this research has proved to be worthy. The project
report or the research is done o the basis of evaluation of cyber security protocols through
various assessment and bring out results that would help in solving the security issues and
create a better future.
The approach has been taken in this research is inductive, where the data is
collected for the similar aspects of security through web technology and hence, the based
on the collected data recommendations are assumed. The results and conclusion part
includes the gathering of various recommended structures that will be helpful in future
researches. Through all over the project, the potential impact of cyber crimes has been
stated and accordingly security measures are recommended.

This Project Report is approved for recommendation to the Graduate Committee.
Project Advisor:
____________________________________
Name1, e.g., Jane Doe

©200x by <your name including e.g. middle initials>
All Rights Reserved
[This page should be included ONLY in theses that are copyrighted. If you include this
page, change the page numbering for following pages to vi instead of v using the
Insert/Page Numbers command. ]

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction...................................................................................................................1
1.1 Problem......................................................................................................................1
1.2 Project Statement.......................................................................................................3
1.3 Approach...................................................................................................................3
1.4 Organization of this Project Report...........................................................................5
2. Background...................................................................................................................6
2.1 Key Concepts.............................................................................................................6
2.1.1 Key Concept 1 Application and Information security........................................6
2.1.2 Key Concept 2 Operational and Network security.............................................7
2.2 Related Work or Literature Review...........................................................................8
2.2.1 Securing the digital era.......................................................................................8
2.2.2 Loss of information.............................................................................................9
3. Architecture..................................................................................................................10
3.1 High Level Design...................................................................................................10
3.2 Design Phase............................................................................................................11
3.3 Implementation (Codes)..........................................................................................12
4. Methodology, Results andAnalysis (or similar title)...............................................13
4.1 Methodology............................................................................................................13
4.2 Results.....................................................................................................................14
4.3 Analysis...................................................................................................................16
5. Conclusions..................................................................................................................17
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5.1 Summary..................................................................................................................17
5.2 Potential Impact.......................................................................................................17
5.3 Future Work.............................................................................................................18
6. References.....................................................................................................................19
7. Appendix.......................................................................................................................22
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1. INTRODUCTION
In this era of digitization, internet has become the source of modernizing the
society and use science as a way of propagating to the future. Cyber Security is similarly
a concept within the communal values of interconnectivity of people through internet.
The term cyber refers to internet or interconnectivity of the whole world and again, as the
world becomes one society through a virtual connectivity, it needs security in order to
keep the community and its inhabitants safe. In this modernized era, people are mainly
connected virtually as the way is much easier through web connection. Sitting in their
homes people can do anything. In exchange, the web connectivity needs information
regarding every business aspect that people include in their lives. Cyber security is the
process where all these information are kept safe and guarded continuously. This research
is conducted in order to analyze the aspects of cyber security and research accordingly for
developing the concept. A safe and secure future awaits based on the results of this
research.
1.1 Problem
Cyber security can be stated as the solutions for cyber crimes. The web
technology has developed in such a way that it includes security measures for the
information collected by the users. The problem lies within the section of collecting or
transferring of information. The transformation of information is insecure due to the facts
that similarly with the development of technology, there are such people who are
developing their skills of sculpting through the connectivity sections and get a hold of the
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information being shared1. In other words, the ethical hackers have been the most
significant cause for the security issues and hence, the modifications are done within the
channels for securing the information only. Firewalls, evident internet platforms and
according web channels are modified till date and secured in order to avoid such
information loss but according to various reports, the up gradation of the entire system
did not become worthy of securing the working principles as lots of news have been
heard regarding stealing of data through hacking2.
Cloud systems play the role of storing information through various websites.
Either government or personal both the systematic process have encountered loss of data
by the hacking techniques. Cloud computing introduced the use of SaaS, IaaS and PaaS
as the major mediums for channeling information, where the user can get hold of their
personal information. Repeatedly the same thing is happening with the mediums as well,
when the user is using their systems as a software (SaaS) for gathering information into
the cloud, insecure channels and bugged firewalls are making the user lose their
information. Hence, through this research the researchers are expected to provide
solutions that will be helpful in recovering lost information and accordingly help in
securing the information as well. Similarly, PaaS and IaaS are also effective in making
such security issues and the researcher includes responsibility of developing solutions.
1 Buczak, A. L., & Guven, E. (2016). A survey of data mining and machine
learning methods for cyber security intrusion detection. IEEE Communications Surveys
& Tutorials, 18(2), 1153-1176.
2 Yunfei, L., Yuanbao, C., Xuan, W., Xuan, L., & Qi, Z. (2015, August). A Framework of Cyber-Security
Protection for Warship Systems. In Intelligent Systems Design and Engineering Applications (ISDEA),
2015 Sixth International Conference on (pp. 17-20). IEEE.
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1.2 Project Statement
The project statement incorporates if the concept of cyber security can be helpful
in creating a virtual world that will make human society follow to a better future. The
arguments stand for the security purpose of cyber crimes. As cyber crimes have become
one of the largest problems in IT sector, the security measures have been undertaken as
one major concern that should be taken care of as soon as possible. The security counters
for cloud platforms are also discussed within this report, as the loss of information
includes mainly information migration through cloud computing.
1.3 Approach
In order to make a research work successful there are several approaches that are
undertaken by the researchers. The researchers consider various approaches like
deductive and inductive as well, where the processing of further researches is included
within the scope of evidences. For deductive approach, the researchers chose already
researched articles and journals. Along with that they also chose various resources that
can help these researchers with propagating their research in a further volume with the
help of attained information through the sources.
In this particular research, the researcher has chosen the inductive approach where
the evidences are gathered through various data collection3. The data collected from
different samples are assessed and hence, results are delivered. In case of cyber security,
then researcher has chosen various employees of IT companies as the samples and
3 Sekaran, U., & Bougie, R. (2016). Research methods for business: A skill building approach. John Wiley
& Sons.
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represented different qualitative and quantitative questions regarding the issues they have
faced till date.
The quantitative questions in the inductive approaches are meant to answer as
numerical values. The numerical values indicate how many times the company has faced
such issue as in how many times they have lost their information. How long they are
insecure with the web applications they are sing for their business processes etc.
In other hand, the qualitative data collection is done in order to equip the
evidences from very depth of their originality. Inductive approaches on the basis of
collected data are done by assessing the collection through evaluation towards whether
the data proves anything or not. It can be stated that when the researcher is providing
results on the basis of gathered data, the assumptions are not wrong as they are collected
through various data gathering approaches and all the information collected regarding
cyber security are true to the facts and hence, the recommendations are also correct as
required.
1.4 Organization of this Project Report
There are no such chosen organizations for this project as the issue covers a whole
industry rather than any individual companies. Information technology is a bliss to this
modern world where maximum of the business processes are conducted using web
technologies only. Hence, the chosen industry on this research is the IT industries that are
facing loss of information issues due to engagement of cyber criminals. Cloud computing
and cyber criminals are effecting the world as they can for their personal profits, similarly
the web industries are becoming afraid of using web service applications as per their
needs due to fact of information loss.
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2. BACKGROUND
2.1 Key Concepts
The key concepts of this research are stated within this chapter. Concept of cyber
security includes the concept of IoT and its initials for acknowledgement. IoT is the
abbreviation of Internet of Things, which is basically referred to the aspects of web
technology and in other words use of internet. In this era, using internet all the business
procedures are involved in a virtual multitasking platform that helps in each aspects of
business considerations. The elements of cyber security include these virtual platforms
and all these platforms include threat from different online resources. As the whole world
is connected through cyber connections, the applications are involved with vigorous
information of different users. The elements mainly incur application security and
information security but there are also threats for network security, end user security and
operational security4. All these aspects are illustrated in the following section.
2.1.1 Key Concept 1 Application and Information security
People nowadays prefer working from home using a laptop or a desktop, which is
connected through internet. In the recent traditions of IT industry, there are various web
based applications that ensures online transactions. Using money, people can do anything
in their lives. The threat of cyber security mainly threatens the loss of information that is
monetary. Loss is calculated on the basis of not only information loss but also the loss of
the transactional details that will be loss of money directly from bank account. In
4 Newmeyer, K. P. (2015). Elements of national cybersecurity strategy for developing nations. National
Cybersecurity Institute Journal, 1(3), 9-19.
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