Information Security Research Paper 2022

Running head: INFORMATION SECURITY
INFORMATION SECURITY
Name of the Student
Name of the university
Author note

1INFORMATION SECURITY
Part 1a
Digital Signature can be defined as mechanism of security which the certificate
authority issues and appends to digital certificate for allowing a receiver for verifying that
there has not been any alteration from the time of its creation by the sender. It is actually like
a code that has been digitalized and gets included in the digital message for sender
identification. Digital Signature guarantees the identity of the sender of the digital message; it
is used in a number of business transactions and cannot be forged. There are various
techniques for encryption which are used for ensuring that the security level is high. In 2000,
a law in the United States made it legitimate for the signing of legal documents by utilizing
digital signatures (Chen, Liu, Chen and Wang 2018). It is like there is a guarantee digitally
about the non-alteration of the information, acting like a seal that is tamper proof and is
broken if there happens to be any alteration in the content. The two important digital
signature applications are verification of file integrity and establishment of a secured website
connection. Digital Signature is a digest encryption of the file that is signed. Computation of
the digest is done from the file contents with the help of hash function that is one way, like
SHA-1 and MD5, after which encryption is done using the private part of the private/public
key pair (Shi et al. 2016). For proving that there was no tampering done to the file, public key
is used by the recipient for decrypting the signature to original digest, re-computation of new
digest from the file that was transmitted and comparing both to see if they are matching. If
both the digests match, it’s proved that there has not been any alteration by a hacker.
As per the information digital signature is the digest encryption of a file which was
created with hash function that is one-way from the contents of the file. Digital certificates
are the first important application for digital signatures and these are used for the verification
of the organization or an individual’s identity (Buldas et al. 2019). These are broadly used for
website authentication which establishes a connection encryption for confidential data and

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credit card purposes. The next important application is code signing which ensures the
verification of executable file integrity that is downloaded from website. This application also
utilizes digital certificates that are signed for identity verification.
PGP refers to Pretty Good Privacy and it is the type of encryption which has become
an important part in internet security and privacy for a reason and that is allowing users for
sending encoded message without sharing the code in advance. For example if user1 wants to
send a message to user2 and he does not want any other person to discover the message
content then the best solution is to alter the same with some secret code which only user1 and
user2 are aware of and as a result if anyone else intercepts the message, the contents will not
be readable to the third person (Pooja and Yadav 2018). However there is a flaw in such a
system. If a coded message is sent to someone without sharing the code to that person then
the recipient will not be able to decode that. Hence PGP comes into picture and has a solution
of public key encryption which helps users in sending encrypted and secured messages.
The core function of PGP is enabling the users for sending secure messages without
the requirement of any prior introduction and also the recipients are allowed for the message
verification that is whether the authenticity and contents are intact. This is done by the help of
digital signatures (Yin, Fu and Chen 2016). Apart from email encryption, PGP is also
involved in the encryption of files, hard drives, instant messages and more. Many people may
not be aware that email is not a secure method of communication. Once the email is sent from
an account it transition occurs through various networks that are beyond control of the user.
The emails can be easily tampered and intercepted without the sender’s or recipient’s
knowledge.
If user has to send sensitive or valuable information, normal email is not suitable
since it can be hacked and hackers may utilize it for committing identity frauds whereas
important messages of the government can be used by spies (Ahmad and Alam 2016). To

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avoid all such occurrences PGP was brought into picture which would protect the security in
email communication. The most important elements on which the PGP encryption depends
on are web of trust, symmetric key cryptography, digital signatures, and public key
cryptography.
In the cryptography of symmetric key the same key is used for encryption and decryption.
The asymmetric cryptography is also known as public key cryptography and in this type both
the private and public keys are used for encryption (Roh and Lee 2018). The various steps for
a PGP encryption are as follows:
1) Adding digital signature
2) Encrypting the data or information
3) Decryption of the message
4) Verification of Digital Signature
As long as security is concerned the recent PGP versions are very secure if used correctly.
Some vulnerability exists for the older version. With the development of PGP there has been
a significant addition to the encryption algorithms for tightening the security. Even for the
slightest vulnerabilities there has been quick patching done by the developers (Li, Zhong and
Takagi 2016). For those using PGP the settings in email client should be changed so that the
auto loading of images that are external can be prevented. HTML and JavaScript should also
be turned off while viewing the encrypted emails (Suprihanto and Priyambodo 2017). With
all these measures, this type of encryption is safer to use. With all the advantages PGP also
has some drawbacks and one of its major drawback is that it is not user friendly which means
it is challenging for those who are lacking technical literacy. Different versions of PGP are
available over the years with new features and algorithms and as a result the PGP with an
older version is unable to open messages encrypted by newer one.

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Part 1b
Cloud storage is the model of data storage of computer where digital data is kept
within logical pools. Several servers are spanned by physical storage and physical
environment typically is owned as well as managed by hosting company. Such providers of
cloud storage are responsible to keep data available as well as accessible, along with physical
environment running and protected. People as well as organizations lease or buy capacity for
storage from providers for storing user, application or organization data (Li et al. 2017). It is
model of cloud computing which stores data over internet by provider of cloud computing
who manages as well as operates storage of data as service.
Cloud storage is dependent on virtualized infrastructure having accessible interfaces,
metered, multi-tenancy and scalability resources. Data of cloud based is stored within pools
over disparate; the commodity servers are located over premises or within data center that are
managed by cloud provider of third party. By using RESTful API, a file is stored by object
storage protocol and the associated metadata as single object as well as assigns this ID
number (Xiao et al. 2017). Most services of cloud storage use several quantities of hard drive
storage systems within servers which are linked through mesh such as network architecture.
Advantages
Cloud services possess most appropriate option to store data digitally online. Best
thing of storing all data in cloud is this ensures affordability as well as data could be accessed
easily from any place. Users could drag easily as well as drop files within cloud storage. This
is easy in saving every data and file in cloud, there is no need of technical knowledge for the
purpose. Stored file in cloud could be accessed easily from any location. This is
recommended for all businesses in having backup plan for emergency. Cloud storage is
appropriate backup plan to the businesses.

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Business owner could be sure after storing data within cloud, this is safe. Best thing of
cloud storage’s use is that there is distribution of server data over redundant servers as well as
data stored within cloud service is safeguarded from any kind of failure of hardware. Cloud
storage is an appropriate platform for purposes of collaboration. Multiple people are enabled
by cloud environment for accessing, editing as well as collaborating on single document or
file (Yu et al. 2016). Cloud storage is beneficial to every kind of business. It is great platform
which doesn’t need huge investment as well as could be used actively to collect and
collaborate with employees and clients.
Disadvantages
Cloud storage has formidable setback as difficulties to migrate. After selecting
specific cloud vendor to store data, difficulties could be faced while migrating data into
another vendor. Businesses store huge amount of data generally with specific cloud vendor. If
there are problems in cloud vendor, data’s migration to other cloud vendor would not be
feasible (Yu, Ren and Wang 2016). Cloud storage consists of transfer control of the
confidential information into third party organization. Hence, complete trust is required in
cloud vendor. There could be issues in privacy and security of data which are stored within
cloud storage.
In this paper the installation guide of MEGA has been given. It is a secure cloud
storage service providing users with 50 GB free storage space. This is the 3.87.0 version
comprising of new download page video viewer, file versioning, MEGAchat and MEGAdrop
public upload folder. This provides video, text as well as audio chat capability. The source
code of the software can be found at https://mega.nz/sourcecode. This is the extension that
will allow any user to install MEGA into his or her browser (MEGA Help 2020). This will