Equifax Data Breach and PlayStation Outage: Security Issues in Information Technology

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY 0
MITS 5004 IT
SECURITY

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY 1
Table of Contents
Part A..................................................................................................................... 2
Question 1: EQUIFAX DATA BREACH...................................................................2
Introduction........................................................................................................ 2
The problem of Equifax data breach...................................................................2
How and why this problem occurred?.................................................................3
A possible solution for data breach....................................................................3
Conclusion.......................................................................................................... 4
Question 2: problem linked with asynchronous I/O activities.............................4
Suggested Solutions........................................................................................... 4
Part B..................................................................................................................... 5
Introduction........................................................................................................ 5
Problem with PlayStation outage........................................................................5
Who was affected and how?............................................................................... 6
How was the attack carried out?........................................................................6
What could have been done to prevent the attack?...........................................6
Conclusion.......................................................................................................... 6
References............................................................................................................. 8

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY 2
Part A
Question 1: EQUIFAX DATA BREACH
Introduction
Data breach is a very common problem for information technology
and it is growing rapidly which impacts on the personal data or
information of consumers. The Equifax is one of the best examples of a
data breach that was faced the issue of hacking and cyber-crime in the
year 2017 (Gressin, 2017). During this time hackers collected user’s
profile, name, social security numbers and other private details and they
also obtained bank details of consumers. The purpose of this research is
to examine the Equifax data breach and evaluate the complete data
breaching process used by hackers for gathering user’s data.
The problem of Equifax data breach
On September 8, 2017, the Equifax organization faced the data
breaching and hacking related issues and hackers obtained consumer’s
names, birth dates, and addresses and driving license numbers. It is the
second highest data breaching attack where 143 million users lost their
sensitive data files and personal details. Recently Equifax suggested that
a cyber-security attack compromised the private information of more
than 143 Americans (O’Brien, 2017). It is observed that data breach is a
very common problem which affects computer devices of consumers and
hackers targeted the computer networks of Equifax and send unwanted
signals by using malware software.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY 3
Figure 1: Equifax data breach
(Source: O’Brien, 2017)
During this attack, the management team of Equifax reported that
unauthentic data access occurred from July 2017 and the data breach
was identified on July 29. It is observed that data files gathered by
attackers were a treasure trove of private details. Moreover, data breach
was the major problem faced by company and users that also affected the
credit and debit card numbers of consumers.
How and why this problem has occurred?
A recent study identified that Equifax is a credit reporting
organization which track and rates the financial history of United State
users for which they communicate with numbers of users through social
sites and third party websites. Hackers generated a large number of
unwanted signals with the help of botnet process and transferred to the
servers and networks of Equifax that occurred the issue of data
breaching (Life lock, 2018). Moreover, attackers entered reduced the
performance of computer networks and accessed their private accounts
due to which the issue of hacking or cyber-attack occurred. The IT team
of Equifax initially did not implement security policies and they used less
secure networks which influenced the data breaching problem and
numbers of consumers were affected due to this cyber-crime (Forbes,
2017). The CEO of Equifax stated that hackers imposed data of 143
Americans and they also collected the bank details of around 90000
users. Therefore, it is not easy to identify the key factors that increased