Network Security Fundamentals

Running head: NETWORK SECURITY FUNDERMENTALS
NETWORK SECURITY FUNDAMENTALS
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NETWORK SECURITY FUNDAMENTALS 2
Introduction
Every day, attackers release network attacks crafted to steal confidential information.
According to the 2015 Verizon data breach investigation report, the primary targets for these
attacks are the organization’s database servers as they are the heart of the organization. This
paper presents some of the security issues and mitigation strategies.
Current network security issues
One of the current security issues which have become significant to individuals and to
organizations is Ransomware attack. The current ransomware attack encrypts files on the
infected network or system. In mid-2017 ransomware attack spread like wildfire in Ukraine and
led to shutting down of lots of hospitals. This type of attack also led to shutting down of lots of
radio stations in California. The second security issue is DDoS and DoS type of attack. One of
the common type of DoS type of attack is teardrop; this where the attacker sends a crafted packet
to the victim. One of the victims which have ever been hit by DoS type of attack is Github, a
popular developer platform. The company was hit by a sudden onslaught of traffic which
resulted in inaccessible services. In mid-2014, CloudFlare was slammed by 400 gigabits per
second traffic, a form of DoS attack (Nassiri, 2018).
Mitigation strategies
To mitigate these forms of attacks organizations need to first have an incident response
plan. This includes what to do when faced with any security issue. Second, an organization
needs to use anti-virus and anti-spam solutions such as Norton or Kaspersky’s anti-virus. These
applications have the ability to stop phishing form of attacks as they are able to detect malicious
links. Third an organization need to keep all its software and operating system patched. Forth,
organizations need to restrict internet access by using a proxy server for internet access. A proxy