Network Security: Importance, Aims, Issues, Current Techniques, and Future Solutions

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NETWORKING SECURITY
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Introduction
Information or data is what keep the world moving. Information or data of a person or company
can help an attacker who is against the owner of data, and can be used for the benefit of the same
(Richardson & Director, 2008). The essence of ensuring that the networks are secure is to see to
it that data being transmitted, or held within the network is secure and no one can interfere with
it (Brickell, Hall, Cihula, & Uhlig, 2011).
In the world of computing, and communication, networks can never be avoided as the industry
grows. It is because of networks that the world is able to communicate limiting the geographical
distance of the globe (Armstrong et al., 2008). Network varies in types we have the local area
network(LAN) and wide area network(WAN), these are a clear indication that a network can
cover not only a village but also the whole universe.
Network security ensures that policies and practices are adopted to help prevent and control
access, modification, misuse and denial of network accessible resources by an unauthorized
person. Network security oversees the network itself as well as protect all the operation being
run (Conklin, White, Cothren, Davis, & Williams, 2015).
Aims
With the merging of voice and data in communication, together with the high dependency of
organization to networked application and internet, the need for network securely increases every
new day (Goodrich & Tamassia, 2011). Networks have a lot of threats that are regarded as harm.
The harms are ether human or non-human. The non-human includes natural disasters, loss of
power and failure of components. The human harms are either malicious or not malicious. This
harm threatens the aims of security.
1. Confidentiality: this entails information being transmitted over the network not being
able to be accessed by a third party. confidentiality is a legal requirement for any
information, either it is customer information in a company or the company itself, or any
data signal on transit via the network (M. Li, Lou, & Ren, 2010). Therefore, data on any
network should not be accessed by a third part voluntarily or involuntarily. Maintaining
confidentiality with the customer’s data the company maintain a relationship based on
trust with the customers since their right of privacy is maintained. To maintain
confidentiality information on transit should be accessed by the sender and the recipient.
the transfer should be so secure any the data should be prevented from using
unauthorized access routes (Hudic, Islam, Kieseberg, & Weippl, 2012).
To ensure data confidentiality, there is high training that is required for those privy of
such. The training should be accompanied by use of strong passwords and also
familiarization with the password related best-practices and also information on social
engineering. Data encryption is the best in ensuring confidentiality. Use of IDs and
password also help in data protection. Two-factor authentication and other ways of data

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protection such as use of biometric verifications, security tokens, key fobs and soft
tokens. physically the user of the network can limit where the information appears and
the number of cycles is to be transmitted so as to achieve the required (Yu, Wang, Ren, &
Lou, 2010).
2.Integrity.This ensures that data is consistence, accurate and its trust-worth of data
maintained over the full life cycle of data, that is, it ensures data is not altered or
destroyed by any unauthorized manner (Sridhar & Manimaran, 2010). In a
communication network a message that is sent should be exactly as the one received.
Data should not be altered while on transit and measures put to prevent data from being
tampered with by any either malicious, or non-malicious personnel. The measure are file
permission and access controls (Jover, 2013). To prevent erroneous changes or accidental
deletion by the authorized user the version control can be used. Changes to the data may
also occur due to non-human errors that occur during transmission . This may involve
electromagnetic pulse, server crash, use of checksums to use in verifying the integrity of
data can be used. Keeping of backup or redundancies can help also in restoring the
affected data (Chen & Liu, 2012).
2. Availability: this goal ensures that the network is in continuous operation. this network
goal of network security is achieved by maintaining all the hardware, making sure the
hardware is repaired in case of failure and maintaining a correctly functioning of the OS
and system upgrade (F. Li & Luo, 2012). To achieve this aim there is need to provide
enough bandwidth, avoiding bottlenecks occurring. Redundancy, RAID, failover help
mitigate the security bleaches that compromise availability. A comprehensive disaster
recovery plan is needed that will reduce cases of system failures rendering the service
unavailable.
Issues in network security
Apart from the many benefits associated with the network, the emerging security issues include
data loss, security breaches and other malicious attacks.
The goals of the network security may be compromised by security threats. The security threats
are divided into two broad categories passive and active attack. Passive attack includes breaking
into the system using observed data. It involves plain text attacks eavesdropping and observing
of data communication. Main aim of passive attack is to gather data or get details of the
communicating channel, this compromises the confidentiality aim of network security.
Interception: attacks confidentiality such as eavesdropping and middleman attacks.
Traffic analysis: it focuses on compromising confidentiality and anonymity, it may involve
tracing back on a network, and on CRT radiation.
The attacks involve modifying the communication media or bits of data being transmitted via
channel. this include;