Security at an Instant Messaging Service

Running head: SECURITY AT AN INSTANT MESSAGING SERVICE
Security at an Instant Messaging Service
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1SECURITY AT AN INSTANT MESSAGING SERVICE
Table of Contents
1. Introduction............................................................................................................................2
2. Detailed working procedure of secure messaging.................................................................2
3. Assets at risk..........................................................................................................................5
4. Threats of the instant messaging service................................................................................6
5. Controls of Instant Messaging...............................................................................................6
6. Security objectives of instant messaging...............................................................................7
7. Risk evolution of IM service..................................................................................................8
8. Testing with a specific instant messaging service..................................................................9
9. Conclusion............................................................................................................................11
10. References..........................................................................................................................12

2SECURITY AT AN INSTANT MESSAGING SERVICE
1. Introduction
This report deals with the overview of the technology that is incorporated with the
current instant messaging services. The security of the present day data is at high risk as there
are many vulnerabilities associated with the applications that are developed for the transfer of
data from one node of network to the other. The applications that provide secure messaging
services mostly uses the data encryption methodology thus providing the data security
(Oghuma et al., 2016). The possible threats regarding this technology are well stated in the
below report that will be dealing with the vulnerabilities as well as threats in an overall
environment of a secure messaging service.
2. Detailed working procedure of secure messaging
The secure messaging service provided by any type of the messaging application
follows the cryptographic algorithms for the encryption as well as decryption of the message
that are send or received by the users within the nodes of the network. The unknown users
present within the network may state these algorithms as the procedure of scrambling the
plain text into some other form that is not understandable. This plain text will be shown to the
specified user that has the key, which will decrypt the unscrambled text. Many algorithms are
present that performs encryption as well as decryption (Cohn-Gordon et al., 2017). The key-
based algorithms that are used for the cryptography of the messages may be divided mainly
into two classes that are said to be symmetric key cryptography and public key cryptography.
The common methodology of the data security working process is provided in the foilowing
figure.

3SECURITY AT AN INSTANT MESSAGING SERVICE
(Image: Data Security Working Procedure)
(Source: Del Pozo and Iturralde, 2015)
The symmetric key cryptography uses a single key for the encryption as well as
decryption of the data that is send form one node in a network to another. This may be
represented in the following figure below.
(Image: Symmetric key cryptography)
(Source: Unger et al., 2015)
Moreover, the asymmetric key cryptography (also known as public-key cryptography)
uses two different keys for carrying out the encryption as well as decryption procedure. This
is represented in the following figure
(Image: Asymmetric key cryptography)
(Source: Unger et al., 2015)