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Unit 3: Assurance and Operational Issues
vulnerabilities, patches, and other areas that impact security. The Forum of Incident Response Notes
Teams (FIRST) has an electronic mailing list that receives information on threats, vulnerabilities,
and patches.
Task Differentiate between design and implementation assurance and Operational
assurance.
3.6 Human Issues
There exist two main types of human issues: one relating to organizations and the other to
people problems.
3.6.1 Organizations
The key here is that those responsible for security have the power to enforce security. Otherwise
there is confusion, and the architects need not worry if the system is secure because they won’t
be blamed if someone gets in. This arises when system administrators, for example, are
responsible for security, but only security officers can make the rules. Preventing this problem
(power without responsibility, or vice versa) is tricky and requires capable management. What’s
worse is that security is not a direct financial incentive for most companies because it doesn’t
bring in revenue. It merely prevents the loss of revenue obtained from other sources.
3.6.2 People Problems
People problems are by far the main source of security problems. Outsiders are attackers from
without the organization; insiders are people who have authorized access to the system and,
possibly, are authorized to access data and resources, but use the data or resources in unauthorized
ways. It is speculated that insiders account for 80-90% of all security problems, but the studies
generally do not disclose their methodology in detail, so it is hard to know how accurate they
are. (Worse, there are many slightly different definitions of the term “insider,” causing the
studies to measure slightly different things!) Social engineering, or lying, is quite effective,
especially if the people gulled are inexperienced in security (possibly because they are new, or
because they are tired).
Self Assessment
State whether the following statements are true or false:
6. People problems are by far the main source of security problems.
7. System performance monitoring analyzes system performance logs in real time to look
for availability problems, including active attacks and system and network slowdowns
and crashes.
8. Penetration testing can use only one method to attempt a system break-in.
9. Penetration testing can be done both manually as well as automatically.
10. Checksumming presumes that program files should change between updates.
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