Internet Security



Internet Security

Introduction

Over the years, the internet has changed the way people interact with their daily lives in regard to staying current with world and local news, shopping, banking and other means of gathering information. The internet is the backbone of the internet superhighway, interconnecting millions of networks, which has made accessibility to information virtually effortless. However, the internet is also capable of creating vulnerabilities of security breaches. With information technologies internet security and its policies need to be addressed in order for organizations to establish and maintain procedures that will be beneficial to the organizations overall security.

This paper will discuss the impact of the internet has had on information technologies, the ramifications associated with the internet and the effects that the introduction of the internet has had on an organization's security. Once these areas have been discussed the paper will also present solutions to those problems and discuss how the solution will achieve their goals.

Analysis

Information prior to the internet was communicated between workstations by sharing local area network workstations. Those workstations were connected to servers and shared data and applications within office buildings. However, only the workstations sharing the communication line could access the server. Once the internet was introduced, millions of networks exposed both the user and server, to malicious attacks, such as viruses and hackers. Over the years these along with other attacks have continued to plague users, servers, and networks that are connected to the internet. On a regular basis, computers are infected by spyware, viruses, Trojan Horses, worms and many other software applications that can be destructive to computers, networks, and servers via the internet. Currently attacks happened quite frequently across the world, whether the attack is through spyware or from mass distribution of a virus (Sieber, 1986).

Just recently on April 1, 2009 the world was warned that a new worm was being distributed by the name of Conflicker, which buries itself onto computers with Microsoft Window's operating systems. The worm relies heavily on connections from the internet in order to receive instructions from websites, were the worm was spread through downloads and e-mails over the past few months. This is just an example of how worms, viruses and hackers are evolving and finding more creative ways to breach security within organizations and at a personal level as well. Although differences exist between worms and viruses they continue to be harmful to organizations (Salton, 1980).

According to Whitman and Mattord (2004, pp. 7-8), early Internet deployment treated security as a low priority. For example, many of the problems that plague e-mail on the Internet today are the result of this early lack of security. Early computing approaches relied on security that was built into the physical environment of the data center that housed the computers. As networked computers became the dominant style of computing, the ability to physically secure a networked computer was lost, and the stored information became more exposed to security threats.

E-mails have become a major source of communication over the ...