Exercise 15: Protecting and archiving data

1. What makes a firewall a good security investment? Accessing the Internet, find two or three firewall vendors. Do they provide hardware, software or both?


Firewalls are systems (Hardware or Software or a combination of both) that are designed to prevent unauthorized access to or from a private network. Firewalls are frequently used to prevent unauthorized Internet users from accessing private networks connected to the Internet, especially intranets. All messages entering or leaving the intranet pass through the firewall, which examines each message and blocks those that do not meet the specified security criteria.

As every IT-Infrastructure model stems on security, Firewalls are a good security investment for the following reasons.

- To prevent access to certain services built into Windows which are notoriously difficult or even impossible to disable.
- To prevent certain Denial Of Service attacks, most notably disconnects due to spoofed unreach aka "click" - this is perhaps its most important (and some would say only unique) contribution to your security.
- To block inadvertent holes in your computer's security if you unintentionally leave open services such as file or print sharing or an FTP daemon. Instead of relying on a firewall, however, you should check your security (try the Shields UP! site) and just fix these vulnerabilities.
- To make it impractical for others to port scan you to identify your vulnerabilities. It does so by making scanning more time consuming, by preventing the usual RST response on closed ports so that the scanner has to wait for the connection attempt to time out. It can also defeat automated scanning for active hosts by disabling ICMP ECHO replies (aka "pings").

Vendors of Firewalls are:
- Juniper Networks - http://www.juniper.net, provides both hardware and software integrating firewall called NetScreen.
- Check Point - http://www.checkpoint.com, provides integrated appliance solutions (Security Gateways) for both hardware and software
- SonicWALL - http://www.sonicwall.com, provides both hardware and software firewall products


2. Find out if your university or workplace has a backup policy in place. Is it followed and enforced?

The following is an overview of the policy enforced at my organization(workplace)
Back up Policy
• The frequency and extent of backups must be in accordance with the importance
of the information and the acceptable risk as determined by the data owner. Incremental and Differential Backup
• E-Solutions Information Resource backup and recovery process
for each system must be documented and periodically reviewed.
• Physical access controls implemented at offsite backup storage locations must
meet or exceed the physical access controls of the source systems. Additionally
backup media must be protected in accordance with the highest
sensitivity level of information stored.
• A process must be implemented to verify the success of the
electronic information backup.
• Backups must be periodically tested to ensure that they are recoverable.
• Signature cards held by the offsite backup storage vendor(s) for access to
backup media must be reviewed annually or when an
authorized individual leaves %ORGANIZATION%.
• Procedures between and the offsite backup storage
vendor(s) must be reviewed at least annually.
• Backup tapes must have at a minimum the following identifying criteria that can
be readily identified by labels and/or a bar-coding system:
o System name
o Creation Date
o Sensitivity Classification
o Contact Information
Version History
Version Number Date Reason/Comments
Vn.00.00 Month, Year


3. Most of the anti virus software perform an active scanning of the user activity on the Internet, detecting downloads and attachments in e-mails. Hackers have readily available resources to create new viruses. How easy is it to find a virus writing kit? Search the Internet and find such a tool. For example, see what you can find at http://vx.netlux.org/dat/vct.shtml.


On a search conducted using www.google.lk with the search term virus writing kit, the following are resources i found.

http://vx.netlux.org/lib/static/vdat/creatrs1.htm
http://www.ca.com/us/securityadvisor/pest/pest.aspx?id=818

http://vx.netlux.org/dat/vct.shtml
VX Heavens
Home Upload Library Collection Sources Engines Constructors Simulators Utilities Links AV Checkβ

Virus Creation Tools (195)
"INVICTUS" VX Library
$MOOTHiE::s Macro Virus Creator 2000
Access Macro Generator
Acid Flowing Trojan Generator
Advanced Batch Mutator
Advanced Steam Trojan Generator
Alchemic Life Generator
ANSI Bomb Constructor by Duke
The ANSI Bomb Generator
Ansi Bomb Kit
Ansi Bomb Maker
Apokalipses
BAT Poly Generator
BAT virii Generator MIX 1.0
Batch Encrypt
Batch Maker
Batch Trojan Generator
Batch Virus Construction Kit
Batch Worm Generator
Batch-O-Matic
Valid XHTML 1.0! S1