ITACS 5211: Introduction to Ethical Hacking

Wade Mackey

Xinteng Chen

Is Payment Card Security Slipping?

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In the article “Is Payment Card Security Slipping”, the author introduces about the security of credit card payment is worse than before. According to report, only 52.4 percent of organization maintained the compliance of Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard  in 2017. Compare with 55.4 percent in 2016, the number kept dropping. There are 9 factors the organizations can deal with this problem.

Factor 1: Control Environmentt.
Factor 2: Control Design
Factor 3: Control Risk
Factor 4: Control Robustness
Factor 5: Control Resilience
Factor 6: Control Lifecycle
Factor 7: Performance Management
Factor 8: Maturity Measurement
Factor 9: Self-Assessment

Credit card is still the major payment method in the US, so it is important for organizations to ensure the security of the payment method.

https://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/89446-is-payment-card-security-slipping

 

Understanding Cybersecurity and Its Relationship with Physical Security To Reduce Risk

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In the article “Understanding Cyber Security and its Relationship with Physical Security to Reduce Risk”, the author introduces about how to build relationship between cyber security and physical security. There are four perspectives for understanding the relationship:

  • Physical and cyber security are co-dependent
  • The disconnect between physical and IT security can be easily reduced
  • Physical Security Directors should contribute more to breach-readiness
  • Questions to ask yourself in assessing risk management

Physical security is usually the first step to defend attackers. For example, security guard should protect the entrances for a building to protect all the devices. Therefore, that is one of the most important method for security.

 

https://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/89426-understanding-cybersecurity-and-its-relationship-with-physical-security-to-reduce-risk

The Biggest Email Security Challenge Facing Organizations Today

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In this article, the author introduces about the challenges for email usage. 3.7 billion users use email everyday to send 269 billion messages. The primary challenge is that users lack security awareness. Most users think their emails are safe to use. What they usually do is to delete the spam emails.  In addition, phishing is also a problem for email security. Impersonations are the main method of phishing. Once attackers obtain trust from users, they can start attack activities. In addition, attackers send link to users’ emails, when they click the link, they may lose their passwords or install malware automatically. To prevent emails from being attacked, managing emails is important to companies. Organizations should control emails reception in certain period to block threats. What is more, improving employees’ security awareness should be the primary work for organizations to do.

 

https://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/89415-the-biggest-email-security-challenge-facing-organizations-today

6 Ways to Fight Election Hacking and Voter Fraud, According to an Expert Panel

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In this article, the author introduces about 6 ways to fight election hacking and voter fraud.

  1. Use paper ballots to establish a backup record of each vote. Using this way because even though devices and computers do not connect to internet, it is still hard to protect them from cyber threats. Therefore, each computer should generate paper records for votes.
  2. Outlaw any kind of internet voting – from now. Some states allow people to vote online, or vote by sending emails. It is not secure for data. Hacker could intercept these information and make changes. Therefore, internet voting should be terminated.
  3. Verify election results. All elective results should be audited publicly and transparently to make sure the results are accurately. Risk limiting audits should be conduct to double check the vote validation.
  4. Crosscheck voter registrations nationwide to weed out duplicates. All states should compare the registration database to make sure there is no duplicated vote in different states.
  5. Make voting by mail more secure. Mailing voting is securer than internet voting. Even though that has a risk of theft, the government has a system for people to verify their mails have been delivered.
  6. Spend more to make elections trustworthy. The government should spend more money on United States Election Assistance Commission. People can use that money to improve management and securer technologies.

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/06/us/election-security-expert-panel.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FComputer%20Security%20(Cybersecurity)&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection