ANSWER QUESTIONS AND RESPOND TO BOTH PEERS!!! 1. Potential incidents represent t
Place your order now for a similar assignment and have exceptional work written by our team of experts, At affordable rates
For This or a Similar Paper Click To Order Now
ANSWER QUESTIONS AND RESPOND TO BOTH PEERS!!!
1. Potential incidents represent threats that have yet to happen. Why is the identification of the threat important to maintaining security?
2. Penetration testing is a particularly important contributor to the incident management process. Explain why that is the case, and provide examples of how penetration test results can be used to improve the incident response process.
REPSOND TO ANDREW
Good evening class and professor,
Identifying potential incidents helps organizations prepare and proactively take action to mitigate security threats before they occur. This enables them to implement effective measures to prevent or minimize the impact of incidents, reduce the likelihood of recurrence, and maintain the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of their systems and data. By identifying potential incidents, organizations can also do a better job to prioritize their security efforts, allocate resources effectively, and improve their overall security posture (Hillson, 2020).
Penetration testing is important in the incident management process because it helps organizations to identify and evaluate their vulnerabilities and weaknesses in the context of a simulated attack. These results can then be used by the organization to improve their incident response processes by being able to provide the organization with vital information as to the areas that require the attention and improvement. Penetration testing results can be used to identify critical vulnerabilities by identifying specific areas where systems or applications may potentially be vulnerable. The organization can then prioritize the efforts of the security team to focus on the most critical of the vulnerabilities first. Results can also be used to refine and improve the incident response plans. This includes the identification of potential attack vectors and the development of response procedures and checklists. The results can also be used to train the incident response teams. Penetration testing can provide realistic scenarios that can then be used to train incident response teams and help them to better understand the type of incidents that could potentially happen. Overall, penetration testing can help organizations better protect their systems, data and assets form security threats and can improve their overall security posture (NIST, 2018).
RESPOND TO ALEXANDER
1. Potential incidents represent threats that have yet to happen. Why is the identification of the threat important to maintaining security?
Threat identification is highly important because of the of the high probability an incident can occur. When identifying threats, it gives us an opportunity to learn how to take preventative actions to create a management program that can help mitigate incidents from occurring in the future. Policies are usually written after the fact of an event taking place. When these “occasions” happen, they are discussed, policies are created, risk management is used, training and protective measures are added. When it comes to laws, policies, rules being put in place anywhere you go, it’s because something has occurred and we want to avoid it from happening again. Same thing in the world of cyber security. When threats happen, we identify and put in place protective measures to maintain security. It helps us recognize vulnerabilities in our current systems to strengthen them. Learning from our mistakes or even other people’s mistakes helps us to learn, adapt and train on ways to avoid any future problems that can cause a threat or error. If we could avoid all problems, most policies would not be put in place but since there are high chances something can or will occur, its best to always treat every situation as a possibility that something can happen.
2. Penetration testing is a particularly important contributor to the incident management process. Explain why that is the case, and provide examples of how penetration test results can be used to improve the incident response process.
Penetration testing is very important when it comes to incident management and protection of one’s security system. The authorization of a simulated attack performed on a computer system to evaluate its security is key to identifying vulnerabilities.” (Synopsys) It can help businesses learn the impact of these weaknesses, how to identify the attacks and reinforce a company’s protection against these attacks. “The different types of penetration tests include network services, applications, client side, wireless, social engineering, and physical. A penetration test may be performed externally or internally to simulate different attacks.” (Firch 2022) A penetration test could include using social engineering techniques such as phishing, vishing, whaling, piggybacking or using old or unencrypted passwords to gain access to the network. Their goal is to penetrate the system and locate weaknesses in the system, people and technology to gain access to restricted assets.
Penetration tests can help determine if the software’s used for protection for example, such as new firewalls or IDS programs are maintaining a high level of security while the availability of the server is protected during an attack ensuring data loss prevention systems are preventing breaches and functioning as they should be. If a company has sensitive data to protect such as banking information, social security identifications, healthcare information, Official information, etc., they should test to see if what they have in place is enough to withstand attackers trying to gain this information.
An example of a penetration test could be a Network Service test to expose and exploit vulnerabilities in a company’s network infrastructure such as their servers, firewalls, routers, workstations, endpoints, etc. At the end of the test, a report will be given if any weaknesses were found and how to mitigate these problem areas, what hardware needs to be replaced, software’s need to be updated, patched, removed or added. With this report a company can create an incident response plan if an incident occurs, create policy, trainings or change some of the ways they have their network set up.
Another example would be a client-side penetration test which would include testing software’s or applications a company uses for vulnerabilities such as web browsers, email, Microsoft office programs, etc. These tests could identify if any of these common programs could have been hijacked by hackers. This test can help a company either learn ways these common applications can be penetrated and used for exploitation, what identifiers to use and teach employees or if better applications can be used with stronger security measures in place. (Firch 2022)
Penetration tests can be costly, but I believe they are worth it. In my opinion, a company should spend a couple thousand in protection and testing an avoid the millions a cyber-attack normally costs in damages.
