Data Transmission Security Issues

Data Transmission Security Issues

1. Security Issues

   • Sniffing
     • Packet sniffers are often used by network technicians to analyse problems of a network but can be used to gain unauthoriesed access to data
     • They are designed to inspect all data being transmitted over a network, even if its not intended for that computer
     • Public wifi connections and particularly vulnerable as you have no restrictions who is connected to it
   • Spoofing
     • Where your computer pretends to be another computer
     • By using fake credentials and presenting them to the network they can fool the system into giving access to services meant for another device.
     • Spoofing can also be used to perform a Denial of Service attack by spoofing IP addresses to make them seem like a legitimate source of data
   • If someone has access to a network data can be listened too
     • This is because of how data doesnt go from A-B it is transmitted to all computers directly connected to the LAN

2. Data Transmission Security Issues

   • Firewalls
     • Both hardware and software to monitor traffic and block anything illegitimate
       • They can block access to certain websites, prevent certain data being sent out of the business, prevent external computers accessing internal computers and close down certain ports to prevent network traffic going through them.
     • Hardware firewalls can be dedicated devices but are often integrated into a router and will monitor traffic going into and out of the computer
       • Software firewalls are installed on the individual devices connected to the network. They can monitor traffic going both into and out of the computer, filtering any unwanted traffic. They can even set rules on a per program basis
     • Hardware firewalls can also prevent DoS attacks that try to harm our network performance as they can block the illegitimate traffic before it reaches our LAN. Spoofing can be used to trick the firewall into accepting the traffic though.
   • Encryption
     • Stops data being intercepted and read easily
     • SSL and TLS are methods of encrypting data across a network securely and are very commonly used in applications like the web and email.
     • The SSL will encrypt the data to secure it so that it cannot be accessed by anyone who doesn’t have the encryption key.
     • VPNs, which we looked at the lesson “Types of Networks”, create a private secure connection over the internet by encrypting data too.