Security, privacy and data integrity (Chapter 6)

Question 1

What is data security ?

Answer 1

It ensures that data is safe and protected from data loss , illegal access and to make sure it can be recovered.

Question 2

What is data integrity ?

Answer 2

It ensures the consistency and accuracy of the data after transmission and ensures it hasn’t been corrupted.

Question 3

What is data privacy ?

Answer 3

It protects the data from unauthorized access and keeps the data confidential.

It restricts access to personal data to avoid it being accessed by an unauthorized person.

Question 4

What is a firewall ?

Answer 4

It is hardware or software that sits between a computer and an external network and monitors all the incoming and outgoing traffic and filters it.

The firewall checks if the data meets some criteria and if it doesn’t then the firewall alerts the user and blocks the data from being transmitted. It also logs all the incoming and outgoing packets and can keep a list of undesirable IP addresses which it prevents access to.

The firewall can also alert the user if some software tries to access an external data source.

Question 5

What is a digital signature ?

Answer 5

It is encrypted data attached to an electronically transmitted document to verify that the data comes from a trusted source.

Question 6

How does a digital signature authenticate a digital document ?

Answer 6

• The sender puts the document through a hashing algorithm to produce a digest
• The sender encrypts the digest with the senders private key to create the digital signature
• The message and the signatures are sent to the receiver
• The receiver decrypts the signature using the matching senders public key and reproduces the digest.
• The receiver uses the same hashing algorithm on the document to produce a second digest and then compares the digest to the one with the digital signature.
• If they are the same then the document is authentic.

Question 7

What is pharming ?

Answer 7

Pharming is malicious code installed on a users computer without their knowledge.

Unlike Phishing in Pharming the user is redirected to a fake website without them even taking any action since when they type in the URL for the actual website, the IP address is changed and they are redirected to the bogus one. When the user inputs any information on the fake website, the creator of the website will gain access to their sensitive information.

To protect against pharming,

Have anti-virus software be constantly running in the background.

Check for the green padlock symbol or https

Check the spelling of the website in the URL

Question 8

What is phishing ?

Answer 8

It is when someone sends legitimate looking emails to users usually with some attachment or link which redirects the users to a fake website. It then prompts the user to enter some sensitive information which the person who sent the email will gain access to since its a bogus website.

To protect against phishing,

A good firewall must always be running in the background
Users should be aware of new phishing scams
Check for the green padlock or https before entering data
Email should filter out the phishing mail into the SPAM section.