Information Security Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Information Security - Research Paper Example Lack of awareness and execution to protect company’s information assets can result in loss of revenues, bad reputation for the company and probable law suits by the customers for not being able to protect their data. 2. Threats and Vulnerabilities There are numerous types of threats and vulnerabilities that are required to be considered for the protection of information. Data breach is defined as the disclosure of information to unauthorized individuals in an intentional or unintentional manner. Verizon Business Risk Team (2009) stated that the degree of data breaches is the highest in the modern times than it has ever been. Figure 1: Percentage of Different Types of Data Breaches from 2004 to 2008 (Verizon Business Risk Team, 2009) Data breaches tend to threaten the confidentiality, integrity and authenticity of the data. Confidentiality aspect requires the data to be hidden from unauthorized third parties to protect the privacy of the individual. Hash, Bartol, Rollins, Robin son, Abeles and Batdorff (2005) explained that integrity of data provides the assurance that it is not tampered with or modified at any level as a result of malicious intent. Authenticity of data also ensures that the data is complete and accurate. The absence of such attributes of data makes the data unreliable and may prove to lead to misleading directions and results for the management of the organization. Data breaches may result from outside or inside sources. Moore, Cappelli, Caron, Shaw and Trzeciak (2009) defined insider theft as instances when employees (current or ex-employees) may disclose information for personal motives or as a result of lack of awareness of required information security measures. Employees might help the outside intruders gain unauthorized access to sensitive data by leaking passwords or loopholes in the security systems. Such employees may also damage or destroy the data as a result of personal conflicts or grudges against the management. Outside sour ces of threats and vulnerabilities include denial of service (DOS) attack, virus and worms attacks. Houle and Weaver (2001) explained that DOS attacks are directed to impair the IT services and resources so that legitimate users cannot avail them. Common sources that are witnessed to become targets are bandwidth, data storage services and computing power of a resource. Abundant fake requests are sent to the server to make it incapable and unavailable to cater the requests from legitimate users. Viruses and worms are also common threats that reside in a computer without the knowledge of the owner and perform spiteful actions to harm the data. Viruses and worms are automatically installed on the system if the user opens a compromised email attachment, visits an unreliable website, opens an infected image or clicks on a compromised online advertisement etc. Non-repudiation was defined by Hole (2009); it ensures that the transfer of messages between participating parties is valid and re al. Effective security measures need to be taken by companies to ensure that sender and receiver cannot deny the transfer and receiving of the messages, respectively. 3. Counter Measures for Improving Security Cannady and Harrell (n.d.) proposed a technique to tackle the threat of insider theft; they recommended that ‘user profiles’ should be developed and stored in the server. These user profiles are developed on the basis of routine activities

Sigmund Freud Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 2

Sigmund Freud - Essay Example Sigmund Freud is well-remembered by history not for coming up with the right answers,but for asking the right questions.His conception of mental illness as something that could be understood,engaged with,and treated transformed our conception of the mentally ill or mentally disabled,and led to gradual improvements in the treatment of sufferers, both of emotional disturbance and cognitive disability. For a long time, mental handicaps were seen as completely insurmountable, just something that nobody could engage with or do anything about. In the 20th century, though, that began to change. The notion that mental illness was treatable began to become widespread, and mental hospitals because places of treatment rather than mere confinement. A good example of the changing attitudes is the 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, based on Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel of the same title. In it, Randle McMurphy, played by Jack Nicholson, is transferred from prison to a mental instit ution, where he challenges the way the institution is run. Prior to his arrival, the institution is essentially a holding pen, a place where people are kept because society doesn’t want to deal with them. There is no real expectation that anyone ever will, or ever can, leave the institution or be cured of their problems. Indeed, McMurphy initially goes there because he thinks it will be an easier place than prison to serve out the remainder of his sentence, only to discover that one he’s in the institutional system, he can be kept there indefinitely against his will. However, by engaging with the other patients as human beings, McMurphy challenges the authority of the institutional system. He reveals that most of his fellow â€Å"nuts,† in his phrase, are capable of functioning at a higher level than they are given credit for, and even the mysterious Chief Bromden has been completely misdiagnosed. He’s not deaf and mute; he’s just very quiet. The s tory is a larger metaphor about the emasculating effects of institutional systems (it is not by accident that Nurse Ratched is female) but the very fact that it was set in a mental hospital reveals a serious change in attitudes toward the mentally ill and disabled. The 1960s were a fertile time for changing attitudes, and the liberation of McMurphy’s compatriots should be seen in that context. In 1968, the Special Olympics were founded, as parents of mentally disabled children were encouraged for the first time to take pride in their offspring despite their disability. Prior to this era, such parents were frequently told to have their children permanently institutionalized, and tell people they were dead. As another example, three years prior to the release of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, there had been a famous television expose of the Willowbrook State School, a grossly abusive and inadequate institution for mentally disabled children and youths. It led to a publ ic outcry and a series of reforms in how such institutions were run. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, in that sense, is chronicling an unfolding cultural narrative about the treatment of mental handicaps; it’s a story about changing attitudes that came out in a time of changing attitudes. There is often an easy narrative applied to the Civil War, one in which evil, racist Confederates are opposed by virtuous, non-racist Union troops. Few would phrase it in exactly that way, but that is the basic structure of the model many people absorb from pop culture and conventional wisdom. Like most such good-vs.-evil narratives, it is a gross oversimplification that misses much of its own point. Reality is, as ever, more complex. At another end of the spectrum, one finds those who insist that the war had nothing to do with slavery, that that was a mere incidental issue. Considering that every state that seceded wrote an elaborate proclamation of their reasons, and that every one of those documents cites slavery as their central ideological issue, the