Securing and Protecting Information

Securing and Protecting Information

Author

CMGT 400

Professor 

Data security is vital to almost any business that uses computers and manage information. Every IT department should have a data security assessment that includes a plan to safeguard the company’s information from unauthorized access. The department also should create a plan that reviews the data and its integrity regularly, manage the users’ access and access level to the information, and handles all information backups.

The key is on the balance. Too much security will strangle the information and make it unusable, too much access could create a chaos. In order to secure information the specialist needs to make sure the person accessing the data it is fully authorized. For this is necessary to implement strong authentication mechanisms.

The authentication process attempts to link a user to an ID in the system. The ID, in most cases it is related also to a password that only the user knows (something you know), and in more advanced systems to something else. That something could be:

• Something you are

• Something you have

Something you are is mostly related to biometrics,

“ “Biometrics” has also been used to refer to the emerging field of technology devoted to identification of individuals using biological traits, such as those based on retinal or iris scanning, fingerprints, or face recognition” (THE INTERNATIONAL BIOMETRIC SOCIETY, n.d.)

Something you have is a trusted device that is not easily duplicated, like a phone, a special card, or a security token generator.

These methods in combination with a secure password make for a strong authentication process.

During the authentication process a user will enter his/her password (something you know) and the system will verify that the password it is correct. Nowadays not may systems store passwords in plain text where they can be easily accessed or even recovered during network transmission. More secured systems will locally encrypt the password in an undecipherable hash and send it to be compared with the hash stored in the server. Most systems use MD5 as message algorithm to communicate passwords. This form of transmission it is very popular because it is easily generated and the hash cannot be reversed. (Ciampa, 2009). After the first authentication factor has successfully completed a second factor selected by the administrator comes to play. With something you are, a piece of hardware scans a unique feature of the user, fingerprints are the most common biometric used in the