The internet is the power behind modern day email and voice communication, data transfer, information gathering and online community and friendship. This explosion in technology has created business opportunities all around the world where monetary exchange is an every minute business. With all the combinations of internet benefits comes the threats we hear about or we have been victims of. Threat to data is a major concern for all companies. There is a need to make sure that data stored in companies' computer networks is secure. This means the data need to be available to the people who have access rights and proper permission to the files and information they contain, yet secure from integrity compromise and unavailability. Denial of service is a major threat to companies that offer services like telecommunication, internet services and many other services offered by the computer networks. Criminals are always working hard to get information either for their own monetary gains, political gains or even get attention. Financial fraud and money laundering nowadays involve use of the internet. Attempts by various organizations to come with solutions have resulted to development of standards and protocols meant to be followed to make the networks that constitute the internet secure.
Encryption is one of the methods used to secure information while transit. This method tries to make it hard for an attacker to make any meaning from data that may be stolen while being exchanged between computers or computer user. Encryption takes advantage of using keys to convert the data and sharing keys between the users so that the party's will be able encrypt and decrypt the data. This method has its standards and has been developed along the way as technology continues to be complex and more business and organizations and government entities become targets for cyber criminals and cyber wars. Encryption has application benefits in such area as verification of integrity of the file as message may contain identification of file or data, generation of pseudo random numbers as well as delivery of generated keys. Some of these applications are explained in the following concept. S/MIME(Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension) supports three public key algorithms to encrypt session keys for transmission with the message: Diffie-Hallman, RSA, and triple DES. MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension) is a protocol used to transfer multimedia data. The protocol adds a digitals signature and encryption to a file while being transmitted. This part of the process of addressing the data file to the requesting client so that the delivered file bears the validity that can be trace to the sending host which is one by adding a source and destination in the packed header. It also adds the mime type on the body such that the receiver can identify any compromise on the packet should the packet be affected by replay attack. In this case if the packets digital signature is compromised or the type differs the receiver will reject it and request for retransmission from the soured host.
Digital signatures
From a hash function of either 160-bit SHA-1 or MD5 to create message digests.
Secure socket Layer
Virtual private networks
This is a Networking technology that supports multiprotocol virtual private networks (VPNs) that enable users to access corporate networks securely across the Internet or other networks by dialing into an Internet service provider (ISP) or by connecting directly to the Internet. The Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) tunnels, or encapsulates, IP, IPX, and traffic inside of IP packets. This means that users can remotely run applications that are dependent upon particular network protocols. This is one major area of concern for users and organization because a breach of security can easily occur over the internet traffic. This problem has been minimized by development of tunneling of the packet through secure networks. An organization may use another organization network as a link. The hosting network has an established security that safeguards its own interest while serving the interest of the other company. The mutual agreement works by the host network availing channel and ports which will only be available for the company needing tunneling service. The packets are encrypted at the access server then sent through secure routing protocol like EIGRP which will also determine the secure path over the internet to the receiving server and the destination host will have a key to decrypt the received packets
(HTTPS) Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure.
HTTP protocol was developed for use with simple web services, without such things as dynamic graphics that needed no encryption or much security. Most of the users of the internet were not as sensitive to the need of web online security as we are today. The increase in threat and experiences that many organizations continued to go through after attacks became evident and increased with time required development of secure ways to transfer information across the web. This demand for security led to development of the HTTPS protocol which came with more cryptographic and graphic improvements if it were to remain the e-commerce backbone it had become.
HTTPS addresses the security issues with HTTP but at the same time it operates in the same phenomena, the difference being that the data is sent encrypted and also the protocol uses Digital Certificates as a way of confirming the authenticity of a server to the client during a session. The digital certificate is used to determine the keys used to encrypted and decrypt data have not been compromised and new ones generated and the data also replayed. This minimizes the man in the middle attack as well as replay attack. If the keys are compromised the session will be terminated and a new one established. The error also is generated as a log for audit.
When a person visits a website with the https:// prefix a secure session is established between the web server and the client. HTTPS then uses a different port i.e. 443 to ensure that all secure and non-secure communications are kept separately. In a brief the system works in the following way. The client browser inspects the certificate that the web server has to ensure its authenticity and the legitimacy. Once the client has confirmed the certificate is legitimate the browser checks the type of encryption the server applied. After the type of encryption is determined, the client and server will then exchange encryption keys used to encrypt the data on the server side and decrypt on the clients side. This process is complex than regular HTTP communication and because of the extra overhead that is created you might notice a decrease in speed which may be minimal and of significant benefit depending on the level of security needed on the data being accessed. If a packet sniffer captures a HTTPS packet it will be of no use unless the attacker has a way of decrypting the captured packet.
Network Layer Security
There are various that affect the network layer of the OSI model that include IP Spoofing, RIP attacks ICMP attacks Ping flood Packet sniffing among others. This is one main are where denial of service attacks occur. In that case there is a need to overcome such vulnerabilities with a common standard. This has been addressed using firewalls that come mainly as software or hardware with installed software set at critical locations of a network to filter un-wanted traffic and from iffy destinations. Use of a dummy server is also one way administrator do to misdirect potential attackers who will be thinking they are accessing the network. When they launch an attack, it goes to the dummy which will deal with the attack out of the network and also generate an audit for the administrator to assess the risks the network could have been exposed to. According to the article, Network Security at the Network layer 3 "Utilizing IPsec VPN at the network layer and by using session and user (or host) authentication and data encryption technologies at the data link layer, the risk of IP Spoofing and Packet Sniffing will be reduced significantly. IPv 6 in combination with IPsec provides better security mechanisms for the communication at the network level and above." (Javinn 2007)
Conclusion
