Course Code : OSEI-041 : OSEI-041
Course Title : Information Security
Maximum Marks : 20
Last Date of Submission : As per SED Notification on IGNOU’s website
Question 1: In today's business context, the employees of an organisation
discharge their daily duties by using the tools and services provided by the
organisation on its Enterprise Network. There is a need for employees on
travel or out of their workplace to access the Enterprise Network to look at or
modify/add information on the network. What are the elements that help us
secure network connectivity? (10 Marks)
SOLUTION
A network comprises two or more computational systems connected by
physical and/or wireless connections. Networks broadly use peer-to-peer or
client-server architecture apart from a number of networking protocols for the
connected systems to communicate with each other.
Network security is a subgroup of networking. It involves securing the
connected network infrastructure from the core to the edge of the network
perimeter. Typically managed by a network administrator, network security
involves implementing IT security policy and deploying network software and
hardware to:
● Protect the network, its infrastructure and all its traffic from external
cyberattacks
● Protect all IT assets and resources available via the network from
unauthorized access
● Ensure authorized users have adequate access to these network IT assets
and resources to effectively perform work
Some of the most common threats to network and computer systems are:
● Distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS)
● Malware
● Spyware
● Adware
● Computer worms
● Botnets
● Trojan horses
An IT security policy identifies the rules and procedures for all authorized
individuals accessing and using an organization's IT assets and resources. It is
the principle document for network security. Its goal is to outline rules for
ensuring the security of organizational assets.
Employees today often use several tools and applications to conduct business
productively. Policy driven by the organization’s culture supports these routines
and focuses on safely enabling these tools for employees. Enforcement and
auditing procedures for any regulatory compliance to which an organization is
subject must be mapped out in the policy as well.
Enforcement
Enforcement concerns analyzing all network traffic flows and should aim to
preserve the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of all systems and
information on the network. When it comes to enforcing protections, network
security operates on a defense-in-depth model and follows the principles of the
“CIA” triad:
● Confidentiality – protecting assets from unauthorized entities
● Integrity – ensuring the modification of assets is handled in a specified
and authorized manner
● Availability – maintaining a state of the system in which authorized users
have continuous access to said assets
Strong enforcement strives to provide CIA to network traffic flows. This begins
with a classification of traffic flows by application, user and content. As the
vehicle for content, all applications must first be identified by the firewall
regardless of port, protocol, evasive tactics or encryption. Proper application
identification provides full visibility into the content it carries. Policy
management can be simplified by identifying applications and mapping their
use to a user identity while inspecting the content at all times for the
preservation of CIA principles.
The concept of defense in depth is observed as a best practice in network
security, prescribing for the network to be secured in layers. These layers apply
an assortment of security controls to sift out threats trying to enter the
network: access control, identification, authentication, malware detection,
encryption, file type filtering, URL filtering and content filtering.
These layers are built through the deployment of firewalls, intrusion prevention
systems (IPS) and antivirus components. Among the components for
enforcement, the firewall (an access control mechanism) is the foundation of
network security.
Providing CIA of network traffic flows is difficult to accomplish with legacy
technology. Traditional firewalls are plagued by controls that rely on ports and
protocols to identify applications – which have now developed evasive
characteristics to bypass the controls – and the assumption that IP address
equates to user identity.
Next-generation firewalls retain an access control mission but re-engineer the
technology; they observe all traffic across all ports, can classify applications and
their content, and identify employees as users. This enables access controls
nuanced enough to enforce the IT security policy as it applies to each employee
of an organization, with no compromise in security.
Additional services for layering network security to implement a
defense-in-depth strategy have been incorporated in the traditional model as
add-on components. IPS and antivirus, for example, are effective tools for
scanning content and preventing malware attacks. However, organizations
must be cautious of the complexity and cost that additional components may
add to network security and, more importantly, not depend on these additional
components to do the core job of the firewall.
Question 2: What is Application Layer? Explain the protocols included in the
Application Layer. (10 Marks)
SOLUTION
Application layer is the top most layer in OSI and TCP/IP layered model. This
layer exists in both layered Models because of its significance, of interacting
with user and user applications. This layer is for applications which are
involved in communication system.
A user may or may not directly interacts with the applications. Application
layer is where the actual communication is initiated and reflects. Because this
layer is on the top of the layer stack, it does not serve any other layers.
Application layer takes the help of Transport and all layers below it to
communicate or transfer its data to the remote host.
When an application layer protocol wants to communicate with its peer
application layer protocol on remote host, it hands over the data or
information to the Transport layer. The transport layer does the rest with the
help of all the layers below it.
There’is an ambiguity in understanding Application Layer and its protocol. Not
every user application can be put into Application Layer. except those
applications which interact with the communication system. For example,
designing software or text-editor cannot be considered as application layer
programs.
On the other hand, when we use a Web Browser, which is actually using Hyper
Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to interact with the network. HTTP is Application
Layer protocol.
Another example is File Transfer Protocol, which helps a user to transfer text
based or binary files across the network. A user can use this protocol in either
GUI based software like FileZilla or CuteFTP and the same user can use FTP in
Command Line mode.
Hence, irrespective of which software you use, it is the protocol which is
considered at Application Layer used by that software. DNS is a protocol which
helps user application protocols such as HTTP to accomplish its work.
