FUNDAMENTALS OF INFORMATION SECURITY

AND

FOUNDATION OF CYBER SECURITY

Learning Outcome

By the end of the course you will be able to,

Differentiate the objectives of information security –
confidentiality, integrity and availability.
Use information security jargon in conversations.
Differentiate symmetric and asymmetric cryptography.
Understand generation of digital signatures.
Understand the functioning of common network security
technologies: firewall, IDS
Understand why input validation is very important for
software applications.

By the end of the course, you will be able to confidently

participate in discussions involving information security.

Why information security?

Every organization reliant on IT for pursuing their mission –
government, military, healthcare, education, retail etc. needs
to protect themselves from such attacks.
What can happen after a cyber-attack?
• Organization name hits headlines!
• Loss in business: loss of customers, reputation/brand
damage, trade secrets, strategies, plans leaked
• Legal penalties: lawsuits filed by customers for privacy
breach.
• Regular functioning crippled: email systems down,
automated payroll processing down, network outage etc.
• Defamation: Confidential emails leaked; etc

What should be done to protect an organization

from cyber-attacks (and their consequences)?
• Information security: Protecting IT assets. (technical
definition later)

What are assets that need protection?

• Information: Customer data, source code, design
documents, financial reports , employee
records, intellectual property, etc.
• Information systems: Computers, networks, other devices,
cables etc.

What is your role, in protecting these assets?

• You build/maintain/test/operate information systems that

must be secure. Security is one of your responsibilities -
explicit or implicit.

In this section, you’ll learn the fundamental principles of

information security.
Categories of attacks

Cyber Security Goals

The objective of Cybersecurity is to protect information from
being stolen, compromised or attacked. Cybersecurity can be
measured by at least one of three goals
1. Protect the confidentiality of data.
2. Preserve the integrity of data.
3. Promote the availability of data for authorized users.
These goals form the confidentiality, integrity, availability
(CIA) triad, the basis of all security programs. The CIA triad is
a security model that is designed to guide policies for
information security within the premises of an organization
or company. This model is also referred to as the AIC
(Availability, Integrity, and Confidentiality) triad to avoid the
confusion with the Central Intelligence Agency. The elements
of the triad are considered the three most crucial
components of security.

Confidentiality
Confidentiality is roughly equivalent to privacy and avoids the
unauthorized disclosure of information. It involves the
protection of data, providing access for those who are
allowed to see it while disallowing others from learning
anything about its content. It prevents essential information
from reaching the wrong people while making sure that the
right people can get it. Data encryption is a good example to
ensure confidentiality.

Integrity
Integrity refers to the methods for ensuring that data is real,
accurate and safeguarded from unauthorized user
modification. It is the property that information has not be
altered in an unauthorized way, and that source of the
information is genuine.

Availability
Availability is the property in which information is accessible
and modifiable in a timely fashion by those authorized to do
so. It is the guarantee of reliable and constant access to our
sensitive data by authorized people.

Cryptographic techniques.
Hashing

Hash functions are extremely useful and appear in almost all

information security applications.
A hash function is a mathematical function that converts a
numerical input value into another compressed numerical
value. The input to the hash function is of arbitrary length
but output is always of fixed length.
Applications of Hash Functions
There are two direct applications of hash function based on
its cryptographic properties.

Password Storage
Hash functions provide protection to password storage.
Instead of storing password in clear, mostly all logon
processes store the hash values of passwords in the file.
The Password file consists of a table of pairs which are in the
form (user id, h(P)).
An intruder can only see the hashes of passwords, even if he
accessed the password. He can neither logon using hash nor
can he derive the password from hash value since hash
function possesses the property of pre-image resistance.

Data Integrity Check

Data integrity check is a most common application of the
hash functions. It is used to generate the checksums on data
files. This application provides assurance to the user about
correctness of the data.

Digital Signature
A digital signature is a mathematical technique which
validates the authenticity and integrity of a message,
software or digital documents. It allows us to verify the
author name, date and time of signatures, and authenticate
the message contents. The digital signature offers far more
inherent security and intended to solve the problem of
tampering and impersonation (Intentionally copy another
person's characteristics) in digital communications. The
computer-based business information authentication
interrelates both technology and the law. It also calls for
cooperation between the people of different professional
backgrounds and areas of expertise. The digital signatures
are different from other electronic signatures not only in
terms of process and result, but also it makes digital
signatures more serviceable for legal purposes. Some
electronic signatures that legally recognizable as signatures
may not be secure as digital signatures and may lead to
uncertainty and disputes.
Application of Digital Signature
The important reason to implement digital signature to
communication is:

Authentication
Authentication is a process which verifies the identity of a
user who wants to access the system. In the digital signature,
authentication helps to authenticate the sources of
messages.
Non-repudiation
Non-repudiation means assurance of something that cannot
be denied. It ensures that someone to a contract or
communication cannot later deny the authenticity of their
signature on a document or in a file or the sending of a
message that they originated.

Integrity
Integrity ensures that the message is real, accurate and
safeguards from unauthorized user modification during the
transmission.

Cyber Security Challenges

Today cybersecurity is the main component of the
country's overall national security and economic
security strategies. In India, there are so many
challenges related to cybersecurity. With the increase
of the cyber-attacks, every organization needs a
security analyst who makes sure that their system is
secured. These security analysts face many challenges
related to cybersecurity such as securing confidential
data of government organizations, securing the private
organization servers, etc.
Ransomware Evolution
Ransomware is a type of malware in which the data on a
victim's computer is locked, and payment is demanded
before the ransomed data is unlocked. After successful
payment, access rights returned to the victim. Ransomware is
the bane of cybersecurity, data professionals, IT, and
executivesToday's DRaaS solutions are the best defence
against the ransomware attacks. With DRaaS solutions
method, we can automatically back up our files, easily
identify which backup is clean, and launch a fail-over with the
press of a button when malicious attacks corrupt our data.

Blockchain Revolution
Blockchain technology is the most important invention in
computing era. It is the first time in human history that we
have a genuinely native digital medium for peer-to-peer
value exchange. The blockchain is a technology that enables
cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. The blockchain is a vast global
platform that allows two or more parties to do a transaction
or do business without needing a third party for establishing
trust. It is difficult to predict what blockchain systems will
offer in regards to cybersecurity. The professionals in
cybersecurity can make some educated guesses regarding
blockchain. As the application and utility of blockchain in a
cybersecurity context emerges, there will be a healthy
tension but also complementary integrations with traditional,
proven, cybersecurity approaches.
IoT Threats
IoT stands for Internet of Things. It is a system of interrelated
physical devices which can be accessible through the
internet. The connected physical devices have a unique
identifier (UID) and have the ability to transfer data over a
network without any requirements of the human-to-human
or human-to-computer interaction. The firmware and
software which is running on IoT devices make consumer and
businesses highly susceptible to cyber-attacks. When IoT
things were designed, it is not considered in mind about the
used in cybersecurity and for commercial purposes. So every
organization needs to work with cybersecurity professionals
to ensure the security of their password policies, session
handling, user verification, multifactor authentication, and
security protocols to help in managing the risk.

AI Expansion
AI short form is Artificial intelligence. According to John
McCarthy, father of Artificial Intelligence defined AI: "The
science and engineering of making intelligent machines,
especially intelligent computer programs." It is an area of
computer science which is the creation of intelligent
machines that do work and react like humans. Some of the
activities related to artificial intelligence include speech
recognition, Learning, Planning, Problem-solving, etc. The key
benefits with AI into our cybersecurity strategy has the ability
to protect and defend an environment when the malicious
attack begins, thus mitigating the impact. AI take immediate
action against the malicious attacks at a moment when a
threats impact a business.

Serverless Apps Vulnerability

Serverless architecture and apps is an application which
depends on third-party cloud infrastructure or on a back-end
service such as google cloud function, Amazon web services
(AWS) lambda, etc. The serverless apps invite the cyber
attackers to spread threats on their system easily because
the users access the application locally or off-server on their
device. They don't need to worry about the underlying
infrastructure. The web-services and data processing tools
are examples of the most common serverless apps.

Conclusion

I understand the fundamental principles of information

security, general awareness on Cyber-attacks &
terminologies of Cyber Security, importance of cryptography
for data security, threat modeling for secure design of
software, key concepts of identity and access and importance
of governance & administration of identities.