Responding to Memo Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Responding to Memo - Essay Example The consequence was that the company suffered a land attack which subsequently forced our networks into a "ping of death" (Liu, Yu, and Jing, 2005). This means that the network was forced into the continued and repetitive transmission of packages which exceeded the allowable size. As you may well recall, the DoS attack paralyzed our systems and cost us in excess of $150,000. Attacks which exploit security holes in hardware and software systems are quite common. Apart from the above described incident, the company was subjected to a second attack as a direct outcome of a security hole in its Cisco IOS router. This, the most popular corporate router, had a serious security flaw which the company only identified after the release of the router and even then did not inform users about (Zetter, 2006). Consequently, our company, just like countless others was attacked through this security hole. In the second place, our identity renders us the target of attacks. It is unlikely that any hacker would deliberately target your daughter's computer and infect it with a Trojan Horse but where we are concerned, the issue is quite different. As a profit-making organization, we represent potentially financially lucrative information (Rhodes-Ousley, Bragg, and Strassberg, 2003). We are targeted by professional hackers who seek out security flaws in our system for the explicit purpose of infecting us, either in order to access our data or to bring our networks to a halt (Rhodes-Ousley, Bragg, and Strassberg, 2003). The fact of the matter is that our department has protected our networks as much as is possible. The fact that we send out malware alerts or often engage in the cleaning up of the system is quite simply because we cannot afford any viruses on our networks. Malware could undermine the integrity of our data and, therefore, we often resort to the exercise of extreme precaution. Indeed, it is quite probable that your daughter's computer has some malware on it but that she is not able to identify it. We, on the other hand, identify and remove all malware. Lastly, Windows OS is ore vulnerable to malware than is Macintosh OS. This is because of security holes in the latter which are not present in the former and because hackers target Windows much more than they do Macintosh (Rhodes-Ousley, Bragg, and Strassberg, 2003). Migrating to Macintosh, however, is not an option both because it would be too costly and because it does not have the software range that we need. P2P Memo To: Salamanika Giorgiopolis, Corporate Counsel From: CISO Date: 05/18/2007 Re: Peer to Peer and Piracy Irrespective of the popularity of Peer to Peer Networks and regardless of the fact that everyone is doing it,' company employees are explicitly prohibited from running P2P programs on company computers or from using the company's network connection to download files through these programs. Apart from the aforementioned being explicitly forbidden under company policies and regulations, it comprises an immoral and illegal violation of copyright laws which the company is not going to abide by. Copyright laws are very precise, leaving little room for manoeuvring or interpretation. As Paradise (1999) clarifies, this body of legislature, determines the fortification of