Network Security and Cryptography Report Writing - IT Computer Science Assignment Help

Assignment Task

Task 

Scenario
Business Overview and Challenge
Video Zone Limited is a video streaming company established in 2001 with its headquarters in London, United Kingdom. The company's primary business is a subscription-based streaming service offering online streaming from a library of films and television series to millions of subscribers around the world. Currently, its streaming service is available in Europe, the United States and Canada only. The company is planning to expand its platform to new customers in Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Caribbean within the next few years. Subscribers choose movies and television titles from the main Video Zone website or mobile app. They create an account using an email address and password, can manage their online account, make payments to renew their subscriptions and download movies from the website and mobile app.

Copies of all digital films and movies are stored in its in-house data centre which consists of a huge network of computer servers that can be streamed over the internet to subscribers via the company’s website and mobile app. However, the company’s data centre is struggling to cope with its growing customer base and inability to deliver real-time streaming of different media file types including video and audio quality in Ultra HD and 4K resolutions. In some cases, customers with low bandwidth internet connections have suffered poor video quality and buffering when streaming online content. To support its business growth and planned expansion, Video Zone has embarked on a complete redesign of the company's traditional network infrastructure. This will require a phased migration within the next three years of its own data centre to Amazon Web Services (AWS), a public cloud technology infrastructure to scale the online streaming service and cater for new customers.

A competitor video streaming platform was recently hit by a ransomware attack, causing network disruption and significant data loss. Restoration of customer data and digital movies was not complete until six months after the incident. Video Zone is aware of the incident and Thomas, the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), has created a plan to allow automated backup of data to a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device. Video Zone has asked all staff to attend an optional social engineering training course. However, a recent review has highlighted that several members of email-based customer service and finance department staff are yet to complete this training.

Network Overview

• Video Zone’s data centre located in London consists of about 100 servers. The company also holds personal and financial information on millions of its subscribers on its servers.
• The Video Zone web server hosts both the main Video Zone website and mobile Application Programmable Interfaces (APIs).
• The company has set up a public-facing blog on the web server to engage with its customers about new features to their streaming platform. The details of the exact setup are shown below:

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Supsystic Digital Publications 1.6.9 WP Plugin
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• The company uses an internal non-encrypted SMTP server for email communication between staff at the London office.
• During the COVID-19 pandemic, many of Video Zone’s network administrators have been working from home. Whenever there is a network issue, they can remotely access the data centre and company internal network using a remote desktop application from their personal computers and fix the issue.
• The Network Attached Storage (NAS) device is kept in-house, in the server room which is always locked and accessible to all staff members.
• The diagram of the company’s network architecture is shown below:

Task 1 – Risk Assessment 
This is a complex scenario; you should read it several times to identify what you consider to be critical information that needs to be secured, and where you think the threats may come from. You will need to make some reasonable assumptions here since the scenario does not provide a complete list of data/information or technology employed.
a) Analyse the scenario and identify what you consider to be the FIVE (5) most important electronically held information assets for Video Zone. Justify your decision.
b) Create a table (see below) that lists the assets. For each asset identify the main security threats that you think could affect its confidentiality (C), integrity (I) or availability (A). Remember, threats can be accidents as well as malicious. There are likely to be multiple threats for each asset and the same threats are likely for several assets.

Task 2 – Controlling the risks – Explanation 
Once you have identified the highest risks, you need to make recommendations on how to control those risks, i.e., what security you will put in place.
a) Discuss each of the threats you have identified in Task 1b) and recommend what security implementations to mitigate the risks. For higher marks, consider including alternative countermeasures to mitigate the risks and provide clear justifications. Where you use a technical term, you should explain it.

b) i) Provide detailed explanations about THREE (3) different types of attacks to which the public-facing blog setup is vulnerable. For extra marks, provide references to exploits and security advisory notes for each vulnerability.

ii) Outline a strategy that could be used to detect the presence of ALL THREE (3) of the vulnerabilities featured in your answer to Task 2b) i) and describe technical solutions that would prevent the exploitation of the vulnerabilities described in your answer to Task 2b) i).

Task 3 – Securing the network 
Thomas, the CISO has suggested that Virtual Private Network (VPN) technology, a Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) and firewalls might be useful to help secure the corporate network.
a) Explain the key features of a VPN and how it could be applied here to address risk(s) associated with staff working remotely. Explain the suitable type of VPN connection option that is appropriate for the scenario and justify your recommendations.

b) As part of securing the corporate network, discuss the use of firewalls to secure the entire network and of a Demilitarised Zone (DMZ). Draw a new network diagram from Figure 1, showing new components which include firewalls, a VPN connection for staff working remotely and a DMZ. You must include all components from Figure 1 in your new diagram and justify your network design.

c) Discuss how you will improve the security on the internal email server and Network Attached Storage (NAS) device. You must provide a detailed discussion of any appropriate technology and methods in your recommendations.

Task 4 – Maintaining Security 
Explain any actions you would recommend for ensuring security is taken seriously by all staff, especially the staff members of the email-based customer service and finance department. Discuss how you would monitor the effectiveness of the social engineering training course.

Task 5 Reflective commentary 
Using the Rolfe, G., Freshwater, D. and Jasper, M. (2001) model, critically review the learning that you have undertaken in order to complete this assignment. Based upon your learning, your reflection should include a description; an analysis; and an action plan in order to bring about improvements in the future.

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