TECH2400 Introduction to Cyber Security Report 2 Sample
Assignment Details
Situation:
Mark, a cybersecurity analyst at DCS Inc., plays a vital role in safeguarding the company's information assets. During routine security assessments, he uncovers a significant vulnerability in the network infrastructure that poses a risk to sensitive customer data and valuable intellectual property. Addressing this vulnerability becomes a top priority.
Ethical Dilemma:
Mark finds himself in a challenging situation where he must make critical decisions regarding the vulnerability at hand. On one hand, he is tasked with recommending risk mitigation strategies that effectively address the cybersecurity vulnerabilities and threats associated with the identified vulnerability. This requires him to carefully assess the potential impact on data security, identify suitable controls, and propose measures to prevent data breaches. It is crucial for Mark's recommendations to align with industry best practices and consider the unique IT infrastructure and technologies employed by the organisation.
Furthermore, Mark must thoroughly analyse the privacy, legal, ethical, and security implications linked to the vulnerability. This entails evaluating the impact on data privacy, understanding the legal and regulatory frameworks governing data protection, and considering the ethical considerations involved in handling sensitive customer information. Mark's proposed solutions must not only rectify the vulnerability but also ensure compliance with relevant laws and regulations, safeguard individual privacy rights, and uphold ethical standards.
Additionally, Mark needs to assess the broader ramifications on the organisation's IT infrastructure and technology usage. This involves identifying potential disruptions to business operations, evaluating the financial consequences, and devising strategies to mitigate associated risks. Mark must demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of the interconnectedness between cybersecurity, privacy, legal, ethical, and security matters. By offering holistic solutions that encompass these factors, Mark can contribute to the organisation's cybersecurity resilience, protect customer data, and promote responsible and secure technology utilisation.
By navigating the ethical dilemma skilfully and providing well-reasoned recommendations, Mark plays a vital role in fortifying the organisation's defences against cybersecurity threats. Through careful analysis and consideration of privacy, legal, ethical, and security aspects, Mark ensures that the organisation can effectively combat the complexities of the cyber landscape while maintaining the highest standards of privacy, integrity, and ethical conduct.
Instructions
a) Read the situation and scenario on the previous page.
b) Answer and address the six (6) questions listed below.
c) Include at least 6 (six) references in your report.
d) Refer to the assessment marking guide to assist you in completing all the assessment criteria.
e) Submit your report to MyKBS (Moodle Assignment) once you have completed your report.
Your report must include the following questions:
1. What risks and consequences could result from the identified network infrastructure vulnerability? How might these impact data security and overall operations?
2. What strategies would you recommend to mitigate the vulnerability and prevent data breaches?
3. What ethical considerations arise when deciding whether to disclose the vulnerability? Factors such as stakeholder impact, legal obligations, and reputation should be considered.
4. Analyse the role of transparency, responsible disclosure, and informed consent in handling cybersecurity vulnerabilities. How can these principles be applied to foster communication and collaboration?
5. Analyse the relevant legal and regulatory requirements for the vulnerability. Identify privacy, legal, and security issues, and propose steps for ensuring compliance.
6. Examine the potential impact of the identified vulnerability on the organisation's reputation and public perception. How can effective communication and reputation management strategies mitigate reputational damage and maintain stakeholder trust in the face of cybersecurity incidents?
Solution
Introduction
Mark is an analyst of cybersecurity at DCS Inc. which has the responsibility of securing the assets information of the company. He did his job very well and used routine security assessments that helped him to know about the vulnerabilities that occurred in the information system. One day he finds a serious issue in the network infrastructure that puts essential intellectual property and sensitive customer data at risk while conducting routine security assessments. It becomes important to fix the issues to safeguard sensitive information.
This report aims to evaluate and provide a solution to the identified risks, and ethical, security, and legal considerations that are surrounding this vulnerability.
Risks and Consequences
The risks and consequences that could result from the identified network infrastructure vulnerability are as follows:
• Data breach: The data breach occurs when the data is stolen and removed from the system without any consent from the owner (Spinello 2021). Data breaches harm the company in various ways resulting in financial losses due to the theft of assets.
• Exploits: In weak 3 it is discussed that exploits are a form of attack where a cyber-criminal exploits an existing software vulnerability, flaw or weakness in operating systems, applications, or networks to gain unauthorized access to victim systems or to execute malicious code for university assignment help.
• Trust issues: It creates trust issues for the company among its customers and stakeholders, and disclosure of private, sensitive data that cybercriminals could use to steal identities.
Recommended Strategies
Ethical consideration
As a cybersecurity analyst, Mark has to maintain ethical considerations around the exposure of the vulnerability. These ethical considerations are as follows:
• Firstly, Mark plays a crucial role in strengthening the organization's defenses against cybersecurity threats by deftly navigating the ethical dilemma and offering well-reasoned recommendations. Mark has to inform all the stakeholders about the issue that occurred in the network infrastructure because transparency is important for establishing trust and fostering collaboration among stakeholders (Martínez-Peláez et al. 2023). When the stakeholders are aware of the problem all have their solutions to deal with the problem that minimize the potentiality of harm.
• Legal obligations are also one of the ethical considerations that Mark has to consider while identifying the possible business operations disruptions, the financial impact assessment, and the development of risk-related strategies (Haque 2023). Mark has to use a transparent disclosure approach to comply ethical considerations with the legal obligations. All the industry-applicable rules and data protection laws are followed by Mark to meet the legal obligations.
• Last but not least, as a cybersecurity analyst he has to carefully balance the possible harm from the issue hidden against the impact of disclosure on the reputation of the organization. This also caused negative effects on DCS Inc.’s reputation, such as the black-market sale of private customer information. He has to use various communication strategies to minimize the reputational harm by communicating with stakeholders to inform them about the vulnerability. Mark makes sure that the company can successfully navigate the complexity of cyberspace while upholding the highest standards of integrity, privacy, and moral behavior by carefully analyzing and taking into account privacy, legal, ethical, and security issues (Dhirani et al. 2023).
The role of transparency, responsible disclosure, and informed consent
Transparency: Transparency is an important principle to foster communication and collaboration. It can help Mark maintain the trust of customers and the reputation of DCS Inc. But he also eliminates the unnecessary panic information among the customers and stakeholders. Transparency gives insights into security procedures and guidelines. By maintaining transparency Mark provides regular updates and security measures to enhance communication and collaboration (Matheus, Janssen and Janowski 2021).
Responsible disclosure: Responsible disclosure is a process that enables Mark to safely report found vulnerabilities to its team. It allows the company to resolve problems before making them public. Under this principle, Mark established 90-day periods within which he must be publicly disclosed about the vulnerability.
Informed consent: Users should be allowed to be aware of the risks associated with the vulnerabilities and given the freedom to ask questions and clarify all doubts. Users need to be aware of potential weaknesses and the safeguards in place to reduce the risk.
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Figure 1. Application of principles
Source: Created by author
Relevant legal and regulatory requirements
Relevant legal and regulatory requirements are crucial for an effective cybersecurity strategy (Matheus, Janssen and Janowski 2021). It is important to identify and evaluate the vulnerability to reduce the risks and preserve ethical standards. With the help of this identification, DCS improved its network structure by ensuring compliance with legal and regulatory requirements. Mark must adhere to the laws to propose effective measures for compliance. Some of these are discussed below:
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Proposed Steps for ensuring compliance
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Impact on the organization’s reputation and public perception
The identified vulnerability caused negative effects on DCS Inc.’s reputation, such as the black-market sale of private customer information. To minimize reputational harm and manage stakeholder trust Mark has to use proficient utilization of noteworthy management and compelling communication procedures. Below are the examples of it:
• Viable emergency reaction begins with open and genuine communication. The provoked notification of the occurrence, by stakeholders a comprehensive clarification of it, and standard upgrades on relief endeavors are exceedingly esteemed (Sapriel 2021). Data that are withheld or delayed merely serve to extend guesses and devastate confidence.
• Workshop 6 defines that spreading awareness and training employees on cyber threats, best practices, and identifying threats enhances their knowledge and ability to protect their organisation against any cyber threats or cyber risk.
• Given that individual information may have been compromised, recognize the effect on stakeholders. Showing empathy and a commitment to advance is illustrated to dodge comparative circumstances in the future by offering sincere statements of regret and giving particular suggestions (Kuipers and Schonheit 2022).
• Stakeholders change in what they require and what stresses them. Provide data that are relevant to each group's concerns and create messages that are custom-made for them. As well as demonstrating merely understanding their needs, this cultivates trust (Wang and Park 2017).
Conclusion
This is concluded that Mark is an analyst of cybersecurity at DCS Inc. which has the responsibility of securing the assets information of the company. He found a critical issue in the infrastructure network. Mark plays a crucial role in strengthening the organization's defences against cybersecurity threats by deftly navigating the ethical dilemma and offering well-reasoned recommendations. There are various steps taken by him to resolve the issue. He critically evaluates all the aspects of privacy, legal, and security in ethical consideration.
References
Dhirani, L.L., Mukhtiar, N., Chowdhry, B.S. and Newe, T., 2023. Ethical dilemmas and privacy issues in emerging technologies: a review. Sensors, 23(3), p.1151. https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/23/3/1151
Haque, W., 2023. Internship Report On “Legal Implications of Credit Risk Management of IDLC Finance Limited”. http://1031095248080.20bet-br.org/handle/52243/2854
Jha, S.K. and Kumar, S.S., 2022. Cybersecurity in the Age of the Internet of Things: An Assessment of the Users’ Privacy and Data Security. In Expert Clouds and Applications: Proceedings of ICOECA 2021 (pp. 49-56). Springer Singapore. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-16-2126-0_5
Kuipers, S. and Schonheit, M., 2022. Data breaches and effective crisis communication: A comparative analysis of corporate reputational crises. Corporate Reputation Review, 25(3), pp.176-197. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41299-021-00121-9
Martínez-Peláez, R., Ochoa-Brust, A., Rivera, S., Félix, V.G., Ostos, R., Brito, H., Félix, R.A. and Mena, L.J., 2023. Role of digital transformation for achieving sustainability: mediated role of stakeholders, key capabilities, and technology. Sustainability, 15(14), p.11221. https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/14/11221
Matheus, R., Janssen, M. and Janowski, T., 2021. Design principles for creating digital transparency in government. Government Information Quarterly, 38(1), p.101550. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0740624X20303294
Mishra, A., Alzoubi, Y.I., Gill, A.Q. and Anwar, M.J., 2022. Cybersecurity enterprises policies: A comparative study. Sensors, 22(2), p.538. https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/22/2/538
Sapriel, C. (2021). Managing stakeholder communication during a cyber crisis. Cyber Security: A Peer-Reviewed Journal, 4(4), 380-387. https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/hsp/jcs/2021/00000004/00000004/art00007
Spinello, R.A., 2021. Corporate data breaches: A moral and legal analysis. Journal of Information Ethics, 30(1), pp.12-32. https://search.proquest.com/openview/411f82de1156707443294db8eac6122f/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=2035668
Syafrizal, M., Selamat, S.R. and Zakaria, N.A., 2020. Analysis of cybersecurity standard and framework components. International Journal of Communication Networks and Information Security, 12(3), pp.417-432. https://www.academia.edu/download/78607584/426.pdf
Wang, P. and Park, S.A., 2017. COMMUNICATION IN CYBERSECURITY: A PUBLIC COMMUNICATION MODEL FOR BUSINESS DATA BREACH INCIDENT HANDLING. Issues in Information Systems, 18(2). https://iacis.org/iis/2017/2_iis_2017_136-147.pdf
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