Potential threats and mitigation tools for Network Attacks

Abstract

In today’s data hungry and interconnected world, the use of technology has become an integral part of our daily lives. As our reliance on technology grows, so does the need to keep the data that is captured, collated, processed and disseminated through our use of such data secure. Network security relates to the field of securing such data as it is moved between systems from the prying eyes of malicious actors or others, who through various network attack methods and exploits, seek to potentially misuse this data for their own benefit and/or further their own causes. This paper seeks to analyse some recent network attacks that have been launched against companies in the past five years, how these attacks work and the societal impact that these attacks when successful, be it financially through extortion or theft, through the loss of data or reputationally where customers trust and confidence in a brand or product is negatively impacted. Additionally, we will perform a deeper analysis of such an attack against a company as a case study and determine what happened, and what further could be done to mitigate or prevent the attack from occurring in the first place. However, before we can perform such an analysis, we need to discuss what a network attack is and some of the types of attacks that can occur.