Protect Yourself against computer and cyber attacks
Follow along as the program engagingly teaches computer security concepts by relating them to sports!
Author: Rocco Nardozzo
Overview
Welcome! In today's age, everyone uses a variety of computers every day in their personal life and at work. However, the large use and reliance of computers opens the door for many different security threats and attacks. As a result, it is crucial for users of computers to understand the threats and risks of using computers, as well as learn how to properly protect from the threats, through computer security awareness programs.
Unfortunately, such awareness programs are extremely technical and may be too complex for the average computer user to fully understand. To combat this difficulty, I have created a computer security awareness program that relates all the technical concepts of computer security to different aspects of sports, forming a more interesting and comprehensible program since the majority of users are fans of, or at least familiar with, different sports!
Through the awareness program, I will identify and provide an in-depth, technical, explanation on the different topics required to most effectively protect yourself from computer attacks. Then, I will relate each technical concept directly to a feature of sports to make it easier to understand. Lastly, I will provide some practice questions and games to help viewers master computer security!
To view a quick rundown of the information that will be provided, click here.
What is Computer and Cyber Security?
Computer security is the protection of assets, such as data, software, hardware, and emails, on computers. Cybersecurity, while similar, protects networks of computers from threats and attacks. Overall, computer security and cybersecurity work together to prevent, detect, and respond to threats that could potentially intercept, interrupt, or modify the assets on computers. To do this effectively, it is crucial to understand ways to lower the chances of successful attacks, stop threats while they are occurring, and respond to attacks after they happened to ensure your assets are safe and protected.
Since the use of computers have become extremely prominent, more and more attacks and threats have popped up that can have lasting effects on individuals and companies, like financial loss, legal trouble, or reputation damage. For example, attackers have the ability to gain access to or delete confidential and private data like financial and health records, as well as private photos. In addition, cyberattacks can disrupt operations of businesses and breach customer information or intellectual property. As a result, understanding how to protect your own personal assets, as well as your company's assets, is as important as ever due to how much computers have, and will continue, to become used. In addition, an aspect of computer security is deciding what risks, impacts and likelihood of attacks, you should allow, as there are not unlimited resources. To do so, it is important to examine what assets are the most valuable to you and your company.
Take for example, the common adage, "defense wins championships". To win championships in sports, teams must plan to and successfully protect their endzone, goal, or hoop from their opponents. Similarly, computer and cybersecurity protect their assets from attackers and malware. Like players of a team, all members of a family or organization must do their part in understanding how attacks work to secure assets from being compromised in order to "win the championship" or reach personal and company goals. In sports, one player's poor performance can have major impacts on a game. Computer security is no different, as one employee's poor computer security practices can have major negative impacts on a company. Therefore, it is important for every computer user to learn the components of computer security to keep the technological environment safe and effective.
CIA Triad
While there are many different components to computer and cybersecurity, their core is based on the CIA Triad. The CIA Triad forms the basis for securing computer assets and systems by focusing on protecting their confidentiality, integrity, and availability. As the offense, defense, and special teams are the three aspects that work together to win football games, the confidentiality, integrity, and availability are the three aspects that work together to ensure the security and effectiveness of computer assets.
Confidentiality ensures that only confidential users can view or have access to computer assets. Confidentiality is crucial because the unauthorized access to information and systems can release private information like credit card information, health records, or company plans, all of which can create major problems. For example, sports teams must make sure that the opposing team does not gain access to their plays and plans since the unauthorized access will give the opposing team an advantage to win the game.
Integrity refers to the trustworthiness of assets, making sure everything is accurate and has not been altered by unauthorized parties. Integrity is crucial since the unauthorized modification of assets may have major impacts on individuals and companies, as the modifications of health records, financial records, and company operations will have many negative and potentially dangerous effects. For example, it is extremely important in sports that the score of a game is accurate and unmodified to ensure the winner actually deserved to win.
Lastly, availability ensures that authorized parties have the ability to use the assets. Availability is important since it prevents disruptions that could possibly block crucial assets, like needed information or business operations. Availability protection is crucial to companies, as disrupted operations will majorly impact profit. To understand availability, examine how sports games must proceed without disruptions like power outages or protests in order to complete successfully.
It is important to note, however, that there will never be enough resources available to fully protect the availability, integrity, and confidentiality of every asset. Therefore, individuals and businesses must examine their goals and decide what assets are the most important, focusing on fully protecting the prioritized assets first. Sports teams, for example, must prioritize what positions are most important to their game plan since the salary cap limits how much money they can spend. As a result, the important positions like quarterback will occupy a lot of money, while the backup quarterback will not.
Password Security
While it may seem basic, one of the most important aspects of computer security is ensuring proper password security, as poor password habits are one of the leading causes of breaches. Strong and complex passwords protect the confidentiality and integrity of assets by acting as the first line of defense against unauthorized access. Attackers attempt to use brute force or doxing to break passwords, so it is important to follow certain practices to make sure your passwords are complex and strong, reducing the likelihood of success from the attacker.
Recommendations for strong passwords include:
- Create passwords using at least 14 characters with a mix of uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters. (@C0mP$eCuR1Ty5). This will drastically increase the time it takes for a brute force attack to break the password.
- Avoid using any easily guessed information like names, birthdays, or pets. Also, do not use basic words. This will make it much harder for the attacker to guess the password correctly.
- Consider using a phrase or unpredictable sequences of uncommon words, which will also drastically increase the brute force time.
- Avoid sharing your password with anyone. By sharing your password, you run the risk of the password falling into the hands of the wrong person, as well as having to rely on other people to keep your password safe.
- Do not use the same password for every account. If you use the same password, or similar passwords, for every account, if the password gets compromised, the attacker will have access to all of your accounts. By using different passwords, you can limit the effects of a compromised password.
- Use multi-factor authentication, which is a security process that requires a user to verify their identity in two separate ways before gaining access. It adds an extra layer of protection beyond the password, in case the password gets compromised. For example, a sports player may need to punch in their password and then swipe their card to gain access to the locker room.
Relate using a strong password to the top defenses in soccer. By using complex gameplans, changing their plans every week, utilizing layers of defense, and creating playbooks, defenses will be able to prevent the opposing team from scoring much more effectively than if they used the same, basic plan with no layered defense every game. Passwords are no different. It is essential to use complex passwords, different passwords for each account, and multi-factor authentication to prevent unauthorized access to assets.
Email Security
In today's world, email has become the primary method for communication, both personally and professionally. As a result, it has become targeted by attackers as it serves as the gateway to compromise systems, steal information, and transfer dangerous software, compromising all aspects of the CIA Triad. Since attackers try to exploit emails in a variety of ways, it is crucial to understand how to properly use emails to protect your assets.
For example, attackers use a method called phishing to send fake emails pretending to be from a trusted source attempting to trick you into clicking dangerous links or providing them with sensitive information like passwords or company secrets. Phishing emails tend to have certain features including:
- Suspicious email address containing subtle differences from legit accounts like misspellings or unusual characters. For example, you receive an email from your favorite sports team offering you free tickets, but the sender's address spells the team's name wrong.
- Urgent or threatening language, attempting to pressure you into taking immediate and rushed action. For example, you may receive an email claiming that your account to watch sports games was compromised and you must give them your password immediately to fix it.
- Unusual or unexpected attachments and links. Phishing emails tend to contain files that, if opened, could install dangerous and harmful code on your device.
Phishing emails can be related to your opponent sending you an email pretending to be your coach, asking if you could send them the plays. If you do send them your plays, the other team will know what your team will be trying to run and will be able to stop it and win the game. It is crucial to examine all emails that have an attachment or ask for information to see if there are any indications that it is phishing. If you are not sure, make sure you directly ask the person who sent you the email if it is valid to ensure you do not fall for the attacker's trick.
To help prevent yourself from falling for phishing emails, you can use spam and malware filters that will detect and block suspicious emails and attachments before they reach your inbox. For example, owners of sports teams most likely use spam folders to block emails that do not contain to their team, preventing the possibility of opening harmful emails.
Social Engineering Attacks
Social engineering is a technique used by attackers to trick individuals into providing confidential information, granting unauthorized access, or performing harmful actions, similar to phishing attacks. These attacks can be done over any type of communication, including in-person, email, or phone call. Since this type of attack targets humans directly, it is important for all computer users to understand and identify social engineering attacks to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of their assets. Besides phishing, other common social engineering attacks that you should look out for include:
- Authority - an attacker fakes having a position of authority to convince a user to provide information. For example, an attacker pretends to be the owner of a sports team and tries to convince the coach to divulge sensitive information on which players they are scouting.
- Familiarity - an attacker tries to build a relationship with you, trying to make you feel comfortable enough to share private information. For example, the attacker tells you that their favorite player is also your favorite player, trying to build a connection where you would provide valuable information.
- Intimidation - an attacker uses social force to pressure you into giving them information. For example, an attacker may pretend to be your coach and threaten to cut you from the team if you do not install what they want you to.
- Tailgating - The attacker follows legitimate personnel into secure locations without proper authentication, often relying on the victim's kindness or distraction. For example, the custodian may try to follow a play into the locker room to gain access, even though he is not authorized to do so.
Social engineering exploits the human element of computer security to allow the attacker to compromise assets. Even if there are perfect security measures in place, like passwords and prevention software, attackers can still gain unauthorized access to data or install dangerous code through social engineering. Therefore, it is important to look out and be aware of such attacks. For example, even if the locker room requires passwords to get in, the custodian in the prior example managed to bypass it by using a social engineering attack. If anything seems suspicious, verify with your managers or other co-workers instead of automatically falling for the attack. In addition, you should follow all business security policies, use multi-factor authentication to gain access to assets, and limit access to sensitive information to prevent possible social engineering attacks.
Secure Device Protection
To protect your devices, such as computer, tablet, and smartphone from unauthorized access, malicious code, and other attacks, it is important to mitigate the possibility of successful attacks by implementing proper security technologies. The most effective practices to ensure your device is secure includes:
- Device access control to prevent unauthorized access to devices and assets. This includes using strong and unique passwords, physical locks, enabling biometric authentication like facial recognition, and turning on lock screen timeouts, which ensures the device locks when unattended. For example, the tablets used by football players to watch film require a password, test facial recognition, and turn off when it is not being used to ensure only authorized players and coaches can use it.
- Data encryption, like AES, to protect the data stored on the device. Encryption is a method that scrambles information into an unreadable format so that only authorized people with the decryption key can access it. This ensures confidentiality as unauthorized users will have no way of reading the data. Encryption relates to football play calls, which consists of words scrambled together that can only be understood by the players that know what each word means.
- Regular updates to address new vulnerabilities that attackers might be able to exploit. Regularly checking for and installing updates ensures that the device is as protected as it can be. For example, offenses constantly update their strategies to beat evolving defenses.
- Use endpoint detection and response systems, which monitors and responds to threats on devices. Not only do these systems detect and respond to threats in real time, but they also log all unusual behavior. For example, sports facilities rely on cameras to monitor all behavior, so they can detect and prevent harmful actions.
- Back up all data by storing copies in secure locations, such as offsite and onsite locations, where you can recover it after loss or corruption. While the main goal is to prevent a loss and corruption of data, backing it up regularly will at least ensure you will have access to the correct data after an attack. For example, sports teams keep multiple copies of their plans and strategies in case the original gets lost.
Overall, ensuring that your devices are implemented with these practices is one of the most effective ways to prevent successful attacks.
Safe Internet Practices
In today's age, everyone relies heavily on the internet to learn information and communicate with others. While the internet provides many luxuries, it is often exploited by attackers. Therefore, it is essential to follow safe internet practices to prevent any threat and attack. The most effective ways to safely use the internet include:
- Avoid clicking on suspicious links - malicious links found on the internet can lead to websites that attempt to access your assets or download harmful software onto your device. By avoiding clicking on any link that looks suspicious (not from a trusted source) and hovering over links to check their destination, you can protect yourself from dangerous links. Just as an athlete must recognize and avoid risky plays, internet users must avoid risky links to protect their assets.
- Ensure that you are browsing the web safely. While searching the web, only use sites that start with "https://" and a padlock, as that ensures it is secure. If it does not contain that information, avoid entering sensitive information, as it can be intercepted by an attacker, just like an interception in football.
- Regularly monitor online accounts to detect any suspicious activity early to prevent larger attacks. By reviewing account activity for suspicious activity, such as logins, you can become aware when you are getting attacked.
Overall, you must be very careful when using the internet. If you do not browse the web carefully, you may be providing a pathway for an attacker to gain unauthorized access or download dangerous code.
Malware awareness
As stated in prior sections, malware, short for malicious software, refers to harmful programs that are designed to damage, disrupt, or gain unauthorized access to computer systems. Attackers use a variety of different malware types, as well as different entry points, to successfully attack and compromise systems.
While viruses are malicious files that spread from one computer to another inside files, and worms can spread itself to other computers in the network without files, they both are extremely dangerous as they spread harmful code to different systems. Take for example, one player on a sports team becomes sick. However, he spreads the sickness to a teammate, and then the sickness eventually spreads to the whole team, preventing them from playing in their next game.
Another type of malware is spyware, which can track login credentials and steal data once it is installed on a device. This is very harmful as it compromises privacy and assets on the system. For example, imagine that a player who is mad about their playing time takes all of the secret game plans for the next game and gives it to the opponent, giving them a major advantage.
There are many more types of malware, however, you can take certain steps to attempt to prevent malware including:
- Use reliable and trusted anti-virus and anti-malware software that can detect and remove malicious programs before they can spread or cause harm. Take for example, a camera that watches over the gameplans and alerts the coach when someone is grabbing them when they should not be.
- Enable firewalls, which monitor and block unauthorized network traffic, preventing malware from spreading. To do so, you can activate the built-in firewall on your operating system and configure it to block suspicious connections (can be done with personal device or business device). A firewall is very similar to an offensive lineman in football, who blocks all defenders (suspicious activity) from hitting the quarterback.
- Limit the use of external devices like USB drives and CDs. One of the most common ways that malware spreads is through external media. Therefore, limiting the use of media, especially untrusted external media, will prevent one of the main ways that malware can spread. In addition, you can disable the autorun feature for external media, which will allow you to examine programs before they run, giving you the chance to discover malware. Limiting the use of external media is very similar to security at sporting events ensuring all of the outsider guests are not bringing anything dangerous into the stadium.
Overall, malware is one of the most dangerous and used tools by attackers. As a result, it is crucial to understand the dangers of malware, and most importantly, implement security practices to prevent malware.
Remote Work
We are now all living in a world where it is common to work remotely from home. While it may bring some conveniences and comfort, it also creates several dangerous computer security risks for companies. By allowing employees to work from home, companies are forfeiting a lot of the control and security measures set up to protect its assets from attacks. As an employee, it is crucial to follow proper practices while working from home to keep everything secure. Proper remote work practices include:
- Ensuring you secure your home network by changing default passwords on the router and using proper encryption protocols like WPA3 to prevent the intercepting of communication, often called a man-in-the-middle attack. Another way to securely communicate while home is to use a virtual private network, VPN, which encrypts your data and communication until it reaches its desired target. Once again, we can think about football play calls as being similar to VPNs.
- If given a company-managed device, it is essential that all remote workers use such devices. These devices are often already set up and implemented to have security measures that the company finds important. If you use your own device instead, it will not have all the required security measures and may create a path for an attack. For example, sports teams provide their players with trainers that are already trained to treat injuries in a particular way.
- While working remotely, it is important to properly and securely video-chat with colleagues so no unauthorized parties will be able to eavesdrop. To do this, you should use company-sanctioned tools for communication, as well as protect virtual meetings with passwords and waiting rooms.
- While you may be working from home, it is crucial to separate work and personal environments. If you are not given a company-based device, it is important to not do anything personal while logged into or connected to your work networks. Personal activity and data may create vulnerabilities that could allow for attacks, or cause distractions. For example, if a baseball player constantly talks about his personal life during a game, he will not be focused when up to bat, and his performance will suffer.
While working remotely may sound nice, it is important to continue to follow all the security policies, as well as ensure your home environment will not create additional vulnerabilities.
responding to incidents
Even though our main goal is to prevent all attacks from occurring, the sad fact is that no matter what we do, some attacks will occur. However, it is just as crucial to prepare for and deal with attacks once they happen. While the scale and impact of attacks may differ from personal systems to business systems, knowing exactly how to respond to an attack will minimize the effects. For example, if a player gets hurt during the game, it is well known to stop the play and let the trainers tend to the player. However, teams prepare for injuries by training backups who could take the spot of the injured player.
If your personal computer is attacked, you can do the following:
- If you notice any personal financial data has been compromised, it is important to quickly let the bank know and freeze your account, limiting any financial loss that can occur. For example, if a player notices that they are injured, it is more useful to let the trainer know than to play through the injury until it gets worse.
- Once you notice that your device is infected with malware, it is important to isolate the device from your network and scan the rest of your network with anti-virus software to ensure you prevent the spread of the malware.
- Most importantly, however, it is crucial to learn from any attack to improve your preventative measures. Computer security is not easy, especially for someone in a non-technical occupation, so it will be useful to keep moving forward to learn from any mistakes. For example, no matter how great the baseball pitcher is, he will eventually give up a homerun. Being able to learn from his bad throw will allow him to become even better.
If your business device is attacked, you can do the following:
- If you notice your company device is attacked, it is imperative that you follow the set procedures on how to deal with such attack. Companies need to create, and practice, in-depth incident response plans to ensure the attack is contained and business operations continue as normal, limiting any negative impacts. As an employee, you must follow the incident response plan step-by-step to ensure the company is able to contain the attack. For example, teams have plans set up that describe how the gameplan will change depending on how the game is going. It is crucial for all the players to understand the plan, and properly implement the plan, if they want to end up performing well.
Overall, responding to an incident properly is just as important to preventing incidents. By correctly responding to any attack, you can drastically limit the negative impacts, as well as learn from any mistakes.
Compliance
One of the key aspects of computer security is compliance, which ensures that all security practices align with legal, regulatory, and best practice standards. Following compliance guidelines helps protect sensitive information and reduce the risk of cyber-attacks. While compliance is important in both personal and business environments, they tend to play a different role in each.
Compliance laws tend to help individuals understand and have confidence that their data collected by businesses is protected under law. For example, data privacy laws like the General Data Protection Regulation and the California Consumer Privacy Act help individuals protect their personal data from any misuse. In addition, compliance standards provide individuals many recommendations on how to protect their data and prevent different types of attacks. By reviewing and paying attention to compliance standards, individuals can improve their computer security skills and do a better job at preventing attacks. For example, many professional sports leagues have compliance standards on how to play without receiving major injuries. Many players view the compliance standards and change their game to match the standards with the hope that injuries become less likely.
Compliance is also critical to businesses, as they must adhere to all compliance acts to protect their customer data and ensure their systems are properly ran. As an employee at a company, you must understand all of the compliance laws that the company needs to follow to ensure that you are not doing anything that could go against the regulations. Following compliance regulations is extremely important, as going against such guidelines may result in the loss of customer data and major fines. By following all compliance regulations while at work, you can ensure that the company is following all rules to protect its customers. For example, sports leagues have created rules that must be followed during every game. The failure to follow such rules will result in fines or suspensions. In addition, a business that is known to follow compliance guidelines, like ISO, may attract new customers and partners. Take for example, a sports team that is known to treat their players extremely well. During free agency, more players might want to sign with that team since it is known that they treat their players well.
Access Control
In computer security, access control is crucial in ensuring that only authorized individuals or systems can access specific information or perform a certain action, protecting all three pillars of the CIA Triad. The primary aspects of access control include:
- Authentication: The process of verifying the identity of a user or device attempting to access resources by making sure they are who they say they are. The method to do this is to verify their authentication by using multi-factor authentication to examine things that they know, have, or do that can prove they are who they say they are. For example, to get into some sports locker rooms, you must use a key card and then a password to prove you are who you say you are.
- Authorization: Determines what resources or actions a verified user or process is allowed to access or reform. One model is role-based access control, which assigns access rights based on roles within an organization. For example, depending on what position you play, you are given access to specific meeting rooms. Attribute-based access control grants access based on different attributes, like a person's role, location, time, or device. For example, think of all the rules of a sports tournament. Each rule provides certain access based on different conditions, like the location of the games and the time allowed to practice. Lastly, discretionary access control allows the owner of the resource to determine exactly who can access the resource. For example, imagine the team captain deciding exactly which players can use certain equipment.
- One of the most important aspects on computer security is privilege management, which regulates the level of access granted to users. One extremely important component is principle of least privilege, which makes sure users only have the minimum level of access needed to perform their duties. For example, sports reporters are given access to media rooms in order to do their job, but they are not given access to closed team meetings. The other important component of privilege management is the privilege escalation prevention, which detects and blocks unauthorized attempts to gain higher access levels, preventing privilege escalation attacks. For example, if the sports reporters in the above example tried getting into the team meetings, they would be denied.
In conclusion, access control is a crucial part of preventing attacks to the assets of a computer due to unauthorized access. It is extremely important to ensure the access control is properly set up, as well as to make sure everyone is following the rules.
Defense-in-Depth
Now that we have discussed many different components of successfully protecting your computer assets, it is time to talk about our last topic, defense-in-depth. Defense-in-depth is a strategy that utilizes multiple layers of security measures to most effectively protect data and systems from a variety of different threats. While all of the security measures discussed mitigate the chance of successful attacks, no single security measure can provide complete protection. Instead, a layered approach reduces the likelihood of a successful attack and lowers the impact if one layer is breached. Defense-in-depth closely resembles how the defense in football operates. Defenses use a layered approach, forcing the opposing team to get past the linemen, line backers, and then defensive backs in order to score points against them.
The key principles of defense-in-depth include:
- Layered security: It consists of multiple, independent, security measures to create a more complete defense. Each layer acts as a barrier, making it harder for an attacker to penetrate the full system. To do so, a computer user can utilize passwords, monitor systems, antivirus systems, access control, and firewalls to prevent malicious code from spreading through the whole system.
- Redundancy: It consists of overlapping security measures to ensure that if one fails, the other will remain to protect the system. For example, multi-factor authentication requires the user to prove in at least two different ways that they are who they say they are, to ensure that even if the password is compromised, unauthorized access will still not be given. Relating to sports, there are two defenders on the ice at a time in hockey, to allow them to recover for each other.
- Diversity of controls: It uses different types of controls to prevent attackers from exploiting a single vulnerability across similar mechanisms. This ensures that if one control fails, another unrelated control can still provide protection. For example, combining physical controls, like locks, and technical controls, like encryption, will create a more robust defense. In sports, teams do a similar thing when they use a variety of different, unrelated, strategies in the course of one game to give them the best chance to win.
Overall, all users of computers must utilize defense-in-depth as it addresses the complexity and evolving nature of cyber threats. By combining multiple security measures, it provides a more comprehensive defense that lowers the risk of successful and damaging attacks.
Summary
We have made it to the end of the computer security awareness program! Throughout the program, we have discussed a large number of security measures that should be taken to help protect yourself and your company against computer attacks. Just how all the players of a sports team must work together in order to win the game, all of the aspects on computer security that we discussed need to work together to create the most robust and complete computer security.
In addition, it is important to continue to learn as much about computer security as you can! Computer security attacks are constantly changing and evolving, as well as creating counter measures to security measures. Therefore, it is important to always remain alert and ready to create new security measures. Computer security is similar to a tennis rally where the ball quickly gets hit back and forth over the net. Every time you create a security measure to mitigate an attack, attackers will improve their attacks to beat your countermeasure. As a result, it is critical to constantly monitor and improve your computer system security.
Now that we have finished discussing the different topics of computer security, you can master computer security by thinking about and answering the review questions by clicking here. To examine possible solutions, click here.
In addition, you can further practice your computer security knowledge by playing the crossword puzzle and wordsearch that can be found by clicking here. To check your answers to the games, click here.
To ensure you understand the main concepts, check the key takeaways here!
Contact Information
I hope you have enjoyed this sports related computer security awareness program and have learned ways to protect yourself and company from computer and cyber attacks! If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to email me at rocco.nardozzo@sportscybertraining.org
