Network Security Fundamentals

Question 1

What is the CIA Triad?

Answer 1

Its an abreviation for the 3 most important things for security:
1. Confidentiality: Make sure only authorized users can access data
2. Integrity: Make sure the data is not tampered with.
3. Availability: Make sure the data and services are available at all times they are needed.

Question 2

Whats the difference between a threat and a vulnerability?

Answer 2

Threat: Person or event that has the potential for impacting an asset in a negative manner.

Vulnerability: Quality or characteristic (like a flaw in code), within an asset or environment, that could allow the threat to be realized.

Question 3

What is a risk?

Answer 3

A threat, that can be realized due to a vulnerability, is a risk.

Question 4

What are the 4 types of vulnerabilities?

Answer 4

• Environmental: Power Outage due to a hurricane
• Physical: Open doors, missing CCTV allowing a threat actor to enter the building.
• Operational: Bad or missing policies
• Technical: Misconfigurations, Code Flaws, CVEs etc.

Question 5

Whats the difference between a vulnerability and an exploit?

Answer 5

A vulnerability is just the weakness, that could be exploited, the Exploit is a piece of software (or sometimes just an action) that is used to exploit the vulnerability.

Question 5

What is a Risk Assessment?

Answer 5

A Risk Assessment determines possible incidents, their likelihood and consequences for the organization.

Question 6

What is a Posture Assessment?

Answer 6

A Posture Assessment evaluates the attack surface of an organization.

Question 7

What is Device Hardening?

Answer 7

Device Hardening is the process of reducing the attack surface of an device

Question 8

What are 6 basic steps for device hardening?

Answer 8

1. Disable any unused network interfaces ones
2. Remove any apps/services that arent needed to get the job done.
3. Disable any ports that arent needed.
4. Use full disk encryption
5. Check account permissions.
6. Keep the system updated

Question 9

What are 3 “annoyance” defense techniques?

Answer 9

• Bogus DNS entries
• Web server with decoy entries
• Port triggering & spoofing