BSIT380-T301 System Hardening and Network

During Week 3, I learned that the quick move to working from home and using cloud computing has had a big effect on cybersecurity. The COVID-19 pandemic made many businesses move their data and systems to the cloud much faster than they had planned. This made it easier to access things from afar and gave people more options, but it also added new security risks that attackers can use. This week, one of the main things we talked about was how to recognize the different risks and weaknesses that come with cloud environments and specialized technologies. I learned that cloud systems aren't always safe and still need to be set up, controlled, and watched over correctly. Incorrectly set up storage, weak authentication, and misunderstandings about who is responsible for what can all make systems very weak. We also talked about software and infrastructure weaknesses, like systems that aren't patched, protocols that are out of date, and virtual machines that aren't secure. This w...

Thoughts on Week 2: Handling SLAs, CVSS, and Vulnerability Scanning In Week 2 of this class, I learned the basics of vulnerability management and how formal agreements and frameworks help keep things running smoothly. We began by talking about Service Level Agreements (SLAs). These are more than just contracts; they tell you what to expect when you work with third-party providers in terms of uptime, incident response times, and security responsibilities. I learned that SLAs are a good way to hold both organizations and vendors accountable, especially when they are handling sensitive data. I also learned how to use vulnerability assessment tools and what to do after I pick them. You can't just pick a tool; you also need to set the exact limits of your scans, make rules, make a schedule for scans, and decide if authenticated scans are needed. I learned that pilot scans are important to reduce false positives and that the results of scans should be linked to a ticketing system or c...

This first week of BSIT380: System Hardening and Network has really changed how I think about cybersecurity. The class started by comparing it to a big sporting event, where both teams study their opponent before the big day. That comparison helped me see why threat data and intelligence are so important: you can't protect a network if you don't know who the attackers are, what they want, and how they work. We talked about today's threat actors, such as nation-states, cybercriminal groups, insiders, and hacktivists. Each one has its own reasons for doing what they do and ways of doing it. I also learned that threat intelligence is more than just reading about attacks in the news. It means getting information from a lot of different places, looking for patterns, and using that information to make the organization's security better. The readings talked about the frameworks and threat research sources that analysts use, as well as different ways to model threats that hel...