MALAWI COLLEGE OF ACCOUNTANCY
BACHELOR APPLIED ACCOUNTING; AUDITING
& INFORMATION SYSTEMS
TO : MR MPUWA
FROM : JIMMY NKHOMA MLAVIWA
SUBMISSION DATE : 11TH SEPTEMBER 2020
STUDENT NUMBER : ML 0134
PROGRAMME : BACHELOR OFAPPLIED ACCOUNTING;
AUDITING & INFORMATION SYSTEMS
PROGRAMME CODE : BAA-AIS
MODULE : NETWORKING
TITLE : NETWORK SECURITY
MODULE CODE : NET 225
YEAR : TWO
Network security has a lot of definitions. Among all other definitions, can be
defined as policies that are adopted to prevent and monitor unauthorized access,
misuse, modification or denial of a computer network and network accessible
resources. These policies are designed on network as usable, reliable, integrity and
safe on your data and network for both the public and private network.
There are threats to communication network, and this includes;
Viruses, worms and Trojan horses
Spyware and adware
Hacker attacks
Denial of service attacks
Data interception and theft
Identity theft
Phishing attacks
Network security has been categorized into four major categories, as follows;
1. Cryptography security
2. Digital signatures and public keys management
3. Communication security, and
4. Social issues security
Cryptography Security
This is secret writing and is about constructing and analyzing protocols that prevent third parties
or the public from reading private messages. It involves the following;
Message confidentiality: Only an authorized recipient should be able to extract the
contents of the message from its encrypted form.
Message integrity: The recipient should be able to determine if the message has been
altered.
Sender authentication : The recipient should be able to verify from the message, the
identity of the sender and the origin or path it traveled so to validate from emitter or
validate the recipient expectations.
Sender non repudiation: The emitter should not be able to deny sending the message.
Cryptography is based on a principle that all legitimate users of information have the keys
required to access the information. And it includes the following ways;
Cyphers; To encipher is to convert information into codes that only authorized parties can
read it, hence, it can use substitution or transposition methods.
Symmetric key cryptography; This method, both sender and receiver share the same key
or easily related in a computable way. Ciphers are implemented as either block or stream
ciphers.
Asymmetric key cryptography: It uses a pair of different, though related cryptographic
keys to encrypt and decrypt hence uses both public and private networks.
Digital Signatures and Public Keys Management
This is a mathematical scheme for demonstrating the authenticity of a digital
message or documents. Digital signatures are equivalent to traditional handwritten
signatures in many respects, but properly implemented digital signatures are more
difficult to forge than that handwritten type hence, secured reliable data.
Communication Security
Communication security is the discipline of preventing unauthorized interceptors
from accessing telecommunication in an intelligible form, while still delivering
content to the intended recipients. It uses the following protocols:
IPsec ; Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) is a protocol suite for secure
internet protocol communications by authenticating and encrypting each IP
packet of a communication session.
Firewalls :This is a network security system that monitors and controls the
incoming and outgoing network traffic based on predetermined security
rules hence it can be a hardware or software.
E-mail Security: Email encryption by using public key cryptography while
keeping secret a private key to decrypt the message can secure emails from
hackers, viruses, phishing and identity theft.
Social Issues
The internet and security technology is an area where social issues, public policies
and technology meets. These issues on internet are privacy, freedom of speech,
copyrights and patents.
