1. Common Threats in Using Information Systems

2. Common Threats A number of threats are common to computer systems and deserve the careful attention of managers. These threats include natural disasters, unauthorised access, theft, vandalism, invasion of privacy, computer crime, software piracy and computer viruses. Natural disasters Organisations take precautions against the loss of assets from a variety of natural disasters such as such as fire, floods, water damage, earthquakes, tornadoes, mud slides and wind /storm damage. A number of firms specialise in providing computer facilities to organisations in the event of disasters. These firms are called “Hot–Site recovery Firms” because they provide a computer facility for others that can be used almost immediately.

3. Employee Errors Ordinary carelessness or poor employee training represents one of the most common threats. An employee may destroy the contents of a hard disk by accidentally reformatting the hard drive of the computer system instead of formatting the floppy disk in drive A that was intended formatting target. Computer Crime, Fraud and abuse New technology breeds new crimes. Electronic versions of old crimes : Forgery, Theft, Fraud. Computer Crime is hard to measure, basically because it has not been very clearly defined. It is estimated that as much as 90 percent of computer crime is unreported because organisations do not wish to make known their vulnerability to the customers, suppliers and stockholders. After Citibank reported the crime, it lost 20 top customers to other banks that claimed to have better security.

4. Industrial Espionage The theft of organisational data by competitors is sometimes called Industrial Espionage. or economic Espionage. Industrial spies may use a variety of computer systems as tools. Eg. Using an easily obtainable inexpensive scanner, spies can scan cellular conversations or data transfers. Hacking Hacking sometimes called cracking because the person cracks the log-in codes and sequences of a system, is unauthorised entry by a person into a computer system or network. Hackers are those who illegally gain access to the computer systems, may simply enjoy the challenge of breaking into other computer systems and intend no harm.

5. Toll Fraud Defrauding telephone companies out of long distance toll charges has occurred for many years. Using slugs instead of real coins, letting the phone ring twice to mean on has got home OK, and calling person-to-person for oneself with some cute message are all ways that people have swindled common carriers out of toll charges that were rightly theirs. Managers should be on the lookout for these signs of fraud: oNumerous short calls oSimultaneous use of one telephone access code. oNumerous calls after business hours. oLarge increases in direct inward system access dialing, or DISA.

6. Computer Viruses these are hidden programs that inserts itself into a computer systems and forces the system to clone the virus. It can wreck havoc with the computer system. It can travel from one computer to the other by means of a network, embedding itself in every system it accesses. Sometimes a virus may disguise itself as a utility or other program. Hardware Theft and Vandalism Theft of hardware and damage from vandalism represent ever-present threats to organisation, especially when organisations employ easy- to-pilfer notebook computers and PDAs. Software Piracy The Software Publication Association (SPA) holds that “any reproduction of a copyright program is theft”. This means that most people who copy programs from their organisation for home use or who copy programs from friends and thieves.

7. Piracy Violations Privacy has been defined as the capacity of individuals or organisations to control information about themselves. Privacy rights usually imply that the types of amounts of data that may be collected about individuals or organisations are limited ; that individuals or organisations have the ability to access, examine and correct the data stored about them, and that the disclosure, use, or dissemination of those data are restricted. Violation to the privacy of records, especially records about people, may occur accidentally, through carelessness, or intentionally. Program Bugs Lot of commercial software contains bugs, or defects in programming when the software is first offered for sale. After the software has been on the street for a few months, users usually discover the bugs and the software vendors provide ‘ patches’ to their code. These patches are often made available on the software vendor’s electronic bulletin boards. Users can log in to the bulletin boards and download the patches to their computer systems.

8. Protecting Information Systems  Securing Information Systems Facilities  Securing Communication Systems oEncryption oElectronic-commerce safety oFirewalls oNetwork Auditing Software  Securing Database Information Systems  Securing Information Systems Applications oTesting Software oAppropriateness oStability oSecurity Features oInput Controls (GIGO – Garbage In Garbage Out) oProcess Controls (Exception Reports, End-of-file checks, Sequence checks)