The threat of online security: How safe is our data?

Nowadays, the implementation of technologies is becoming more and more advance as years passed. Businesses are evolving in the e-commerce world and everything has become more conveniet and effective. In addition, computer has become a necessary component for users to manage their personal data and daily tasks. Yet; with this high reliability on technologies, it creates chances for threats to occur. One of the hottest issues for companies and users is the safety of data in the Internet.

There are many types of threats and attacks in the Internet and it is a challenge to be faced. So far, the potential threats and attacks that had been discovered are as follow:

a) Nontechnical attacks – where a perpetrator uses some form of tricks to persuade
users to reveal their information or performing actions. An example of this type of attack is social engineering attacks.

b) Technical attacks – using software and systems knowledge or expertise to perpetrate an
attack.

c

Denial-of-service (Dos) attack – an attack that happens in website where an attacker uses
specialized software to send a flood of data packets to the
target computer with the plan to overloading its resources.
In other words, it is an attempt to make a computer resource
unavailable to its intended users, as defined by Wikipedia.



d)Virus – it is a computer program that can copy itself and infect the computer without obtaining
the permission or knowledge of the owner.

e) Worm – a software program that runs independently, consuming the resources of its host in
order to maintain itself, and is capable of propagating a complete working version of itself into another machine.

f) Trojon horse – it is a program that appears to be a useful function but it contains a hidden function that will introduce a security risk. An example for this threat is trojon horse virus.

g) Macro virus/ Marco worm – it is a virus or worm that executes when the application object
that contains the marco is opened or a particular procedure is executed.

Therefore, looking at the existence of all these threats and attacks, it is obvious that data that users transfered or presented online is not safeguarded. In order to protect our data and information in the Internet, security on internet should be implemented. Security success can be categorised into three component, which are:

a) Confidentiality – users' private or sensitive information should be kept nicely and avoid their
disclosure to unauthorized individual, entities, or processes.
b) Integrity – it means ensuring that the data uploaded by users is under protection and free from the risk of threat.
c) Availability – this is to ensure that the access of data, the website, or other e-commerce data
service is timely, available, reliable, and restricted to authorized user.

Reference:
Turban, E., King, D., McKay, J., marshall, P., Lee, J., & Viehland, D. (2008). Electronic Commerce: A Managerial Perspective 2008 (International Edition). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson-Education International.