Reference no: EM133760634 , Length: word count:2000

IT Security

Case Study and Presentation (2000 Words)

Introduction
The case study has been selected from the news article titled "Equifax data breach FAQ: What happened, who was affected, what was the impact?"

The Equifax data breach of 2017 was one of the most significant cybersecurity incidents in recent history, impacting millions of consumers and highlighting critical vulnerabilities in data protection practices. Personally, identifying data of hundreds of millions of people was stolen from Equifax, one of the credit reporting agencies that assess the financial health of nearly everyone in the United States.

According to the above new article a top-level picture of how the Equifax data breach happened looks like this:

"The company was initially hacked via a consumer complaint web portal, with the attackers using a widely known vulnerability that should have been patched but, due to failures in Equifax's internal processes, wasn't.

The attackers were able to move from the web portal to other servers because the systems weren't adequately segmented from one another, and they were able to find usernames and passwords stored in plain text that then allowed them to access still further systems.
The attackers pulled data out of the network in encrypted form undetected for months because Equifax had crucially failed to renew an encryption certificate on one of their internal security tools.

Equifax did not publicize the breach until more than a month after they discovered it had happened; stock sales by top executives around this time gave rise to accusations of insider trading."

After analysing the above case study, your group must detail the below points that could have been fixed in the Equifax data breach. Your report should be more than 2000 words, and your presentation should not be more than 3 minutes. The report should address the following:

Appropriate security technologies to fix the above-mentioned vulnerabilities.
Appropriate cryptographic techniques to fix the above-mentioned vulnerabilities.
Tools that you can use to identify and fix the vulnerabilities.
The techniques you suggest ensuring CIA (Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability) before and after the Equifax data breach.

Presentation
The oral presentation must be recorded using PowerPoint and submitted through Moodle. All group members should gather in one place and conduct the presentation. The recommended method is a Zoom or Teams meeting. Each individual's presentation should not exceed 3 minutes. After recording the presentation, the group leader should submit it, and the rest of the members should submit the "Individual

Participation Form" to the report submission section. Individual members can explain the parts they worked on in the report. In cases of absence or late submissions, individuals will be affected individually.