Lab 1 : Virtualization

In this lab tutorial, we are taught about virtualization. What I personally understand about virtualization is that you create hardware emulation as a platform/environment for an operating system to be installed on. Any kind of guest software can be installed on this so-called hardware emulation, commonly referred to as a virtual machine.

The main advantage of virtualization is that you can have a certain degree of flexibility, portability and interoperability in the sense that any kind of software can be virtually compatible with any hardware environment created by this virtualization platform.

The concept of virtualization is not limited to just virtual machines. Virtual servers can now be created with virtualization software.

The term Virtual Machine is clearly defined as an efficient and isolated duplicate of a real machine. A real machine has the characteristics of having a processor, memory, network connections and peripheral ports. A virtual machine is capable of emulating a real machine that has these characteristics.

The benefits of using a virtual machine include:

• Hardware utilization due to the usage of multiple virtual machines inside a single hardware.
• The decreasing of the operating cost and capital by sharing in number of virtual machines.
• High availability of virtual machines and security.
• Virtual machines can be used from anywhere inside the intranet.

The VMware Workstation is the commercial virtualization software that is capable of creating and running multiple virtual machines at the same time. In addition to that, VMware Workstation enables the conversion of existing physical PC into a virtual machine. VMware is also capable of running Windows or Linux-based virtual machines or others on the same PC. Virtual machines can share files with each other using drag-and-drop functionality. One organization can also speed up deployment of operating systems by just cloning virtual machines as installing operating systems and applications can be time-consuming. If one desires, one may also reduce the size of virtual machines and insert them into removable storages and take them wherever he/she wants to. The preservation of a current state of a virtual machine can also be done by taking a snapshot, just in case there are any crashes or errors happening to the particular virtual machine.

Lecture 1 : Introduction to Information Security

We were given an introduction on information security. In this lesson, we have learnt about:

• · What is Security?
• · Security Architecture
• · Security Principles
• · Security Policy
• · Security Attacks/Threats
• · Methods of Defense
• · Security Services
• · Security Mechanisms

Security is clearly defined as the state of being secure that is free from danger and threats, as well as to be protected from adversaries, which are those who would intentionally or unintentionally do harm. Information security is the protection of information and systems and hardware that use, store and transmit information.

The table above shows the security trends of today. We see that normal users are capable of hacking using only little amount of knowledge and hacking tools.

Security involves three areas namely, detection by using scanners, prevention by using tools such as proxy and firewall, and recovery using tools regarding cryptography techniques and proper planning.

The security architecture is defined by ITU-T Recommendation X.800 and was developed as an international standard for computer and communications vendors to develop security features for their products and services related to structured definition of services and mechanisms. This architecture focuses on security attacks, mechanisms and services.

When it comes to information security, three security principles are being addressed namely confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

However, the correct balance must be done among these principles to achieve a secure system, which is normally impossible to achieve.

The security policy is a set of rules that applies on security-relevant activities in a security domain. Some of the key aspects related to security policy are authorization, access control policy and accountability.

According to the security attacks or threats defined in the X.800 and RFC 2828 documents, security attacks are classified into two, which is the passive attack that only involves eavesdropping with motives of obtaining information that is being transmitted, while the other being the active attack that involves modification of the data stream or creation of false stream with motives of obtaining authorization.

Methods of defense can be done against harm that occurs when threats are detected. This is by prevention, deterrence, deflection, detection and recovery.

Methods of defense in terms of control involve encryption, software access controls, hardware controls, policies that are agreed among users and physical controls.

Security services are divided into a few types:

• Authentication, an assurance that the communicating entity is the one claimed to be.
• Access Control, prevention of unauthorized personnel who misuse resources.
• Data Confidentiality, protection of data from unauthorized disclosure.
• Data Integrity, the assurance that received data is as sent by an authorized entity.
• Non-repudiation, protection against denial by one of the parties in a communication.

A security mechanism is any kind of process or a device incorporating the process that is designed to detect, present or recover from a security attack.

Security mechanisms are divided into two namely Specific Security Mechanisms and Pervasive Security Mechanisms.

Welcome to The ICT Lounge

Greetings readers. This blog is created especially for the course subject on Information Technology Security, as well as a little personal interest on security in computing. In this subject, information about computer's Internet security attacks and countermeasures can be learnt.

The lessons from lectures and lab sessions will also be included in this blog. Hopefully the information shared inside this blog may benefit all.