Protection of data Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Protection of data - Essay Example There are number of organizers and facilitators in the form of computer software, hardware, mobile phones, smart phones, laptops, tablet-pcs, and other such gadgets that allow the user to write the contents, record it and then send it to the destined email account. This entire route of services needs to be protected and secured against any threat that could damage the content and pass malafide contents with an intention to damage network of other people (Voltage 2011) The management of emails and its accounts are done by the email server which has several components out of which two components that are always required consists of Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) and Mail Delivery Agent (MDA). Both of these components perform different tasks. Emails are held by Mail Delivery Agent for delivery to users while emails are sent and received from other servers on Internet by Mail Transfer Agent (Swanson 2004) The Mail Transfer Agent uses Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) which picks mail from the email clients and sends to its destination server. The Mail Delivery Agent used two standard protocols; Post Office Protocol (POP) and Internet Mail Access Protocol (IMAP). The main difference between the two protocols are that after downloading the email from POP Server, the mail client removes email messages from the server, living the responsibility for the user to store and preserve it on a local machine (Swanson 2004) Whereas messages are stored in mail server and the backup is also made by the server. Messages are not deleted after downloading from IMAP server. POP is an older protocol and its use is reducing compared with IMAP protocol. The complexity and confusion comes when these two different types of protocols interact on the internet (Swanson 2004) Another component used commonly for protecting external attacks is the firewall software. Crackers and hackers deceive and bypass firewall by tunneling through the protocols used for email accounts as the contents of email are not checked by any protocol or system (GFI Software 2011) Email systems are classified in six ways as given below for which they are exploited for the purposes of information theft, attacking networks of other people and harassing target systems (GFI Software 2011) 1. Attack by trojans and viruses 2. Leakage of information 3. Malicious or offensive content 4. Varying methods of email attacks 5. Vulnerabilities in different software 6. Insufficient protection by security tools 7. Junk emails or SPAM TASK TWO EXAMPLES OF EMAIL EXPLOITS Attacks by trojans and viruses: The use of email has become global and wide spread. The hackers use email to tunnel the trojans and viruses as no security or email protocols check its text. In January 2004, it was reported by CNN that email virus MyDoom cost them US$250 million in productivity lost and expenses for technical support. Similarly in the studies cited by NetworkWorld (September 2003), U.S. companies alone spent an amount of US$3.5 bill ion to fight against the email viruses such as Blaster, SoBig.F, Wechia and others(GFI Software 2011) Trojans are sent by email and as soon as the email is opened it installs specific code which gains the control of servers and confidential information. Security experts in the computer technology call such trojans as â€Å"spy viruses† or â€Å"instructive viruses†; tools for industrial espionage. In October 2000,