Hackers Consultants
proportions. There are a couple of interesting sides to this business. Mark Seiden tests the vulnerability of corporate computer networks to hackers. Please read about his business and the general problem of intrusion into information systems in an article published in the New York Times available in Proquest.
Rivlin, G. (2005, Jul 31). The Sniffer vs. the Cybercrooks. New York Times, pp. 3.1. [Available at Trident online library]
SourceFire is a company that provides intrusion prevention solutions to its clients such as saleforce.com. Please check out the overview of its solution to get some sense of its views on vulnerability, cost, and solution.
SourceFire (2012). SourceFire Solutions Overview.
In addition, read the following article available at Proquest at our TUI virtual library:
Cross, T. (2006). Academic freedom and the hacker ethic. Communications of the ACM, 49(6), 37-40.
There aren't a lot of businesses apart from organized crime where the boundaries between the Good Guys/White Hats and the Bad Guys/Black Hats become obscure, but information security is one of them. You might want to review a site on "hackers." PBS's Frontline also has interviewed hackers and provided information of their culture and understanding:
Frontline. Hackers, a report on the explints of hackers and how they have highlighted the internet's insecurities. FRONTLINE. Retrieved from http://www(dot)pbs(dot)org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/hackers/
Darnet.com (2012). http://www(dot)darknet(dot)org(dot)uk/
Case assignment
There is material in the background information bearing on these questions, and you may wish to do further research yourself by following up some of the links or other references.
When you've had a chance to review these materials, and think about the issues involved, please prepare a 3-5 page paper addressing the question:
"Should you hire an experienced hacker to protect your IT systems? Or is there such a thing as too much experience on the "dark side" of the law?"
Case Assignment Expectations
Use information from the modular background readings as well as any good quality resource you can find. Please cite all sources and provide a reference list at the end of your paper.
The following items will be assessed in particular:
- Your ability to consolidate ideas from reading materials.
- Your argument to support your position.
Hackers Consultants
Name:
Institution:
When it comes to issues that deal with protecting the company’s integrity with respect to the data security, the measures stop at nothing. Annually, companies lose billions through network bleaches that lead to leaks in the company data and in most of the cases the hackers sell the information to the best bidders in the market, who almost obvious are the competition. The debate about hiring some the best hackers in the industry has been up for a while, with two schools of thought. On one side of the rift are those that believe regardless of the demarcations that exist between the white hats and the black hats, there is never a clear line differentiating the cyber criminals. The other side of the rift feels that some of the tactics of fighting what you cannot beat is getting someone that has the raw experience, in this case hiring the retired hackers (grey hats) to guard against intrusions (HYPERLINK "https://app.heliumnetwork.com/heliumnetwork/viewPublicUserBio.sc?userNumber=601297"Mohan, 2011).
The two sides of the debate have developed due to the fact that there is always a risk of giving a former convict all the rights to the security details of the firm. The bottom line about the rifts laysflat on the trust issues that surround the hackers and the sensitivity of the data in question. The idea of security revolves around letting all those that one trusts and then locking out of the company’s sensitive data out. Trusting a former hacker with the security protocols and privileges essentially trusts a criminal. It does not only weigh in on the company’s staff and the board, as the same is also going to have some effect on the stake holders and the shareholders.
In most of the cases, the security consultants are out there to make sure that the companies they work for have the best systems in place but rather they want the companies to depend on them. This therefore means that most of the consultants will draw up reports that scare the board into submission and once this happens the consultants can now control the company’s budget on security among other aspects. Working with a former hacker means that risk of such intricate behaviours, including coming up with policies that limit he access of the security system.
Majority of the times that this aspects have been referred to, there has been some form exaggeration to make the former hackers a potential threat. This is not to say that when hiring the former hackers one should trend the ground carefully, but have an open mind about it.As such hiring a hacker that would be...