Security Incidents

Name

Institution Affiliation

Course

Date

Security incidents are events that might indicate that a company’s data or systems have been compromised or various measures that were implemented to protect the systems and data have failed. Some of the current security incidents include privilege escalation attacks, phishing attacks, insider threats, and unauthorized attempts to access data or systems. Other security incidents consist of advanced persistent threats, web application attacks, denial of service attacks, and malware attacks. Most of the vulnerabilities that cause such incidents can be attributed to attack vectors that enable cybercriminals to exploit data or systems. Hackers are able to gain access to a network server or computer through attack vectors in order to deliver a negative outcome (Nestler et al., 2010). Some of those attack vectors include viruses and deception. Insider threats are security incidents that are commonly attributed to current or former employees and third parties like customers, temporary workers, and contractors.

One of the biggest security incidents that have been experienced today in many organizations is phishing attacks. This security incident presented various short and long-term effects on the organization, which greatly affected its operations and production. Some of the short-term effects of phishing attacks include loss of data, financial penalties, and intellectual property theft (Summer, & Yuan, 2019). The organization also faced long-term effects like loss of company value, loss of customers, loss of productivity, and damaged reputation. The organization suffered reputation loss due to data breaches that were executed through phishing attacks. Many customers lost trust in the firm besides the attack exerting a negative effect on the company's brand.

Some of the ways of mitigating phishing attacks include:

· Having a data security platform to spot signs of an attack

· Installing firewalls

· Changing passwords regularly

· Getting free anti-phishing add-ons

Those security policies can be implemented by updating the corporate security policy educating and monitoring employees. This will ensure that employees do what is right to safeguard the organization's data and systems and avoid sharing any sensitive data with outsiders.

References

Nestler, V., White, G., Conklin, A. Wm., Hirsch, M., & Schou, C. (2010). Principles of Computer Security.

Sumner, A., & Yuan, X. (2019, April). Mitigating phishing attacks: an overview. In Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Southeast Conference (pp. 72-77).