Qn 1;

Compromises to intellectual property.

Firstly, Threat simply means an object, person or other entity that present an ongoing danger to an asset. To
protect your organization’s information, you should know the information to be protected and the systems
that stores, transport and prosses it; also, to know the threats you face.
Intellectual property is the ownership of ideas and control over the tangible or virtual representation of those
ideas. The ideas and assets in intellectual property may be owned by individual, a group or company.
Compromises to intellectual property damages an organization by having its intellectual property stolen.
Categories of intellectual property includes Copyrights, Trademarks, Trade secret, and patents.

Copyrights: Refers to legal right of the owner of intellectual property. This means that the original creator
of product and any one they give authorization to are the only ones with exclusive right to reproduce the work.

Trademarks: is any name, symbol, figure, letter, word, or mark adopted and used by a manufacturer or
merchant in order to designate his or her goods and to distinguish them from those manufactured or sold by
others.

Trade secret: is any practice or process of a company that is generally not known outside of the company.
Information considered a trade secret gives the company a competitive advantage over its competitors and is
often a product of internal research and development.

patents: is a government awarded license that grant the inventor of a product exclusive rights to its
manufacture, use or sale for a specific time period.
In order to use one’s property an Organization must ask for a permission from the owner otherwise it is
considered as violation of copyright.
➢ The act of illegally using, copying, or distributing software without ownership or legal rights is known
as software piracy

MECHANISMS TO CONTROL OF PIRACY

In order to avoid and prevent violating policies to intellectual property some measures and controls should be
taken;
License agreement: this is the most common tool, a license agreement window that usually pops up during
the installation of new software, establishes that the user has read and agrees to the license agreement.
Online registration process: individual who install software are often asked or even required to register their
software to obtain technical support or the use of all features.
Qn. 2: Deliberate software attacks:
Software attacks occur when an individual or group design and deploys software to attack a system. Most of this
software is referred to as malicious code or malicious software, or sometimes malware.
These software components or programs are designed to damage, destroy, or deny service to the target systems.
Some of the more common instances of malicious software are viruses, worms, Trojan horses, logic bombs, and
back doors.

Computer Virus:
A computer virus consists of segments of code that perform malicious actions. This code behaves very much like
a virus pathogen that attacks animals and plants, also these viruses affect computer systems. The code attaches
itself to an existing program and takes control of that program’s access to the targeted computer. Many times
users unwillingly help viruses get into a system.
The virus writes its own code into the host program, when a program runs the virus is executed first.
Virus spread via “opening email attachments, runs executable file, visit an infected website, view infected website
advertisement (malvertising).

Mechanisms to protect a system against viruses.

1. Use of strong passwords, like password with a mix of letters and digits.
2. Educating members and staffs about security measures
3. Keep everything up to date, it’s so because some latest version are designed to eliminate bugs that hackers
could exploit.
4. Use of antivirus software which acts like a vaccine against virtual virus. E.g. Microsoft Essentials and
Avast are free antiviruses that could be helpful.
5. Use a firewall. It does provide an extra layer of protection from viruses and malware.
6. Install a pop-up blocker.

Worms:
A worm is a malicious program that replicates itself constantly, without requiring another program environment.
Worms can continue replicating themselves until they completely fill available resources, such as memory, hard
drive space, and network bandwidth.

Mechanisms to control worms.

1. Updating computer’s operating systems and its applications.
2. Be cautious in opening email attachments so as to avoid phishing.
3. Using strong internet security e.g trusted anti-virus
Trojan Horses.
Trojan horses are software programs that hide their true nature and reveal their designed behavior only when
activated. Trojan horses are frequently disguised as helpful, interesting, or necessary pieces of software, such as
readme.exe files often included with shareware or freeware packages. Once Trojan horses are brought into a
system, they become activated and can wreak havoc on the unsuspecting user.
Mechanisms to protect a system against trojan horse
1. Never download or install software from sources that are not trusted.
2. Never open attachment from unknown entity like emails, websites.
3. Update software with latest versions.
4. Use Trojan antivirus in your computer.

Back Door or Trap Door:

A virus or worm can have a payload that installs a back door or trap door component in a system. Back door
enable author to do anything on the infected computer including sending, receiving, launching, delete files and
displaying data on computer.
Mechanisms to protect a system against backdoor
1. Use of advanced antivirus
2. Use of firewall and Network monitoring tool e.g. n – map.
A polymorphic threat; is one that over time changes the way it appears to antivirus software programs, making
it difficult to deal and overcome. These viruses and worms actually evolve, changing their size and other external
file characteristics to escape detection by antivirus software programs.
Mechanisms to protect a system against Polymorphic threats
1. Keep your software up to date
2. Do not click suspicious links or attachments
3. Use of strong password and change them regularly.

QN 3: Deviations in Quality of Service

Quality of Services is a set of technologies that work on a network to guarantee its ability to run high priority
applications and traffic under limited network capacity.
Deviation in quality of service is the situation where products and services are not delivered as expected.
Examples of threats associated with are WAN service issues from ISP, power irregularities. These deviations may
be found in various environment as follows;
Internet service issues. When Internet service provider fails to guarantee services as required leads to
undermine availability of information to end users. Users will experience overloading.
Communication and provider issue; other utility server can affect organizations as well. The loss of service
such as telephone ,water, wastewater, cable television can impair the ability of an organization to function.
Most facilities require water service to operate an air conditioning system. If a wastewater system fails an
organization might be prevented from allowing employee into the building.

Power irregularities; irregularities from power utilities are common and can lead to fluctuations such as power
excess, power shortage and power loss.
This can pose problem for organizations that provide inadequate conditioned power for their information system
equipment