A security weakness in IT terminology refers to vulnerability of a resource. A venerable resource is one which is susceptible to attack either from within the organization or outside. The measure of the vulnerability is expressed by the ease with which a resource can be incapacitated by an attack on it, resulting in paralysis of business operations (Schellenberg, 1995).
Aircraft Solutions, a designer and fabricator of component products and services for firms in the electronic, commercial, defense and aerospace industry may be particularly exposed. This exposure could stem from its business operations as illustrated by its network infrastructure.
The Network infrastructure, of a firm of Aircraft Solutions stature, incorporates contractors, suppliers and customers. With such a big pool of users on the network, weaknesses in hardware, software and policy inevitably emerge in network.
This is because, most network infrastructures are most vulnerable from inside attacks than from outside. Generally, an insider can easily launch an attack on the Network than an outsider as most networks are fortified from outside attacks using firewalls within and without their virtual private networks (Basole, 2008).
On Aircraft Solution’s network, the hardware and policy are vulnerable to both inside and outside attacks. The company’s servers can be attacked easily by an employee as the employees have the access inside the network. Though system access by users at different levels of the network may be set on a strict need to know basis, an employee who works in the field or from home but needs to connect to the company’s servers will mostly connect via the network’s gray zones.
When he logs into the network and access the servers, an attacker who may have hacked into his computer will be able to access the company’s server and copy the vital information such as the access codes, passwords and other user authenticating keys or codes. With these codes he may launch an attack directly into the servers or, simply copy data from the hard drive of the employee’s laptop. The servers will be more secure if a virtual private network is implemented for the company independent of its contractors, clients and suppliers.
The server hardware is susceptible to virus attacks. More often employees carry their laptops home, the moment the laptop is connected to the internet outside the company’s network firewall, and it is susceptible to viruses. As often is the case, updating of virus signatures may take inordinately long periods of time. As a result most employees would skip a virus signature update. When they connect back on the company’s network at the office, viruses will infiltrate the network and attack other devices (Luce, 1995).
Denial of service attack is the second type vulnerability that may cripple the hardware. In this type of attack, the hardware is rendered ineffectual by flooding the network with data packets, making it slow to respond to network client requests.
Hardware resources on networks are extremely sensitive to power spikes and outages. A minute increase or decrease in the power voltage can crash the system. It is important that power supply to the servers is strictly kept stable with the necessary back ups put in place (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1996).
