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HI6008 Challenges in Cyber-Security in Businesses Assessment 1 Answer

Assessment Details and Submission Guidelines

TrimesterT2 2020
Unit CodeHI6008
Unit TitleBusiness Research Project
Assessment Type
  1. Group Formation*, Topic Approval, Team Charter,  (Presentation may be required)
Assessment TitleTopic Approval
Purpose of the assessment (with ULO Mapping)
Clearly identify your chosen topic, having carried out some basic review of available secondary data to secure your interest (at least 3 academic articles, plus a business report, and a relevant current news item). Indicate the Research Problem, as you see it so far, and at least ONE research question at this stage (additional questions may be defined as you progress with this unit). 
List the student numbers and names of your team members and complete the Team Charter, indicating what role(s) each will contribute throughout the project.
A brief presentation in-class may be requested by your lecturer.
Matches to Unit Learning Outcomes 1, 2, and 5
Weight20% of the total assessments
Total Marks20
Word limitNot more than 1200wordsfor the Topic Approval [The Team Charter, which is to be appended, is additional to the 1200 word-count of the Topic Approval]
Submission Guidelines
  • All work must be submitted on Blackboard by 12 midnight of the due date, along with a completed Assignment Cover Page. [If no cover page your mark will be reduced -20%].
  • The group members’ names and student numbers listed on the Cover Page must align with the members officially registered in your group. [any errors or omissions may affect your grade and there is no guarantee of any adjustment]
  • The assignment must be in MS Word format, 1.5 spacing, 12-pt Arialfont and 2 cm margins on all four sides of your page with appropriate section headings, paragraphing, and page numbers.  
  • Reference sources must be correctly cited in the text of the report, and listed appropriately at the end in a reference list, allinHarvard referencing style.

Assignment 1 Specifications

Purpose:

This unit aims to give you an opportunity to combine many facets of your acquired MBA skills into the production of a high-quality research project.

Assignment 1 - the Topic Approval - is to ensure you have given sufficient thought to the topic you are choosing to base your research project on. You will ideally work with a group consisting of 2 or 3 class-mates. Your respective contributions will be governed by the Team Charter, which is a document you will produce at the same time as your Topic Approval submission. The Team Charter is to indicate, essentially, what roles will be played by each member of the team.

Your tutor will LEAD and FACILITATE you through the process, week by week. The learning will be progressive, so for best results you will need to be listening to the weekly lectures as well as in contact with your tutor during the interactive tutorials.

Assignment Structure should be as the following:

  1. Say why this topic interests your team
  2. Discuss your team’s initial search for relevant literature and show that it has provided you with a good contextual understanding
  3. Define the Research Problemthat your team intends to address (as you see it, so far)
  4. Propose at least ONE research question that your team will be seeking to answer through your research project(additional questions may be defined as you progress with this unit)
  5. List the student numbers and names of your team members, complete a Team Charter (see template) and include in your submission as an appendix.

Appended Team Charter (not applicable if doing the assignment individually)

Here the team members must participate in robust discussion during which they discuss their individual interests, strengths and weaknesses and contemplate who can best contribute what over the period of the business research project. For example, while all members of the team must contribute to the whole project, the team members may decide that a particular person will take the lead role in a certain section of the project, such as the sourcing of relevant literature. [If one member takes on the lead role it doesn’t mean that others don’t do any of the work, just that they will be guided by the one leading that section of the project]. It is recommended that each team member assumes a leading role for one aspect of the team effort. The result of your discussions should be documented in a table similar to the one below. [Note that you need to define the roles; those listed are simply examples]. Each person’s name and student number must appear at least once in the table. There may be more than one person allocated to any role. 

Team Charter Template

HI6008 Business Research Project - Team Charter 

Team Member Namesemailmobile
Member 1Contact 1Pref 1
Member 2Contact 2Pref 2
Member 3Contact 3Pref 3

Note: The maximum team size is 3 persons.

  1. Explain the team’s agreed goals and timeline for completion (Due dates, meetings, milestones, deliverables from individuals)
  2. Who is responsible for each activity? 
  3. What particular team-roles will each member contribute to the team? 
  4. What are your team’s expectations regarding meeting attendance (being on time, leaving early, missing meetings, etc.)?
  5. What process will team members follow if they have an emergency and cannot attend a team meeting or complete their individual work promised to the team (deliverable)?
  6. What are your team’s expectations regarding the quality of team members’ preparation for team meetings?
  7. What are your team’s expectations regarding team members’ ideas, interactions with the team, cooperation, attitudes, and team-member contributions in general?
  8. How will your team ensure that members contribute as expected to the team and that the team performs as expected? 
  9. How will your team reward members who do well and how will you collectively manage members whose performance is below expectations?
  10. Add any other team agreements and commitments here

Answer

Introduction

Today's advanced world relies entirely on internet services. The disastrous pandemic hit the whole world. However, the world kept moving ahead with its regular pace. It is very well-acknowledged that our lives are to very much extent, rely on Internet services. From Governments to considerable business, schools to essential items delivery, everything is based on the internet. (Graham, M., & Dutton, W. H. 2019) Our lives were easy and accessible even when we were locked up in our homes. However, nothing comes easy and has some disadvantages. So is the cyber-threat. Cyber-threat is not a different thing; it is always there when we use our internet services. Our team chose ‘Challenges in Cyber-Security in Businesses’ as a topic; because we consider it as the most dangerous thing that can happen to any organization. Being business studies’ students, we wish to understand this topic better and understand the consequences, and then learn about the ways that can help businesses mitigate such threats. In this assignment, we shall discuss the main challenges that business is or might face in future, concerning cyber-security. We will also identify one major problem that needs to be addressed, and we will propose a question concerning the same. We will intend to understand the depth of challenges that businesses are likely to face regarding cybersecurity. 

Cyber-Threat

As we discussed above, cyber-threats come along with system and internet. However, the scope of such threat manifolds when an intention is to harm the individual or organization. Cyber-threats are nothing but wrongful acts that intend to damage data, steal valuable and confidential information to disrupt the functioning of institutions. The threats may be faced in different ways like computer virus, Denial of Services (DoS) and even data breaches. (Tungall, 2020)

How does it affect Businesses?

Data is the most expensive thing in today's date. If a company is not able to keep its customers' data confidential, it cannot survive in such a competitive environment. That's the reason why companies all over the world are spending enormously to build cyber-security. We need to understand that cyber-threat is not limited to a particular area or zone. The companies might face threats from a source from an opposite corner of the world or so. The business leaders are making every single attempt to innovate their digital tools and mechanisms so that no threat can dismantle their company’s functioning. 

Cyber-Security

To deal with Cyber-Threats, the advancement of cyber-security began. There are some aspects of cyber-security:

  • Identification and authentication- Whenever the data of a person enters into the system, it is essential to identify it. The process of authentication helps to prove if the data of the person is genuine or not.
  • Authorization- It helps in protecting the critical resources that are inbuilt in the system by allowing only genuine users to run their applications. It helps in refraining anyone unauthorized to make use of information or input any information.
  • Auditing- It is a method in which the events are recorded and checked so that identification of any unauthorized activity has been done, or was likely to happen.
  • Confidentiality- Data is susceptible. It is the responsibility of organizations to ensure their customers' data is safe, and no unauthorized access is allowed. In that regard, various types of mechanisms are used, such as encryption of data.
  • Data integrity- Even when authentic users are allowed to access data, there are chances that unauthorized modification may occur. It might be due to some human or technical errors or a deliberate attempt. (IBM, 2020)

To protect these aspects of cyber-security, there are some tools and mechanisms that help in the implementation of them: 

  • Cryptography: It is a methodology to converts that take place between plaintext (readable text) and ciphertext (unreadable text). It is a prolonged process under which the plaintext gets converted into a ciphertext when the sender sends it to the receiver. And, then this ciphertext gets converted into plaintext when the receiver receives it. The message does not get affected during this course. (Ming, X., Chen, Y., & Guo, J, 2019)
  • Message Digests & Digital Signatures: The message digest is a fixed size of the numeric representation of the message or the content. A hash function computes this, and this message can be encrypted in the form of a digital signature.  
  • Digital Certificates: These are given to authorized users. It merely means that a specified entity authorizes a public key. A certificate authority issues them.  
  • Public Key Infrastructure: This is a system that is responsible for facilitating that services that provide support to public-key cryptography for checking authentication of parties who are involved in transactions.

Challenges of Cyber-Security

There are numerous challenges that organizations face; however, cyber-threat can be one of the biggest ones. Let us discuss some common challenges of the same: 

  • Unprecedented Attacks: As discussed above, there are numerous chances of attacks even after strict security. This attack is one such. Also, these attacks are dynamic and can surprise the IT personnel. (Lallie, H. S., Shepherd, L. A., Nurse, J. R., Erola, A., Epiphaniou, G., Maple, C., & Bellekens, X. 2020)
  • Cyber Espionage: It is well-known that companies save their data on the cloud. It is learned that dependence on the cloud for storing information is becoming common, and so is the cyber espionage. The whole cloud may get hacked and information related to business, including highly confidential one, too can be on risk. (Shevlin, R. 2020)
  • Data Theft or Wrongful Data Access: It is one of the worst things to happen, especially with businesses such as online shopping sites or hospitality. Recently Marriot hotel in Australia reported that the information of its customers, etc. might have been accessed for wrongful means. (DURBIN, 2020)

Research Question

After studying about Challenges of Cyber-Security, it can be said that internet technology can either be a blessing or a curse. So it is quite important to understand the impact of cyber-threats and deal with them accordingly. Our team has identified a Research Question concerning this topic- 

"Even when we are building strategies to fight cyber-attacks, why is that every time a new threat emerges out of nowhere?" 

The reason for choosing this question is because even though we have numerous mechanisms to deal with data thefts, breaches, espionages, etc. every time an unexpected attack hits us. We need to identify are we moving one step behind the attackers or these acts are unpreventable. This will help us to learn in-depth, the methods that can help us eliminate the causes of such threats.

Conclusion

Cyber-security is not just a formality but a dire need of a company. Be it a big or small one, every company today is facing threats of cyber-security. We learned how our lives have become dependent upon the Internet of Things (IoT). The concept of cyber-threat and how it affects businesses all around were discussed to understand the background of the topic. We then went on the understand Cyber-Security, under which we learned about fundamental aspects and mechanism that help us prevent cyber-attacks. The security mechanisms are well-defined structures that make data transmission safe all around the world. However, even after that, there are a series of challenges that emerge. We also learned about different kinds of cyber-attacks that can hit the companies very bad. As the assignment required, we proposed a research question, which is not just a question that emerges when we read something but is a significant concern for IT personnel. We need to identify if we are doing enough to ensure cyber-security. This assignment helped our team to learn different aspects of cyber-security and enhanced our knowledge into it. Our team would like to thank our teachers for providing us with the guidance to write this assignment. 

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