The 'Six Domains' of Security+

The network is the access point to all information. Therefore you must understand computer networking and have a fundamental grounded set of basic information relative to the TZP protocol which forms the basis of communication on the web devices such as routers firewalls hubs switches and so forth create the infrastructure of local area networks on a corporate scale and on the Internet on a global scale securing such devices is fundamental to protecting the environment and out going an incoming communications traffic you'll need to be aware of security risks and controls that are available and public switched networks and public switched infrastructure as these types of infrastructure often used for computer communications. It's important to understand physical devices network typologies and storage media when analyzing network security the network security domain covers topics such as basic networking Land Security firewalls intrusion detection services transport layer security perimeter security and network access control. The second domain that's covered in security plus exam is the compliance and operational security domain. Now tools are great but processes and best practices rule the day in this section of the exam. Now before we exert effort into protecting resources we need to know how to measure risk in terms of value. Now there's no point in spending a hundred thousand dollars on a great firewall to protect a data set. That's of little to no value security issue such as compliance risk and risk mitigation as well as basic forensic procedures and environmental controls are used to increase things such as reliability resiliency and maintain business continuity. The importance of mitigating risk and calculating the likelihood and expected losses of various risk is covered in the section of the exam along with dealing with third party integration service level agreements and how to maintain operations through business continuity best practices. This section of the exam also covers environmental controls such as hot and cold aisles and data centers high availability and confidentiality integrity and availability best practices are also covered to ensure that data is secure verified and that data is accessible. Securing your resources is a challenge in any working environment. After all resources are now commonly hacked through software hardware and peripherals. The third domain of the security plus exam requires that you understand how to identify and minimize system threats to thwart would be attackers and that you recognize the different types of assessment tools that are available to discover security threats and vulnerabilities. Be sure to give yourself plenty of time to review all these concepts because there are quite a few. Now the following list identifies some of the key areas from the third domain which constitutes roughly 21 percent of the security plus exam. These include types of malware attacks social engineering methods wireless attacks application attacks and you'll need to understand the various types of mitigation and deterrent techniques against these attacks and domain. 3 you'll learn how to implement assessment tools and techniques to discover security threats as well as vulnerabilities. Now within the realm of vulnerability assessments you'll need to explain the proper use of penetration testing versus vulnerability scanning while a network may be the road that hackers take to get to the data. The applications host and data represent the destination. Now the police may have great roadblocks and inspection points in place but if the trespasser bypasses those controls and reaches the bank and the safes unlocked Well then the money's gone. The same holds true with networks hosts and databases application data and host security become the major focus of security as we move to more web based world and exploits such as cross-site scripting and Seagle injections are an everyday occurrence. Web based apps and database servers contain a wealth of valuable data internal application servers store a wide variety of data from web pages to critical data and sensitive information regulatory compliance issues. Make it necessary to have sound procedures in place for the security of applications data in hosts domain for of the security plus exam requires that you are familiar with hosting and securing systems applications and organizational data now when we talk about access control and identity management we're covering areas like user log ins and permissions to resources these resources can be things such as Web sites databases operating systems and application servers access control and identity management is crucial to maintaining and securing an I.T. environment. Various controls and protocols such as radius and TAC X plus along with directory services and authentication services such as Kerberos El DEP and Sammul provide authentication identification and authorization. And these tools can be used to ensure that users are connected securely with access to resources that they need technologies and concepts that are covered in this section include tokens and multi-factor authentication modern applications make extensive use of cryptography when we access our bank accounts and make payments via Paypal we're using online cryptography to keep our information safe so that only the intended recipients and senders are communicating with one another and that the information is unmodified. Now without cryptography there would be no e-commerce or Internet as we know it. Cryptography has four primary functions. The first function is to provide for confidentiality. This is provided by ensuring that only authorized parties can access data and that encryption is used to protect information from unauthorized individuals. The second function of cryptography is to provide for data integrity integrity verifies the data has not been altered in transit hashing algorithms and other technologies are used to ensure that information hasn't been modified whether in movement or on the hard drive. The third function of cryptography is to provide authentication and this was the process of verifying that the sender is who they say they are. And this is done using technology such as digital certificates the fourth capability of encryption is non repudiation. And this means that one party cannot deny that they sent a message to another party and this is typically implemented through the use of asymmetric cryptography.