Cyber Security Management

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Assignment

Autumn 2023

Words:1600

Weighting:40%

Learning Outcomes assessed:1,2,3

Submission date:27 October 2023 (11:59pm UK time)

Module Leader:Chitra Balakrishna

Instructions to candidates:

• Please refer to the Assignment Presentation Requirements for advice on how to set out your assignment.
• You must familiarise yourself with the Academic Dishonesty and Plagiarism Policy relating to this programme and ensure that you acknowledge all the sources which you use in your work. The policy is available to access through your programme handbook.
• You must complete the Statement and Confirmation of Own Work, which is available in the Additional Materials section of the VLE and at the end of this assignment.
• Please make a note of the recommended word count. You could lose marks if you write 10% more or less than this.
• You must submit a digital copy of this online examination through the VLE virtual learning environment. Media containing viruses, corrupted media, or media which cannot be run directly, will result in a fail grade being awarded for this module.
• Diagrams may be word processed or drawn by hand and then uploaded using a scanner or a clear photograph if necessary.
• Manipulating the word count through hiding text in diagrams could be penalised.
• All electronic media will be checked for plagiarism.Cyber Security Management

Assignment Guidance

The learning outcomes assessed in this assignment are as follows:

• It is the student’s responsibility to familiarise themselves with the Academic Dishonesty and Plagiarism policy contained in the Programme Handbook.
• Any assignment submitted after the submission deadline, without prior approval, will be given 0% and the student will be referred.
• The late assignment submission may be marked as a referral attempt, but only a maximum mark of 40% can be awarded for that particular assessment.
• If a student requests an extension to the official submission date this must be done in writing to the Programme Manger at least five full UK working days before the official submission date. This request must be accompanied by supporting evidence.
• This assignment is worth 40% of the overall final mark for the module.
• Students should write no more than 1600 words (+/- 10%) for this assignment. Additional words may not be marked.
• Students are encouraged to read widely in preparing for the assignment, making reference to articles in academic journals and other relevant sources.
• All references should be cited in text and included in a reference section at the end of the report using the Harvard Referencing Scheme.
• The Statement and Confirmation of Own Work must be completed and submitted with the assignment.
• This assignment must be submitted by the due date and time as given on the front of this assignment.
• Please refer to the Assessment Criteria contained in the Programme Handbook which shows how the level of marking relates to your standard of work. Cyber Security Management

Submission Requirements

You must read and understand NCC Education’s policy on ‘Academic Dishonesty and Plagiarism’. You must complete the attached form ‘Statement and Confirmation of Own Work’ and attach your completed form to your assignment.

Scenario

The network in a school that caters to students from year 1 to year 13 is fairly basic in terms of infrastructure and services. It was installed in 2015 and hasn’t been upgraded since, except for the replacement of the broadband router with a similar one that has a VPN server. There school building has four floors, with the primary years located on the ground floor.

The building has wired connectivity across classrooms and staff offices. A wired backbone runs through the corridors on each floor, providing interconnectivity to the teachers' desktops in every classroom. This is primarily used for projection and accessing teaching materials stored on a centralised server. Each floor has a switch, and each switch connects to a core switch in the mini data centre located on the ground floor at the back of the building.

The network is connected to a broadband provider for Internet access. Access to the Internet is limited to the desktops in the classrooms and to the staff offices. The mini data centre houses computing, storage servers, and other network equipment, including the broadband router that provides access to the Internet. A VPN server and the school’s web server are also in the data centre.

Students are provided laptops that utilise the WiFi access points within classrooms to access the VLE (virtual learning environment). Students can also access the school-hosted VLE platform remotely from home. This remote VLE access is via a VPN. The VPN server is part of the VPN router and can only support five simultaneous user connections at any given time.

The system administration is handled by a few staff members who are not trained administrators but have learned on the job. No consideration has been given to security, and as a result, there are no specific security practices in place. The only basic access controls are for the VLE resources and network Internet access.

The school has now received an undisclosed amount of funding from an agency concerned with securing the school's online services and assets (including personal student data, school-related data, etc.), as well as ensuring online safety for students.

The security upgrades are expected to be done beginning with conformance to the NCSC’s Cyber Essentials and tested with Cyber Essentials Plus.

The school has approached you – a cybersecurity consultant – to take the school onward to gain a better security posture and improve it.

The questions that follow are based on this scenario.Cyber Security Management
Guidelines for addressing the tasks:
• The school has not provided you any specific inputs in terms of their network diagrams, functional schematics, etc. Therefore, make assumptions appropriately and state the list of assumptions made.
• Similarly, you have not received any specific details about their suite of services. Make appropriate assumptions and state them clearly, upfront.
• When presenting schematics or network diagrams, use landscape orientation on your pages.
• Attempt to illustrate wherever possible. That could contribute to reducing word count while increasing the information content.
• Package information into tables to make it comprehensive and structured. Note that text within the tables contributes to word count!
• Refer to the slides and exercises where required.
• Feel free to use resources on the Internet. You must cite the sources and include them in the list of references in the Harvard format.
Your specific tasks are set out on the following pages.Cyber Security Management

Assignment

Answering tasks 1, 2, 3 is mandatory. Answer task 4 OR task 5. All tasks carry equal marks.

General

Your submission will be evaluated for these general tasks – Research (sources of information), references (referencing format and in-text citations), the standard of report writing (language, continuity, comprehensiveness), its structure (Sections, subsections, Table of contents, Reference List) and presentation (formatting, captions, and illustrations) Total 20 marks

Task 1

Given the scenario of the school, you are first required to demonstrate to the school authorities, the potential network security threats that they face:

a) Identify three important services of the school that need to be “available” all the time with a brief description of the service indicating its location in the infrastructure, its access, and use.(10 marks)

b) What are the potential threats to the “availability” of the services and data, in your opinion? What would be the impact if the threat led to an exploit resulting in an incident. Mention the potential causes for it.(5 marks)

c) Include a risk matrix and indicate the risk rating for the risks and mention the levels assigned to each of the risks by including them in a matrix. Mention in brief what is necessary to mitigate the risk posed by the threats.(5 marks)

Note: The information you present here is for a non-technical audience and should therefore be in a simple and easy-to-understand language. You could define some of the basic terms where needed. Use illustrations (examples, diagrams, etc.) where needed, for easy understanding. Total 20 marks
Please see the following pages for tasks, 2, 3, 4, and 5.Cyber Security Management

Task 2

Now that you have a fair understanding of the scenario, Your next step would be to list out what are the checks you would want to perform on the school’s infrastructure and
services:

List out the potential issues that require attention from a security perspective. These would be things you would want to check in the school’s existing infrastructure and services, as they are. Categorise them under the headings of network infrastructure, servers and services, and end devices (desktops, laptops, tablets). Use the table format below. It includes two example checks to get you started:


Guidelines for the task: For task above identify aspects of infrastructure – both network and computing (servers and end point devices), and application services that would require examining for secure configuration and function. Also consider how data requires to be kept confidential and check for appropriate functions and implementations necessary to keep data confidential and private.

You can find information about the CVE either on the NVD website or at https://www.cvedetails.com. The CVE you reference could be any recent vulnerability (2020-2023) - for example, the CVE in the top row refers to a remote code execution vulnerability in Windows 11. Feel free to mention a CVE related to vulnerabilities in any operating system of your choice.

Mention clearly any assumptions you make. Total 20 marks

Task 3

With a list of potential check to be made, you would now look at the requirement of NCSC’s Cyber Essentials. The document specifies five themes for the technical controls to be
implemented, namely firewalls, secure configuration, user access control, malware protection, and security update management.
a) For each of the themes, provide a definitions and scope (its objective and the aspects of the infrastructure and services is it applicable to) of the theme.(10 marks)

b) List the controls you would recommend implemented in the context of the school’s infrastructure and services for each theme.(10 marks)

Guideline: The table you generated in Task 2 is a good starting point, followed by the NCSC’s guidelines. Total 20 marks

ANSWER EITHER TASK 4 OR TASK 5

Task 4

A typical means of transferring the security risk is to migrate to the cloud. Once cloud services are subscribed, the infrastructure security risk is transferred to the cloud provider, at a minimum. The degree of risk transferred depends on the cloud service model subscribed to.

a) What is the service subscription option that could be suggested for the school given that there are no trained administrators handling their infrastructure?(8 marks)

b) Justify your choice both from the services perspective as well as the security perspective – how would the services used by the school be hosted on the cloud and what aspects of security would be the provider’s responsibility？(12 marks)

Guidelines: Refer to the cloud services of Amazon, Azure, and Google Cloud platform to identify what aspects of security are covered for each service model Total 20 marks

Task 5

The school has requested the addition of physical security monitoring and access control for its infrastructure. Cameras would be installed around the periphery and at the entrances/exits to monitor the building.

Furthermore, all entrances will have automated door locks requiring a combination of ID card tap plus an individual secret code known by students and staff. Visitors to the school are restricted to the Reception area and Principal's office.

a) Provide a brief description of two typical uses of the physical security system by the school.(6 marks)

b) With this, you have so far listed the Physical and technical controls. What administrative controls might you propose for the context of the school? Note that administrative security controls include any security measures focused on managing people.(14 marks) Total 20 marks

Total marks for the assignment = 100 marks.

Your report should be 1600 words (+/- 10%) plus diagrams.

References do not count towards this word limit. For your prices you need to show via references where the prices have come from so that these figures can be validated. If you use any work which is not yours (for example a picture or a piece of text which helps you to explain your argument) then this must be correctly and fully referenced using the Harvard referencing system.Cyber Security Management

Statement and Confirmation of Own Work

Programme/Qualification name:

All NCC Education assessed assignments submitted by students must have this statement as the cover page or it will not be accepted for marking. Please ensure that this statement is either firmly attached to the cover of the assignment or electronically inserted into the front of the assignment.

Student declaration
I have read and understood NCC Education’s Policy on Academic Dishonesty and Plagiarism.
I can confirm the following details:
Student ID/Registration number:
Name:
Centre Name:
Module Name:
Module Leader:
Number of words:
I confirm that this is my own work and that I have not plagiarised any part of it. I have also noted the assessment criteria and pass mark for assignments.
Due Date:
Student Signature:
Submitted Date:

2023-09-30