Essential Security Measures in System Design

With various threats like cyberattacks, Data Breaches, and other Vulnerabilities, it has become very important for system administrators to incorporate robust security measures into their systems. Some of the key reasons are given below:

• Protection Against Cyber Threats: Data Breaches, Hacking, DoS attacks, etc.
• Data Privacy and Compliance: Different measures like GDPR, HIPAA, and CCPA recommend organizations to protect user data.
• Intellectual Property Protection: Most companies often have their valuable intellectual property stored in their systems in a digital manner.
• Preventing Financial Loss: Not only just loss of data but some cyber attacks can be used to steal valuable information and passwords which then can be used to steal money.
• Reputation Management: Leaking of confidential data and user data can damage the reputation of the company severely.

Steps and ways to ensure the security of a system

Authentication and Authorization :

Authentication is a crucial step to identify the person who is using that certain device. Some of the most popular ways of authenticating are

1. Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
2. Biometrics
3. Emphasis on strong password policy
4. Single Sign-On.

Authorization is a process in which the authority of the particular user trying to access a system is checked. Some of the most renowed ways of authorization are

1. Attribute Based Access Control
2. Least Privilege Principle
3. Review the Accesses
4. Resource Based Authorization.

Data Encryption :

Data Encryption is also a crucial step to ensure the safety of any system. Some of the key aspects to ensure data encryption are

1. Select strong encryption algorithm like AES
2. Use secure protocols like HTTPS, TLS, SSL while transferring data from source to destination.
3. Encrypt stored data using different encryption types like full-disk encryption.
4. Create a secure key management system to generate, store and update encryption keys whenever necessary.
5. Use End to End encryption for the user generated contents and other sensitive communications.

Secure Coding Practices

Secure Coding Practices are necessary to safeguard a system from various types of Cyber Threats. Some of the Secure Coding Practices is given below:

• Input validation: It is necessary to always validate user inputs to prevent threats like SQL Injection and XSS (Cross Site Scripting).
• Access Control: Implement proper access control mechanism so restrict the user to only let them access data or information they are authorized to do.
• Secure Authentication: Use of secure authentication methods like MFA , Face Recognition etc.
• Error Handling: Use meaningful error messages and logging information to avoid potential leak of sensitive and confidential data publicy which could be used by hackers.
• Regular Updates and Patch Management: Updating the security components alongside libraries and patches is a must to safeguard the system from cyber attacks.

Network Security

Having a strict network security policy creates a safe passage to transfer data or information keeping their intergrity and security.

Below are some of the most important practices to maintain it:

• Installing Firewalls and IDS: Firewalls act as a filter to sort out the incoming packets from untrusted public networks and entering trusted private networks or devices. IDS (Intrusion Detection System) is also useful to identify if anything fishy is happening in the network.
• Use Encryption: Use of encryption protocols like SSL or TLS to secure the data transmission, it restricts any third party from doing eavesdropping and data interception, ensuring the integrity of the data transmitted.
• Access Control: Implement RBAC (Role Based Access Control) to ensure that no one gets any other extra access to any of the services which they shouldn't get. It is also necessary to review and make changes to those accesses regularly if needed.
• Network Monitoring and Logging: Continuous monitoring of the network to ensure there is no unauthorized access or anomaly is found. Detailed log of the network activities can also be used to detect any anomaly or security vulnerabilities.

Updates

Keep the network device, software, firmware, libraries etc always updated to fix any vulnerabilities that were present in the previous versions.

Incident Response and Disaster Recovery (IR/DR)

Incident Response (IR): As the named suggests, Incident Response responds to the cybersecurity incidents happening in the system which can range from cyber attacks to data breaches and malware infections. A generic IR plan consists of following phases -

• Preparation: Creating a plan to respond with a particular incident, identify the critical assets and form a incident response team.
• Identification of the Issue: By analyzing the system logs, the issue is being detected and categorized
• Containment: Taking some immediate action to stop the spreading of the malware and affect the entire system.
• Eradication: Identifying the root cause of the issue and remove it from all the affected areas of the system.
• Recovery: After eradication, it is time to recover the system to it's original non affected status and improve the security measures to prevent future attacks.

Disaster Recovery (DR): Disaster Recovery mainly deals with Physical issues like Hard Disk failure, problems in Motherboard or RAM or any other physical part of the system. It deals with hardware based issue and tries to ensure that the system continues to work in the same way by solving the issues. This involves -

• Data Backup: Backing up data regularly to a cloud based or any other place is a very important step to ensure the availability of the data even if the system faces any issue from hardware side.
• Redundancy: Use redundant hardware, data centre etc to make multiple copies of the same file so that if one system fails the file is still accessible.
• Business Continuity Planning: Develop strategies to continue the essential business processes even after a disaster.
• Testing and Performing Drill: Regularly test the disaster recovery plan via testing and simulation to ensure the system is ready to handle those kind of situations.

Physical Security

Physical Security is also a crucial component when it comes to system design. Below are some of the main reason why it is important.

• Protection of Hardware: Physical security measures are crucial for safeguarding the hardware components of a system. Data Centeres, Servers, Network Devices need to be protected from theft, vandalism or any other harm.
• Data Protection: Gaining accress to the Physical Hardware mostly means gaining access to the data stored in it, so to protect the data stored in the physical components, physical security is very much needed.
• Business Continuity: Any kind of Disaster whether it is man made or natural can disrupt the operations, so to ensure that the system keeps working after some disaster like fire or failure of pwoer supply, having a physical security measure is always good.
• Preventing Unauthorized Access: Physical Security can also be used to prevent unauthorized access to sensistive data.
• Physical Asset Protection: Physical Security is also useful to protect the physical assests, such as hardware devices from thefts, vandlise, damage or misuse.

Secure Communication Protocols

Using secure protocols like SSL/TLS and HTTPS while transferring data is highly recommended to securely transmit sensitive data, most of the industries use this. By safeguarding communication, systems mitigate the risk of data breaches, maintain it's credibility, and assure users that their iinformation is safely stored or transmitted.

Some of the moslty used communication protocols are given below -

• Secure Sockets Layer/ Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS).
• Hypertext Transfer Protocol (Secured) (HTTPS)
• Secure Shell (SSH)
• Internet Protocol Security (IPSec)
• S/MIME (Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions)
• Pretty Good Privacy (PGP)

Third-Party Risk Management

Modern Systems rely on various Third Party applications like APIs and Cloud Services, so it is easy to get affected by any of them.

System Administrators need to evaluate their Security approaches from these third-party services. A failure or breach from the Third-Party service can lead to severe issues like data leak, system disruption and most importantly reputation damage.

Secure Software Development Lifecycle (SSDLC)

The Secure Software Development Lifecycle (SSDLC) is a systematic software development approach which integrates security measures throught the development process. This approach significantly reduces the chance of having any vulnerability in the final product. SSDLC implements security approaches in each stage of the development from planning and design to coding, testing and the final deployment.

In the context of System Design, some of the benefits of SSDLC is given below:

• Proactive Security: SSDLC provides proactive security measures, means that a lesser amount of vulnerabilities will appear during the development process. This approach helps in creating more error free software.
• Cost Efficient: Identifying and eradicating issues at a very early stage of the development process is much more cost-efficient then addressing them after deployment. It helps in avoiding costly security breaches and redesigns.
• Compliance: Most of the systems need to adhere to some security compliance defined by the government or the industry, SSDLC helps in adhereing to all the security compliance from the very beginning.
• Enhanced Reputation: If the systems are more secure and has less vulnerabilities then automatically the reputation of that company increases, so using SSDLC methods while designing a system will increase the reputation and build trust amongst the users.
• Reduced Risks: By eradicating vulnerabilities at an early stage, SSDLC reduces the risk of data breach, cyber attack, downtime or any other financial losses.