Johnzell Wilson
SEC230

I will go over the two programs you have inquired about, ping sweeps and port scans. A port scan identifies which ports are open a machine. When running a port scan you can tell which services may be running on the system. A ping sweep sends a ping (an ICMP echo request) to a targeted machine.

If you wanted to determine what machines could be accessed and are active you would use a ping sweep. This is the first step of an attack. If the intruder can find a machine they can then attempt to use a port scan. Finding what services are running on the machine is what the port scan is for. These services can include program applications, the operating system and more.

These two programs are mainly used to gather information. But this information shows the vulnerable points in a network that can be taken advantage of. The intruder can then attack with data they have discovered. The tools the attacker uses is based on what operating system we are using and what services are active.

If an attack were to be successful there can be multiple consequences. You will have information given to individuals not authorized to see it. The information could be altered also. The data could also be deleted. We need to protect ourselves from this happening.

To avoid any kind of attacks and exploits, we need to stay up-to-date with patches and updates available for all software. The next step would be limiting the amount of services that are running. We should only be running what is necessary. Finally we should make sure our company provides as a little information about a computer operations as possible. The less information known about the more they have to figure out. Lower the possible vulnerable points in the network will result in lower a chance of being hacked.

REFERENCES
Conklin, Wm. Arthur. Principles of Computer Security: Security+ and Beyond. 2. VitalSource Bookshelf. McGraw-Hill Learning Solutions, 2010, Monday, June 04, 2012. <http://online.vitalsource.com/books/0073398756/id/ch01lev2sec5>