Act Utilitarianism By Jeremy Bentham And John Stuart Mill...

Act utilitarianism is a theory proposed by English philosophers Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill during the 19th century. The aforementioned theory states that an action is morally good if its benefits exceed its harms, and correspondingly an action is considered morally bad if its harms exceed its benefits. Act utilitarianism is based upon the principle of utility, which states an action is right, if it increases the total happiness of the affected parties, and wrong if it decreases the total happiness of the affected parties. Therefore, the moral action would be the action that minimizes the decrease in total happiness. Analyzing act utilitarianism in the situation mentioned, where Jean impersonates a health care provider to provide medicine for his dying nephew, It is important to first assess the total happiness of each party involved, and measure out the final total happiness. Pierre’s total happiness due to Jean’s actions will be at a 100. I’ve made Pierre’s happiness 100 because this is the happiest Pierre will be since his life was saved, alternatively, he could be dead. I would put Jean’s happiness at -5, because even though he’s happy that Pierre is alive, he can’t help but feel guilty that he impersonated a physician and might face serious consequences for those actions as a result. The pharmacist’s total happiness will be 50, since he got payment for the day regardless if Jean picked up his medication or not. Overall, the total happiness of the affectedShow MoreRelatedHappiness And Happiness1736 Words   |  7 Pagesthe 3 time period will be addressed: Historical utilitarianism, Classical utilitarianism, and Modern utilitarianism. They are very similar but have important miniscule differences in them that separates them from each other but overall share the same concept of happiness. Key words:Utilitarianism, Modern utilitarianism, Classical Utilitarianism, Act/Rule utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill Utilitarianism The Utilitarianism philosophy’s concept is mainly characterizedRead MoreTest Bank For Ethics For The Information Age 5th Edition Mike Quinn4321 Words   |  18 PagesII. d) the Korean War. e) the Vietnam War. 12. Programming languages were developed in order to a) make it possible to program computers in English. b) make programming faster and less error-prone. c) speed translations between English and Russian during the Cold War. d) improve the computation speed of computers, which were very expensive. e) All of the above. 13. Which of the following was not an early programming language? a) BASIC b) COBOL c) DATA-FLOW d) FLOW-MATIC e) FORTRAN 14. SoftwareRead More The Ethics of File Sharing Software Essay3352 Words   |  14 Pagescontrol). But, file-sharing software can be used to share files that are not copy written, and its service is commercially valuable. Typically, items that can be used legally and illegally are not commonly regarded as the primary cause of the illegal act. This is similar to guns. The common argument is that guns don’t kill people, people kill people. This argument is also used for VCR’s, and other recording devices. Ethical Issues This is an interesting question. Do the creators of the fileRead MoreContemporary Issues in Business5466 Words   |  22 Pages6 Managers as Discursive Subjectivies 4. Ethical Theories 4.1. Consequentialist Theories 4.2. Non Consequentialist Theories 5. Conclusion 6. Recommendations 7. References 1.Introduction This report will discuss the events that took place during the phone hacking scandal at News International and evaluate the behaviour of the Organisation and its Management. It will review the issues in this case against several ethical and ideological theories as well as providing recommendations for howRead MoreBranches of Philosophy8343 Words   |  34 Pageswhether knowledge is possible. Among its central concerns has been the challenge posed by skepticism and the relationships between truth, belief, and justification. †¢ Ethics, or moral philosophy, is concerned with questions of how persons ought to act or if such questions are answerable. The main branches of ethics are meta-ethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics. Meta-ethics concerns the nature of ethical thought, comparison of various ethical systems, whether there are absolute ethical truthsRead MoreSources of Ethics20199 Words   |  81 PagesTABLE OF CONTENTS 1.0- JOHN STEINER AND GEORGE STEINER SIX PRIMARY SOURCES OF ETHICS: 6 1- Religion: 6 2- Genetic Inheritance: 8 3- Philosophical Systems: 8 4- Cultural Experience: 8 5- The Legal System: 9 6- Codes of Conduct: 9 2.0- EXPLANATION OF THE SOURCES OF ETHICS: 10 2.1- RELIGION: 10 Teaching business ethics 12 2.11- Impact Of Religiosity: 13 2.12- Ethics Of Islam: 14 Nature of Islamic Ethics 17 The Human-Environment Relationship: 20 The SustainableRead MoreInternational Management67196 Words   |  269 Pagesmanagement reflect this dynamism and the increasing unpredictability of global economic and political events. Continued growth of the emerging markets is reshaping the global balance of economic power. 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A Midsummer Night’s Dream Jealousy, Desperation, and...

People can become jealous by wanting something that someone else has. Overzealous jealousy leads to desperation in which people act irrationally to obtain the object of their desire. With irrational actions, people can ruin their relationships to ensure that they will never get what they want; however, other factors could intervene to help them get it. William Shakespeare explores these ideas in his play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Two characters that he uses to show these qualities are Oberon and Helena. According to Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, jealousy turns people to take desperate measures to get what they want, and they may need intervention to obtain what they desire. Shakespeare suggests that jealousy comes from not†¦show more content†¦At one time, Demetrius loved Helena, and then he fell in love with someone else. Initially, Demetrius had given his love to Helena: â€Å"He hailed down oaths that he was only mine, / And when this hail som e heat from Hermia felt, / So he dissolved, and showers of oaths did melt† (MND 1.1.243-245). Helena loved Demetrius, and he promised to be with her forever. However once he met her friend, Hermia, Demetrius left Helena to chase after her friend. Helena’s jealousy of Demetrius’ love drives her to think about what he really wants. Helena believes that Hermia’s beauty is why Demetrius desires her. She tells Hermia, â€Å"Demetrius loves your fair†, and she goes further to say, â€Å"Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated, / The rest I’d give to be to you translated† (MND 1.1.182, 190-191). Her jealousy of Demetrius’ love has turned into jealousy of Hermia’s beauty. Helena obsesses over having Demetrius back to the point that she continuously follows him around. Demetrius is tired of Helena chasing him: â€Å"Do I entice you? Do I speak you fair?† (MND 2.1.199). Demetrius does not understand why she tries so hard to be with him when he does not even compliment her. Demetrius threatens Helena to leave him alone: â€Å"I’ll run from thee, and hide me in the brakes, / And leave thee to the mercy of wild beasts† (MND 2.1.227-228). At this point, he is beyond exhausted with Helena, and he will do anything to get away from her.Show MoreRelatedMidsummer Night’s Dream: The Power of Love1260 Words   |  6 PagesLove is a powerful emotion, capable of turning reasonable people into fools. Out of love, ridiculous emotions arise, like jealousy and desperation. Love can shield us from the truth, narrowing a perspective to solely what the lover wants to see. Though beautiful and inspiring when requited, a love unreturned can be devastating and maddening. In his play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare comically explores the flaws and suffering of lovers. Four young Athenians: Demetrius, Lysander, Hermia

Aaliyah †original writing on the life of the singer Free Essays

â€Å"I don’t think about my success. I’m happy that the work I’ve done in the past has been very successful. All I can do is leave it in God’s hands and hope my fans feel where I’m coming from. We will write a custom essay sample on Aaliyah – original writing on the life of the singer or any similar topic only for you Order Now I took the time to give my all.† – Aaliyah Haughton. As I sit listening to the infectious, sensuous harmonies of Aaliyah’s smooth R B, I wonder why it had to happen. Why did someone so young with such amazing talent, strength and the potential to carry on rising higher and higher, have to be taken from us? The lyrics swirl around in my head, saying more about the real Aaliyah than any media report could ever attempt. Her tragically shortened life followed the message from within one of her most famous songs, â€Å"If at first you don’t succeed, dust yourself off and try again.† Aaliyah Dana Haughton was born on January 16th, 1979 in Brooklyn, New York. Her Grandmother would tell stories of how she was special straight out of the womb; born with a full head of hair. Aaliyah lived in Brooklyn for five years until, together with her parents and older brother, she was moved to Detroit where they could be closer to family. Her devoted mother gave up her teaching job to care for Rashad and Aaliyah full time. Aaliyah was introduced to music at a very young age; her mother would play Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and other such legends while she worked around the house. It wasn’t long before Aaliyah was joining in, having learnt all the words off by heart. She was just six years old when her talent for singing was recognized by her mother. Before she even started school, the services of a voice coach had been secured for her. Aaliyah spent most of her pre-teen years between singing in school plays and auditioning for various small television projects. At the tender age of only eight or nine she was charming people all around Michigan with her sweet, angelic voice, belting out songs during weddings. Aaliyah sang the very songs she listened to at home, while people sat in awe, eagerly anticipating the time her voice would mature to its full potential. Her first downfall came when she was just eleven years of age. Aaliyah landed a spot on the nationally syndicated talent show, Star Search. She chose to sing ‘My Funny Valentine†, a soul classic that she had often heard her mother singing, ‘That was my Mommy’s song and I wanted to be like my Mommy’ she said, remembering the experience during an interview. The high hopes she and her family had for victory where shattered when Aaliyah lost, and was ripped apart just as any other child would have been. However, without any falls no lessons could be learnt. With lots of encouragement from her mother, Aaliyah began to understand a prospect of great importance, one that would guide her through not only her musical career, but every aspect of her life. Never give up. It was only a matter of months before the bright, upcoming star was on the rise again. At the time her uncle, Barry Hankerson, was married to Gladys Knight. Some people slated Aaliyah for this, claiming she only got onto the music scene because she knew the right people, but without her outstanding talent, none of her future success would have been possible. Hankerson took his niece to perform with Gladys Knight for five nights at Bally’s Las Vegas Casino. Here, the two would duet on Believe In Yourself and Aaliyah would sing solos. Remembering she was still only eleven at the time, she was nervous and hardly moved on the first night. Her aunt helped her, teaching Aaliyah how to work a crowd and loosen them up. Two years later came the meeting that would set Aaliyah’s career on fire. Barry Hankerson introduced his niece to R. Kelly, a performer he was managing at the time. Kelly fell in love with her beautiful voice, going on to become her mentor. He ended up writing and producing all the tracks on her debut album, Age Ain’t Nothing But A Number. And it wasn’t – not many people can boast a completed album at just thirteen years of age. The process of selling the album began but, once again, expectations of Aaliyah were not fulfilled. Many record companies passed on the album – a setback very hard to take at such a vulnerable age. Her confidence was dented but her strength was not; Aaliyah was prepared to give things another go. Hankerson created his own label, Blackground Records especially for his niece. There was no way he was going to give up on her; she was far too special to let go. In 1994 the album was released, catching the world’s attention. Her first single, Back And Forth reached number one on the RB/Hip-Hop chart, dethroning her mentor. Other singles followed including At Your Best (You Are Love), Down With The Clique, and the adulterated title track. Her sound was new and fresh to the music world, her unique mystique captivating listeners. The artist herself liked to describe her music as ‘street but sweet’. With the success of her debut album Aaliyah’s spirits soared. She had kept information about her age (she was just fifteen at the time) concealed, as she wanted her triumphs to be based solely on her talent. She did not seek any advantages because she was, ‘really good for someone so young’. Unfortunately her decision to withhold such facts was taken in the wrong way. Vicious rumors arose, slowing down album sales and threatening to thwart a prosperous career. The provocative nature of Age Ain’t Nothing But A Number combined with a little bit of media imagination and the mystery of her age sparked a frenzy of stories about a relationship between Aaliyah and twenty-five-year-old R. Kelly. Tales of marriage and even pregnancy were spread. All were denied. The storm settled and three years passed, leaving many wondering what Aaliyah’s next project would be. She teased fans with numerous guest appearances, singing songs from soundtracks and building them up for the time she would truly return, stronger then ever. Aaliyah left R. Kelly behind to prove, more to herself than to anyone else, that she had grown as an artist and could make it without him. Perhaps the rumors that had at one point looked like they could destroy her had in fact been a Godsend. Would Aaliyah have made this choice if tales of something more than a good friendship and working partnership between the two hadn’t sprung up? Whatever her reasons, the change was for the best. She teamed up with the then unknown Missy Elliot and Timbaland and, between the three, a new sound was created, once again irresistible to fans. They blended rough Hip-Hop beats with Aaliyah’s silky, laid-back vocals, the voice of an angel. The result was a sassy, sexy, sophomore album, One In A Million. The album went double platinum, putting her among the superstars of the music industry and silencing critics in their questions as to whether or not she had been just a ‘one hit wonder.’ The first single from the album, If Your Girl Only Knew, went straight to number one on the RB/Hip-Hop chart, followed by four other singles including the number one radio play title track. Aaliyah never let the fame go to her head. Between all her musical commitments she still found time for her family, friends and schoolwork. In June 1997 Miss Haughton graduated from the Detroit High School for the Fine and Performing arts, just one A-grade away from a perfect grade score. She had always set her sights so high and her determination paid off. She worked hard through hard times as well as the good, and brought her dreams to life. She truly was one in a million. It was time for Aaliyah to turn her attention to Hollywood. She began by sticking to her music, recording Journey To The Past for the Anastasia soundtrack and then the contagious, Grammy nominated, number one hit song, Are You That Somebody, from the Dr. Dolittle soundtrack. With that track, she really got a taste for the mainstream and took a hiatus from the music world to team up with Joanne Baron, an acting coach. With Baron’s help, Aaliyah’s talent for acting was revealed and, by 1999, she was flying to Vancouver to shoot her debut film, Romeo Must Die. She starred alongside Jet Li in the adrenalin-stoked/Hip-Hop action flick, in which she was the executive producer of the soundtrack. From this came Try Again, the song that followed the story of her life. The lyrics came straight from her heart, from the lessons she had learnt. These qualities took the single all the way, reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, the first single ever to do so base d on Airplay alone. Romeo Must Die sparked rave reviews and her acting skills were soon sought throughout Hollywood. Her next film was the novel-based Queen Of The Damned. Baron recalls the memory of Aaliyah during the audition process, ‘She put her heart, her time, her love and her life into it. She just ripped it out.’ It was her second starring role in just her second motion picture, displaying to the world she was more than just a crossover singer/actress. So much more. The release of the completed film was fervently awaited. Little did anyone know that Aaliyah wouldn’t be there to witness its success. Whilst shooting Queen Of The Damned, Aaliyah simultaneously recorded her third, self-titled album. She was not put off or daunted by her doubled workload, choosing instead to put her all into both projects, as she had always done. Aaliyah was well aware of her presence, or lack of it, in the music world; it had been five years since the release of One In A Million. She released the dark, feisty, first single, We Need A Resolution, warming fans up, preparing them for what was to come. Aaliyah was released on July 17, debuted at number two in the charts and, in it’s first week alone, sold over 200,000 copies. Blackground Records planned to release Rock The Boat and More Than A Woman as back-to-back singles; they were getting heavy rotational airplay and already an awesome response from listeners. It seemed nothing could stop her. It was August the 25th, 2001. Aaliyah had just finished shooting the island themed video for Rock The Boat in The Bahamas. Another video completed; another accomplishment. The set was laid-back and, together with the film crew and dancers, Aaliyah was enjoying herself, chatting, laughing and winding down. Her work done, Aaliyah decided to head home a day early, anxious to be with her beloved family before heading back to promote the album. Her parents and brother had always been there for her and it had been a while since she had managed to get back to them. The arrangements were made; she would leave that day along with eight others. The small Cessna 402 departed from the Marsh Harbour airport, bound for Opa-locka, Florida. It had been airborne for only a short while when, suddenly, it crashed. Six of the eight were killed instantly. Aaliyah was among them. Nobody knows just what it was that made the plane crash that day. Nobody could understand why it had to happen. Why Aaliyah, why someone so talented, so determined, so beautiful? There were so many questions and so few answers. At just twenty-two years of age Aaliyah, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a star, was gone. Disbelief, anger and, most of all, a great sense of sorrow and grief spread with the news. She had lived her life like an angel, fallen from the heavens. Through her life she rose and fell and now she had risen for the final time. We can only hope that, when the time came, she knew how much she was loved. Aaliyah will never be forgotten. Through her music and her memory, she will live on. The album in the CD player draws to a close. It is an album that she never saw released, an album that wouldn’t even have been put together if she was still with us; a tribute to Aaliyah, I Care For You. Visions of her float by with the music and songs take on a whole new meaning now she’s gone. When Miss You is played, instead of thinking of the singer’s lost love, we think of ours, Aaliyah. Every note she sang was a part of her and with every song we understand more about her. She was a star in every sense of the word and I believe she continues to be so even now; still a star, shining brightly down on us. There is no doubt in my mind that this angel lived up to the true meaning of her name, ‘The highest, most exalted one.’ The best. Aaliyah. How to cite Aaliyah – original writing on the life of the singer, Essays

Information Technology Security Report

Question: Describe about the Information Technology Security? Answer: Abstract Information security is an issue that is becoming more important as we are becoming more and more dependent on information technology and Internet. In this paper, it will find details about IT security that is a sub domain of information security. Different security attacks, counter measures, real life statistics about information security will be discussed in the report. It will find out the importance of IT security in our lives. Introduction Information security or InfoSec is an issue that is always an issue with information technology and its applications. With the emergence of information technology, the issues with information security have not reduced, rather those are also growing in number day by day. The attackers are also using the new technologies to update the patterns of their attack. The emergence of social media, internet of things, cloud computing etc. have make Internet more popular among people, more data are now getting transmitted over the internet, there are lots or devices other than laptops and computers that are connected with the Internet. Huge amount of personal and sensitive information about individuals, banking details, credit card information and other kind of business information are shared across such devices over the internet. So, attackers are more interested in stealing these information. Use of cloud computing has added the concept of virtualization. There are various information securit y issues with cloud computing that are hard to overcome as these issues are very inherent to cloud computing platform. There are regulatory, laws, legislation that enforces information security and implements security standard for securing our digital information. However, that does not provide much help. There are several dimensions of information security attacks, countermeasures of those attack. But the truth is, there is no way to stop these attacks all together. So prevention is the solution. There are best practices and other kind of information security implementations that can help in this context. (Whitman Mattord, 2011) In this report there will be extensive literature review on information security in the context of information technology or IT security, different methods followed in IY security, results and finding of IT security etc. Literature Review Information security is the process of securing physical ad digital format of data from some individual. It secures data from unauthorized access, deletion, modification etc. IT security is a sub domain of information security domain. IT security is more centered to computer and internet security. Thus, it needs to understand computer and network security for better understanding or IT security. It is hard to separate computer security and network security. Even discussion on IT security without considering information security, is not possible. Every fields are closely connected and dependent on each other. Computer is an electronic device capable of input/output of data, processing, storage and decision making on those data. Now the range of computers or computing devices has been expanded. Now laptops, smart phone etc., all comes under the category of computing devices. On the other hand a network is a system of connected computers and devices capable of sharing and transmission of information across the network. There are different types of private and public networks. For example, there is public network such as Internet. (Bishop, 2004) Thus, the whole infrastructure is a combination of the mechanisms and processes that connects a wide range of digital equipment and networks. It should facilitate data transmission. Securing the whole infrastructure refers to the notion of all tools, techniques etc. for giving protection to the hardware, software and data in the infrastructure. There should be no unauthorized or unintended access to data or systems, no accidental or intentional change or deletion of data etc. The reliance on computerized systems and internet are growing day by day, so the need for IT security is also growing. Sometimes the term IT security is used synonymously with the term cyber security. In general physical security of these assets and infrastructure is not considered to be an integral part of IT security, but an argument says that physical security should be considered as it gives full unauthorized access control to data that is stolen, or it can damage data. Thus it is considered to be a worse example of IT security breaches. There are some principles of information security and IT security is supposed to conform to those principles also. It says any cyber or IT security infrastructure should provide features like confidentiality, integrity and availability of the data and infrastructure. If the implementation or the infrastructure conforms to these features, then it will be considered as a secure system. Confidentiality is the process of making the data secure from any kind of unauthorized access. There are processes like authorization, authentication etc. that helps in implementing confidentiality in some system. Integrity refers to the process of ensuring that data is not damaged or modified by some unauthorized user. Thus legitimate user will get the pure form of data. This can be ensured by cryptographic solution like encryption, decryption. Digital signature etc. Availability ensures data will always be available to the legitimate users whenever required. There are processes like access control that ensures this. (Andress, 2014) IT security covers protection of data, hardware computing infrastructure and users. Data protection is available when data is in rest or in transit. There are various types of IT security attacks and countermeasures. Methods of IT Security Attacks Other than common virus attacks, attacks from hackers, theft of information, there are different kind of attacks like exploitation of system vulnerability, denial of services, backdoors, spoofing, tampering, exploitation, direct access attacks and many more. Exploitation of vulnerabilities There may be some weaknesses in a system that dampens the assurance of information security in the system. Sometimes these are hard to detect in advance. In some specific circumstances the vulnerability can be prominent or it may be hidden until some attacker exploits the vulnerability. There are three constraints to be met before exploitation of some vulnerability. Those are, There should be susceptibility or flaw in the system. An attacker should have access to the flaw. The attacker should be able to exploit the flaw. There are tools and techniques that are used by attackers for exploiting some vulnerability in a system. The vulnerability is sometimes termed as attack surface. Sometimes a security risk associated to an IT system is also called as vulnerability. However this is confusing. Risks have some significant losses. But vulnerability may not have some loss even if those are exploited. Thus a risk will be a vulnerability but every vulnerability may not be a risk. Denial-of-service attack Denial of service attack is a special kind of attack that does not try to get unauthorized access to some information system, rather it makes the system unavailable to the legitimate users. Victims are denied from getting the services from some system and the process is deliberately done by the attackers. Some examples of such attacks are, flooding a network with traffic overload and making down it, repeatedly entering wrong password on behalf of some user and making some system unreachable to them etc. Prevention of such attacks are very difficult. As it needs analysis of the total IT infrastructure and network for analysis of the patterns and behavior of the network. There are variation of this attack, for example DDoS or Distributed Denial of Service attack. In this case, a large number of zombie systems or compromised systems are used to make a botnet. Then there are some worms or virus, spread through victim network. The botnet sends overwhelming traffic thought the worms and makes the victim network unusable to the legitimate users. The victim network is flooded with simple network requests. The technique is to make the networking resources exhausted so that the network goes down. Other than that, there is another method to do DoS attack. That is using attack amplifier. There may be weakness in the network protocol design for a network. For example, poorly designed protocol like DNS, NTP etc. The attacker exploits some operating system vulnerability and instructs the poorly designed protocols to generate excessive flood that is unmanageable to the network. As a result the system or network get crashed and becomes unavailable. (Pfleeger Pfleeger, 2012) Backdoors Backdoor is a process that let enter into some information system of cryptosystem without going through the authentication process or any other means of secure access. The attempts of bypassing are kept undetected by the system and its security infrastructure. There is some special type of asymmetric encryption based attacks that resists the security system and helps reverse engineering even after detection and analysis. There may be specific computer application that is installed on the victim system or it may modify some already installed application on the victim system as a backdoor application. Even some hardware part of the system can be modified as backdoor application. Rootkit is a special form of backdoor application. It replaces the system binaries. Then it may hook into the process of function calling by the OS and makes it hidden to legitimate applications, services and users. Even it may supply wrong information to the application about resources and makes the system malfunctioning. Eavesdropping Eavesdropping happens to the data while transmitted through a transmission channel. It listen to the transmitting data. When there is a data transmission between two hosts in a network, then eavesdropping sneaks into the streaming conversation. Some specific application that helps in this process are installed on the ISPs. For example, application like NarusInsight, Carnivore etc. However, there are chances that a closed system may be a victim of eavesdropping. In this case the electromagnetic signal that carries data among different hardware parts of the system can be monitored secretly. For example, a specification called TEMPEST. (Bishop, 2004) Spoofing Spoofing is the process of masquerading a legitimate user by falsifying the credentials of the legitimate user. There are various protocols in the TCP/IP protocol suite that helps in authentication mechanisms. These mechanisms are implemented in the source or destination of some message. These protocols are vulnerable to spoofing. Thus these needs extra cautions while implementation. Before sending or receiving messages using these protocols the applications are needed to be sure of the identity of the sender or receiver. There are attacks like ARP spoofing attack, IP spoofing attack etc. These are a kind of man in the middle attacks in some computer network. Malware attacks Malicious software or malware are software that are used for disrupting the normal operation of some system or computers, gaining access to some data in an unauthorized way, gathering sensitive and critical information by stealing those etc. Intentionally malware are used for stealing information from some system. These are used by hackers and attackers as some tools. Some examples of prominent malware are, Regin, CryptoLocker, Stuxnet etc. (Davis, Bodmer, LeMasters, 2009) There are different types of application that comes under the malware category. Those applications include worms, computer viruses, spyware, Trojans, adware, ransomware, scareware and many more. A malware can take different application format. For example, active content, executable, scripts, code blocks etc. Other than attackers, malware are intentionally supplied by companies for different market research. For example, Sony used Sony Rootkit with the CDs sold by them. However, the process is illegal. (Blunden, 2013) Computer viruses and Trojans are some special kind of malware that are spread through replication. Once a system is infected by some of these viruses, it then replicates itself through the data files, programs, storage, boot sectors etc. on the infected hosts the viruses do some nuisances sometimes. Or sometimes they just be dormant. Common problems with viruses are spamming, corruption of data, unauthorized access or stealth of information, stealing computing resources like memory, CPU cycles etc., display of error messages, key stroke logging etc. Computer viruses are just piece of codes and those are used for exploitation of security vulnerabilities in IT systems, computers and applications. Social Engineering With reference to information security, social engineering is a psychological manipulation of the peoples information and finding out the sensitive ones. The goal of social engineering is to play a confidence trick that helps in gathering information from people and use of those information in system access, fraud etc. There are different types of social engineering techniques. Most of these are based on decision making process by humans or cognitive biases. These are also termed as bugs in human hardware. Similar to the software vulnerabilities in information systems, these cognitive biases are also exploited by the attackers. (Hadnagy, 2010) Attackers use different combinations of social engineering attacks and steals information from victims. Some of the common techniques are, Pretexting Pretexting or blagging is the process of creation or usage of some scenario (invented ones) to involve the victim into the scenario. Personal information like social security number, credit card information etc. are stolen using this techniques. Phishing Phishing is the process of obtaining private information of some individual in an illegal way. For example, there are phishing email sent by attackers to target victims. When the victim opens, replies to the email, it asks for some sensitive information like bank details, credit card details etc. if the user steps into the trap and share the same. Then these information are stolen and the user becomes the victim. Insider Attack Insider attack is very common in organization. It refers to the cases when some person like employee or staffs of an organization steals information from the systems of the organization. Other than that there are software based insider attacks. For example, damaging information, eavesdrop, stealth of information etc. Even there may be DoS attacks from inside of the organization. (Pfleeger Pfleeger, 2012) Security Countermeasures There are also different security countermeasures that helps to deal with the security breaches and implementation of security in some IT infrastructure. Generally the term countermeasure with reference to computer security means, the action or measurement taken to reduce some attack, vulnerability or threat by prevention or elimination, or minimization of impact. Some of the common countermeasures to deal with different kinds of IT security attacks are discussed below, Vulnerability Management There is a cyclic process of managing vulnerabilities in a system. It deals with identification, classification, remediation and mitigation of vulnerabilities in some system. It must be noted that these vulnerabilities are software related. Thus vulnerability management is an integral part of IT security. There are special kind of vulnerability scanner for analyzing an information system for vulnerabilities like insecurities and open loopholes in configuration of the installed software, open ports, malware susceptibilities etc. Still there are risks of zero day vulnerability attacks that are harder to overcome. However, there are scanning methods like fuzz testing that may indicate zero day vulnerability attacks. There are other vulnerabilities like buffer overflow etc. these can be identified using test cases and automated testing process. There are anti-virus software that can carry out heuristic analysis and find out different malwares. (FitzGerald Dennis, 2009)There are system p atches and updates that helps in overcoming the vulnerabilities in a system. Other measurement like firewall etc. also helps to some extent. Information System Design and Security While designing an information system at the first place, the security of the system should be taken care of. There should be proper design and development of the system, there should be enough testing and implementation for the security infrastructure of the system. An ideal secure system is unreal to have. However, different sets of security measures can be implemented or followed as a part of the process. Some of these techniques are, Proper implementation of access control across the system is very necessary. There will be different types of users associated with the system, all will not require same data or are not supposed to have same degree of visibility of data. Thus user access control along with various cryptographic measurements can help. Use of antivirus, IDS, firewall etc. makes the system secure from different types of virus attack, insider attack, malware attacks etc. Firewall is a very primitive and basic security implementation used in information systems. However, proper configuration of firewall is very important otherwise, there will be no use of firewalls. The system will be vulnerable. There may be hardware based or software based firewall. IDS or Intrusion Detection Systems are used for detection of different kind of attacks in networks. IDS systems can help in different forensic analysis in post analysis scenarios, log servers, audit trails etc. It is important to have proper response system that can assess the security requirement of some information systems. There are various difficulties in implementation of proper responses to some attack. Identification of some security attack in information systems is difficult. Use of Cryptography Computer codes are some form of mathematical and logical statements. So, theoretically is can proved to be correct or not. However, the feasibility of such proofs are not possible or beyond computational limits sometime. (Pieprzyk, Hardjono, Seberry, 2003) There are several proofs and processes in cryptography that helps in computer security. Some of those are, Protection of information while data is in transit or there is data communication between two hosts. Encryption and decryption is a method from this class. These are like different kind of handshaking using hidden and shared keys, digital signatures etc. Other than the intended party, some encrypted message will look like meaningless word cloud to anyone. There are cryptanalysis systems that in turns checks the vulnerabilities in the cryptographic systems. Thus the process is double checked. Making Hardware Secure Hardware are also sources of system vulnerability and attackers can break into some information system through breaches of hardware. There are common hardware sources like USB, BIOS etc. are common vulnerability sources. For example, the microchip vulnerability is the chip of a computer system was introduced during the manufacturing of the chips. This is an example of hardware based attack. (Pfleeger Pfleeger, 2012) It is considered to be best practice to restrict the use of USB dongles, disabling USB ports etc. Stronger cryptography based security standards and algorithms like AES etc. can help in this context. Awareness In most of the cases, especially in social engineering based cases, it has been seen that individuals and organizations are not enough aware of security issues, vulnerability of their systems etc. Studies have shown that most of the small businesses are not using information security implementation in their business because those are costly and they dont find any direct benefit from those implementations. But these small businesses carry on online transaction about customer information, credit card details etc. and these are very lucrative target option to attackers. They can easily breach into the systems of such businesses and steal data. In such cases, the organization will not have survival threat only, there will be legal threats. (Bishop, 2004) Such kind of lack of awareness about information security makes the systems, individuals and businesses more vulnerable. Implementation of some security measures without understanding the contexts will not help to mitigate cyber-crimes and security issues. If people become more aware then only these problems can be handled efficiently. Information systems are prone to vulnerabilities. Those cannot be ignored but the security can be optimized. Laws and Legislation Information security has become a serious issue to all country and governments. With the rising number of cyber-crimes these have become more critical. So, there are cyber-crime laws and legislation in all countries around the world. Each country and legislation has data privacy and protection acts. Data privacy acts ensures that when data is shared over the network among the hosts, individuals or organization, the data will not be accessed by some unauthorized entity. Every information system, user and organization need to agree on some data privacy policy before sharing data. Data protection acts ensures data will be protected when stored, processed and transmitted. This is the responsibility of some organization that has requested and obtained data from individual. Other than that there are various ethical issues related to information security. However, the laws and legislation about the information security, virus attacks etc. changes from country to country in a very tricly way. Current trends in IT security There are various information security labs, research institutes etc. that are observing the trends and statistics of information security for years. According to the studies of such labs following trends are supposed to prevail information security domain in current year. There are a number of vulnerabilities in the systems used in different organizations of the world, as the number of information system, technologies are rising, so are the number of vulnerabilities. With the emergence of cloud computing etc. these are becoming more problematic. (Tsai, Lin, Chang, Chen, 2010) With the rising of the concept of internet of things there are new types of attacks for these systems. The devices in internet of things use wireless systems and standards for data transmission, networking and processing. But the manufacturers have failed to implement the primitive security implementation and standards. Studies have found several issues in the wireless routers and standards used in such devices. It has been seen in different scenarios that attackers are targeting accounting systems of organizations for breaching into the financial data of some organization. Small businesses are in higher risks than bigger enterprises. Bigger enterprises use rigorous security implementation, risk management plans and security measurements implementations. But in case of small businesses they usually do not use such information security implementations. So, these are becoming more easy targets to attackers. There are emergence of new OS like Android etc. Theoretically these OS are highly secure as those use LINUX kernel, different new types of security measures, SSL encryption etc. But Android is a free and open source OS. In many cases it has been seen that manufacturers have failed implement the security measures in these devices properly. So, mere presence of security control and implementation is not enough. There have been a lot of new information technologies in payment system. Especially with the emergence of smart phone technologies, mobile payment is a rising technology. Attackers have found several vulnerabilities in such systems and these issues have stemmed out from mistakes during implementation of protocols in those systems. However, on the positive sides, in spite of those mistakes, there are several strong security measurements implemented in these new payments systems. There are dedicated hardware, authorization system. Theft control mechanisms that have made these systems stronger and better than traditional payment systems. There is a huge gap between the education system and real life information security responses. The gap is getting wider. This is a very alarming risk for future. As technology is becoming an inseparable part of our lives thus need for right cyber security skill set is becoming a necessity. Studies have forecasted that until 2030 there will be huge gap between the demand of such professional and the availability of same. Current Circumstances and Trends There are various studies going on in the field of information security and technologies. Among those studies researches on the security technologies of cloud computing, mobile computing, wireless communication networks are very important. Researchers are working on making systems stronger, sophisticated yet secure. There are works on cryptography, secure protocol etc. Ecommerce and social media have become very popular. In coming days, those are supposed to be more wide spread. There are huge amount of data that is transmitted and processed through such systems. People from non-technical background and with very little or with no knowledge about information security are sharing data over these platforms. These people, systems and platforms are becoming targets of the hackers and attackers very easily. Conclusion In this report there is a detailed discussion on information technology security. As information technology and security or IT security is a sub domain of information security thus, there is a brief discussion on information security in current context. There is a detailed discussion on different kinds of security attacks ranging from exploitation of vulnerabilities, security breaches virus attacks, backdoors etc. Also there are different countermeasures like vulnerability management, safe and secure design of information systems etc. All these aspects along with current trends, issues etc. in IT security, current researches etc. have been discussed. Information security is a very vast topic. So is information technology security. There are different types of new attacks are evolving each day. The domain is very dynamic in nature. So, awareness, knowledge and understanding is very much important at the first place. In coming days, technologies will be more advanced and that will make the attacking tools and techniques more advanced and sophisticated thus these attacks will be more fatal. Proper understanding, proper implementation of security controls and measurements, proper use of information technology are very much needed in current contexts of IT security. References Andress, J. (2014). The Basics of Information Security: Understanding the Fundamentals of InfoSec in Theory and Practice. Syngress. Bishop, M. (2004). Introduction to Computer Security. Addison-Wesley Professional. Blunden, B. (2013). Rootkit Arsenal: Escape and Evasion in the Dark Corners of the System. Jones Bartlett Publishers. Davis, M., Bodmer, S., LeMasters, A. (2009). Hacking Exposed: Malware and Rootkits. McGraw Hill Professional. FitzGerald, J., Dennis, A. (2009). Business Data Communications and Networking. John Wiley Sons. Hadnagy, C. (2010). Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking. John Wiley Sons. Lampson, B. 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