|Similar to Advanced Exercise 10 in Chapter 14: Identify at least three (not fiv
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Question
|Similar to Advanced Exercise 10 in Chapter 14: Identify at least three (not five, as in the text) major types of threats to systems running the Windows operating system and the policies that systems administrators must take to protect the system from unauthorized access. Fill in the table below to perform this part of the problem. Then, below the table, suggest the very first action you would take to secure a Windows computer or network if you managed one. This question is worth 9 percentage points added to your percent score (1 percent for each major type of threat = 3%, 1 percent for each corresponding policy = 3%, and 3 percent for the first thing you would do to secure the computer or network) The first thing you would do to secure the computer or network is:Explanation / Answer
It doesn't matter what version of Windows, OS X or any other operating system you run; if someone can trick you into giving them access to your bank account, computer or home network you've been compromised. There are plenty of scams out there aimed specifically at Windows users, including fraudsters making cold calls claiming to be from Microsoft. Ultimately they will try to trick you into giving them remote access to your PC and will almost inevitably end up with funds moving from you to them.
On a similar line, every time a new version of Windows comes out some bright spark decides to send malware as an attachment to everyone claiming that the file is an update from Microsoft. Run it and suffer the consequences. For example, even before Windows 10 was generally available a criminal sent out an email that offered a fast way to upgrade to the new operating system. In this case, the attacker attached a ransomware Trojan, a type of malware that encrypts your files until you pay a significant amount of money for the decryption key.
Drive-by attacks, where you visit a website and it installs malware on your PC in the background without your intervention, have been around for years and Windows 10 is not immune. It does have some built-in technology, such as the SmartScreen URL blocker, to help keep the bad sites at arm's length but at some stage you could run into an infected website. That is when running a good anti-malware product will help. Microsoft's own free anti-malware product frequently performs poorly in tests and you should choose an alternative. Running a good web browser, such as Chrome, which incorporates its own malicious website blocking system, would add another layer of protection.
General exploitation
As soon as Windows 10 became available researchers and criminals started prodding it to find its weak points. One researcher found a security hole in Windows' scroll bars that allowed him to attack the system by changing literally one bit of code. This security hole is now patched, but the fact is that there are vulnerabilities in all code and it's a matter of time before more problems with Windows 10 are found.
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