Strategic Issues For Information Security Managers Essay

Strategic Issues For Information Security Managers - Essay Example As on can see, there are various physical elements that go into information security. Information systems play a large role in this. Firewalls are common, as they protect PCs and laptops from viruses on the Internet. Virtual walls are important in order to streamline information and make it suitable for company use. Information systems are one of the key driving forces in information security. Without security there could be no systems. Most prevalent nowadays is the necessity of information security professionals to be on top of problems which deal with breaches of security. Perhaps heard about more recently was the hacker named HackerKroll, an individual who hacked into various corporate accounts at social networking site Twitter. This hacker found a pattern in Twitter's system, also related to Google accounts and Amazon.com accounts, that had an effect on how the system was operated. Passwords for these organizations, as well as Facebook chat, was regarded as unsafe after this uni dentified individual user HackerKroll revealed certain insecurities in not only Twitter's system but other systems as well. The TechCrunch web site displayed a letter written by HackerKroll which went into quite a bit of detail about the information security breaches at Twitter, now known as Twittergate. The reason this problem caused such a stir was because senior advisers at Twitter had had their Twitter accounts hacked, and this also led to a vulnerability in advisers' e-mail accounts as well. This undoubtedly angered many head honchos at Twitter and caused a scandal. The fact that TechCrunch allowed HackerKroll's open letter to be published on its site was widely criticized. "Why would TechCrunch openly give other potential hackers, a.k.a., the public at large, any potential opportunities to hack the system by letting HackerKroll's salient information be released" Technically, one wonders why indeed TechCrunch would have released such a document. Surely, one must think, this is a folly. Why would one hacker's comments about the very system he hacked be allowed to be publicized on the very web site that is supposed to be joined to Twitter at the hip One potential reason that TechCrunch allowed HackerKroll's letter to be displayed on its web site perhaps had something to do with the reason that perhaps releasing this information would somehow trick other hackers into following similar steps that HackerKroll did, thus revealing weaknesses in the system. Inversely, this could also affect potential hackers. If new hackers tried HackerKroll's old tricks, perhaps TechCrunch was phishing for hackers, practically inviting hackers to try what HackerKroll had done-precisely so that Twitter could find and prosecute anyone who had ideas about performing similar actions.