Analysing a Cyber Attack
During this assessment, your task is to produce a report based on a recent cyber-attack which affected a company or organisation. You should describe this attack and any solutions at a technical level and contextualize the impacts of the attack from several perspectives including data, privacy, ethics, and response.
Choose a relatively recent (within the last 5 years) high-profile cyber-attack. This should be an attack on an organisation (Government or business) in the U.K. or abroad and should look at the attack from this perspective.
This coursework will comprise of 70% of your grade for the module.
Based on information gained from media and peer-reviewed sources, you are expected to create a 2250 word (+/- 10%) academic report which includes the following sections:
1. Introduction
Brief Introduction to the topic and background of the type of attack carried out and related incidents.
2. Technical Aspects
Discuss the key technical aspects of the attack and how it was carried out.
3. Privacy and Ethics
Discuss the impact of privacy on the organisation(s) or individuals. What data was compromised and what was the impact on the organisation and other individuals/organisations?
4. Penetration Testing/Ethical Hacking
Discuss the attack from a Penetration/Security testing standpoint. Identify any security testing the organisation carried out prior to the attack. If no such information is available, provide a high-level methodology for penetration testing the organisation’s IT infrastructure.
5. Incident Response and Disaster recovery
Discuss the methods used to respond to the attack and compare and contrast the approaches taken to best practices found in the literature. What impact did the organisation’s strategy have to mitigate the effects of the attack? What were the strengths and weaknesses of the approaches taken?
6. Legal and Ethical Issues
Discuss the legal and ethical issues caused by the attack and the implications for the organisation in question and any other individuals and organisations affected.
7. Conclusions and recommendations
Based on your findings, provide your conclusions, recommendations, and methods used to contain and manage its impact. You should refer to industry best practices and peer-reviewed standards/papers to justify your recommendations