Network Security - Audit & Assurance

Abstract

Due to the rapid growth of interest in the ever-expanding Internet, Network Security is one of the most important concern for all the institutions and organizations. Because of the confidential and important information of the institutions present on the network, it is important to ensure that the institution and its network is secured from all the threats and attacks. To ensure this security, it is necessary to carry out an audit for network security on a regular basis in each and every institution. By means of a network security audit the ongoing level of performance of an organization’s network security can be monitored and can help us to deal with any specific security incidents occurring in the institution. Moreover recent major threats and attacks are noticed to be done with the help of the loopholes and vulnerabilities present in the network itself which are then used by the attackers as a means to penetrate into the network and process their attack. Hence it is important to focus on and ensure that these vulnerabilities present in the network are identified on time and appropriate controls are taken to avoid these threats and attacks. This project provides an overview of network security audit, case studies showing the importance of network security audit in an institution, overview of vulnerability assessment and penetration testing which is done as a part of network security audit and case studies showing the importance of this testing in an institution and audit testing performed by my team and me during my internship with Morgan Stanley.