English I Part II College Prep Program
Section 2

Assignment 2_6

Submitted by:

Jamie Spain
JM1309785

Title:

Computer Fraud Prevention

Computer Fraud Prevention

In this age of technology advancement, the use of computers has become essential for both personal and professional purposes. The use of computers is very important for communication, problem solving, and many other personal and professional issues. However, computer fraud and computer crimes have increasingly become major issues facing individual and organizational computer user. These issues include attacks from viruses, worms, and illegal computer hackers. This paper explores measures to be taken for the prevention of computer fraud and crimes.

Content

Business and non-profit organizations have become increasingly aware of the threats and dangers caused by the fact that their computers are vulnerable to attacks by viruses and hackers. As a result, they have been committing significant funds to acquire equipment such as virus scanners to protect their computers from these criminal attacks. Many organizations monitor how employees use the computers within the organization’s network to ensure minimizing the risk of virus and other illegal attacks. If a virus is found, management can identify the user who infected the network and investigate whether or not there was any malice intended.

Electronic mail is computer tool that has become a major means for communication within the organization’s network and across the globe. In many cases, illegal hackers can find ways to read the emails that are going through a server. Since organizational emails are likely to contain information about business processes and financial transactions, this can have serious implications and increased risk for business organizations. Similarly, personal emails may contain credit card and other financial information which creates the risk for identity theft and other fraudulent activities. To address this concern, measures are being taken to add encryption procedures for email to prevent illegal hackers from accessing emails (Gates, p.97-98).

The process for encrypting email involves using two prime numbers as keys. The first key is public and is listed on the Internet or in an email message. The second key is private, and is only known by the user. The sender encrypts the message using the public key, send it to the recipient, who can then decipher it again using the private key. While this process is not perfect, it makes it extremely difficult for hackers to read the emails since the numbers being used are probably over 60 digits (Gates p.98-99).

Surfing the Internet creates significant problems for computer users. Using the Internet, an individual usually downloads various files. Some of these files may be infected with a virus. Once these infected files are opened, the virus is released and infects the entire system. To minimize this risk, a computer user needs to download files only from known and trusted sites.

As people surf the Internet, they are downloading files into their Internet browsers without even knowing it. Every time a web page is visited, an image of that page is downloaded and stored in the cache of the browser. Most people do not know about this, but this is an example of how to get a virus in a machine without even knowing it.

Accessing the Internet is in essence connecting with many computers that connect the host and the user. Thus, as an individual transmits credit or debit card information, this information goes through several computers before it reaches its destination. A criminal can program one of the connecting computers to copy the card information as it passes through the computer. To properly address this risk, companies are creating secure sites. These sites make it possible to maintain credit or debit card information secure when they receive this information. This provides protection to consumers as they