Network Security

What is a virus?

What is the difference between a virus and a worm?

What is ransomware?

What is a keylogger?

Explain what a man-in-the-middle attack is.

What is phishing?

What is a Denial of Service (DoS) attack?

What is a "brute force" attack?

A company's website becomes unreachable after receiving an unusually huge number of requests from thousands of different computers at the same time. What type of attack does this describe?

Which of the following is the best example of social engineering?

Explain why a brute force attack against a system that locks an account after 3 failed login attempts is much less effective.

What is the purpose of an intrusion detection system (IDS)?

What does packet filtering do in network security?

What is the main purpose of a firewall?

Explain how a firewall can help protect a network from an external attacker trying to connect to a computer on the network.

A firewall can be implemented as either hardware or software. Give one example of each.

A firewall rule blocks all incoming traffic on port 23 (used by Telnet) but allows traffic on port 443 (used by HTTPS). What is the effect of this rule?

Explain the difference between a firewall and an intrusion detection system (IDS) in terms of what each one actually does.

Why might a firewall be configured to block all traffic by default, only allowing specific traffic that is explicitly permitted?

A school firewall blocks access to social media websites during lesson times. What is this an example of?

Explain why a firewall alone cannot protect against an employee being tricked by a phishing email into revealing their password.

Explain how a VPN provides secure remote access and state one benefit.

What is the main security difference between HTTP and HTTPS?

What is a digital signature and how does it verify message authenticity?

What is encryption?

Explain why encryption is important for data sent over a public Wi-Fi network.

If an attacker intercepts encrypted data being sent between a user and a website, what will they see?

Explain the difference between symmetric and asymmetric encryption.

When a browser connects to a website using HTTPS, what is exchanged to set up encrypted communication?

A company encrypts all customer data sent between its app and its servers. Explain what would happen if this data was intercepted by an attacker, with and without encryption.

Which of the following best describes the role of encryption in network security, as opposed to a firewall?

Explain the difference between whitelisting and blacklisting as security approaches, and give one advantage of whitelisting.

What is meant by "user access levels" on a network?

Explain why a school might give teachers different access permissions to the network compared to students.

What is the "principle of least privilege"?

A company employee's account is compromised by an attacker. Explain how having limited access permissions for that employee would reduce the impact of the breach.

Which of these is an example of access levels being used to reduce security risk?

Explain why having separate "administrator" and "standard user" accounts on a computer improves security.

A database administrator can view and edit all records, while a sales assistant can only view (not edit) customer contact details. What is this an example of?

Suggest why access levels should be reviewed and updated when an employee changes role within a company.

What should happen to a former employee's network access permissions when they leave a company?

What is the main purpose of anti-malware (antivirus) software?

Explain how signature-based detection works in anti-malware software.

Why is it important to keep anti-malware software up to date?

Explain what "heuristic" (behaviour-based) detection means in anti-malware software, and why it is useful.

What action might anti-malware software take if it detects an infected file?

Give two examples of types of malware that anti-malware software is designed to protect against.

A user downloads a file and their anti-malware software immediately scans it before allowing it to be opened. What type of scanning is this an example of?

Explain why anti-malware software alone is not enough to fully protect a computer system.

A user disables their anti-malware software because it is slowing down their computer. What is the main risk of doing this?

Describe the difference between a full system scan and a quick scan performed by anti-malware software.

What is two-factor authentication (2FA)?

State four characteristics of a secure password policy.

Why is the password "password123" considered weak?

Explain why a longer password is generally more secure than a shorter one, even if both use a mix of characters.

Which of the following is an example of multi-factor authentication?

Explain how multi-factor authentication protects an account even if an attacker has stolen the password.

Why is it considered poor practice to use the same password for multiple accounts?

Give two examples of "something you have" that could be used as a factor in multi-factor authentication.

A banking app requires a password and also a fingerprint scan to log in. What two categories of authentication factor are being used?

Explain why account lockout after a number of failed login attempts helps protect against brute force attacks, and suggest one possible downside.