Information Assurance and Security

You are a junior IT staff member at a mid-sized company. One morning, you receive an email that appears to be from your company’s HR department, asking you to update your direct deposit information. The email includes a link to a login page that looks similar to your company's internal portal.

• Click the link and update your information

• Report the email to the IT security team as a potential phishing attempt.

• Ignore the email, assuming it's a mistake

• As a security analyst, you notice unusual network traffic late at night. Upon investigation, you find that large amounts of data are being transferred to an external IP address. This raises concerns that a data breach might be in progress.

• Task: Decide your next steps.

• 1. Immediately block the IP address and halt the data transfer.

• 1. Monitor the traffic for a while longer to gather more information.

• 1. Report the incident to your supervisor without taking any immediate action

• You are the IT manager at a healthcare facility. One morning, you find that all critical patient files have been encrypted, and a ransom note demands payment in Bitcoin to decrypt them. The note warns that any attempt to restore from backups will result in the deletion of the encryption keys.

• Task: Choose how to respond.

• Pay the ransom to quickly regain access to the files.

• Attempt to restore the files from a backup despite the warning

• Contact law enforcement and refuse to pay the ransom.

• You are part of the internal security team. An employee has been acting suspiciously, accessing sensitive files that are outside their job responsibilities. This behavior has raised red flags, and you suspect they might be preparing to exfiltrate confidential information.

• Task: Decide how to handle the situation.

• Confront the employee directly and ask about their behavior.

• Monitor their activities more closely without alerting them.

• Report the incident to HR and legal for a more formal investigation.

As part of a regular security audit, you discover that a critical server in your organization is running outdated software with a known vulnerability. This server handles sensitive customer data, and the vulnerability could allow remote code execution.

Task: Decide how to respond.

• Immediately apply the patch and restart the server, even though it could cause downtime during business hours.

• Schedule the patching for after business hours to avoid disruption.

• Leave the server unpatched but increase monitoring until you can determine the best time to apply the patch.

"You receive an email from HR asking you to update your bank details. The email looks official, but something feels off. What do you do?"

• Click the link and update your details.

• Report the email to IT security.

• Ignore the email.

What is the best overall approach to handling a security incident?"

• Act quickly and decisively.

• Gather all possible information before acting.

• Avoid making decisions and defer to others.

What is the consequence of clicking the link in a phishing email?

• Your personal information could be stolen.

• Nothing happens.

• You automatically get logged out of your account.

Which of the following is the best practice for creating a strong password?

• Use a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters.

• Use easily memorable information, like your pet’s name.

• Use the same password across multiple accounts.

Installing antivirus software on your computer guarantees that you will not get infected by malware.

• True

• False