Abstract:
Over the past thirty years, “Network Cyber Attacks” has been an increasing problem in
the cyber world affecting organizations and individuals – everyone in one way or the
other has been exploited. Ethical hacking and network security can be used to prevent
network cyber-attacks in organizations irrespective of their size. Research has proven
that cyber-attacks comes as a result of network attacks that are done unauthorized
without the system administrators or users of the system being aware of, since the
intruders and attackers hide their actions or their presence. The main aim of this research
study is to determine how network cyber-attacks can be identified and be prevented to
avoid unauthorized access in to the system, access into the private information or data
and the stealing of information hence using it illegally, just to name a few. Adding on
the existing cyber security attempts, it may ask; Are there any measures that can be put
in place to curb the problems coming as a result of network attacks? In this context,
Network Cyber-attacks is defined as the accessing of the network services, protocols and
network devices unauthorized by individuals or a group of people with an intention to a
computer system or any electronic communicative device that has data or information,
to harm or to protect it.
Based on the literature review done on network-attacks awareness, a survey was done
and distributed to information technology professionals and illiterate personals when it
comes to technology. Respondents were given the same questionnaires irrespective of
the level of their understanding in IT. The analysis shows a large number of non-IT
technical people who are unaware of network cyber-attacks as compared to technical
people. The results indicate that network cyber-attacks are a huge problem to people
since most of them are not aware of it and how to prevent it if they get attacked or
compromised. On this background, it is recommended that individuals and organizations
be educated and be made aware of ethical hacking and network security measures and
how to use them to implement secure network connections. They can be used to
implement secure communications within the organization and communications made
outside the organization through the internet or when the system is just idle, they can
also be used to identify the systems vulnerabilities.
