IT Management help: Technology from Linux environment

Question 1:When we talk of the technology platform usage by Martin College in Linux environment, it is impossible to ensure integrity of data, information and application by just integrating in methods and tools that fits bets with Linux (Edge, 2008). It is so because for these tools and methods to work as per expectation and with reliability we need to have penned down rules and policies in place and top of all these we need to have integrity as a critical factor while devising the access and exchange strategy itself. We discuss these three aspects in light of integrity in coming sections.

At the strategy level it is obvious that we cannot have restricted access to some systems or some IP addresses. This is so because this platform would not have its benefits realized with this restriction as both students and teachers would like to use this possibility mostly from remote access and areas and possibly from multiple sources (Writer, 2011). Hence with these benefits in mind we cannot have such restricted policy. However we need to have limited access to number of users and the space that they can use to ensure uptime, no spamming by fake users and limited costs of servers and maintenance.Now that we have strategy in place, let look at policies that will ensure this. As a first policy the user accounts and all major details would be filled by administrators of system and handed over to user, thereby ensuring no fake users are able to come in. They also would have rights of moderation and banning of users if some restricted attempts are made by users. On the other hand multiple instances of application for same user would not be allowed to save on server capacity and u intended privacy leak. Very limited modification and creation rights would be allowed to users as per their category to reduce unexpected chances of errors.

Now let’s look how we implement the above strategy by giving above defined policy by specific technology procedures in Linux platforms. Anyone having a little technical knowledge would agree to fact that to ensure integrity of application and associated data, one would need to ensure that only approved users and programs are allowed to be accessed and used. This could be ensured with both software as well as hardware or possibly with a combination of both.

In terms of hardware in Linux platform we have TPM (trusted Platform Module) chip. This piece of hardware ensures protection against unauthorized binaries along with ensuring associated systems are also running on good code. We have alternative system known as SELinux which ensures above need by working on kernel of Linux. It ensures what we call as mandatory access control (MAC) which prevents attacks which are executing while the systems aren’t running.

 Question 2:

There should be no surprise in realization and understanding of the fact that the kind of data and information that would be dealt with by this system would be extremely private and sensitive apart from highly important that they are for individuals (Perrin, 2009). In line with the same not only is the data backup are important to make sure the continuity and historical data are not lost. Apart from this more important need is for data redundancy because this could have more dangerous than or at least as dangerous as above case.

We need to have certain plan and policy for data backup and restoration, as for achieve a flawless policy to ensure this we need to design systems and time tools and techniques to take care of it. We discuss the restoration and backup plan in coming section.

All Linux Network Storage data would be as per policy backed up fully once a week, possibly Saturday. However it is not to be assumed that from Monday to Friday we would not have any data backup, especially when we realize that it is these days when most of the critical and volume of activities would take place (Borruso, 2005). In light of same all Linux Network Storage data would need to be incrementally backed up every evening from Monday to Friday.This would basically backup the files and data which have been created new or have been changed (Zziwa, 2011). Of course college would not like to invest in all data backups to carry it to future and hence a policy only tapes backup up to 6 weeks would be carried forward and the remaining tapes formatted and reused till the time feasible.

The data redundancy though as important as restoration, we can ensure the same by use of various tools and methods known to us (Sandra & Frederick, 2008). This would be ensured in various access level programming and design as well in the rights of access and actions programming and designs.

No doubt the same would need to be taken care of initially at the design level and the additional measure could be ensured by use of tools available. Some of the possible tools that are compatible in applied Linux environment like those of afbackup, AMANDA, Bacula, Mondo, NDMP, UBT etc .

Question 3:

We of course do not expect that we won’t be ever faced with issues and security threat. In line with the same we also need to be prepared that we in some cases would prove to be inefficient and lose the battle and in such situation it is logs that will help us in understanding the threat areas and making the system up again (Borruso, 2003). On the other hand it is audit process that will have learning from previous issues and employ them to check the system regularly to avoid such incidents being repeated.As we know that Linux is not an easy system to handle especially when debugging and logging needs to be done perfectly. It is not that logging is not enabled or is not efficient in Linux but on the contrary Linux has a variety of log files that needs to be maintained and taken care of. It is extremely important to understand the importance and vitality of it for efficient troubleshooting. There are basically two major centralized logging systems in place for Linux, those being “syslogd” and “klogd”.

 Apart from this there are a number of log files that are created in Linux server for various uses and specific details, the majority of which resides in Var/log/……. One such critical file only accessible to administrator of system or say server is /var/log/dmseg. It is the same file which is written when system boots and hence has all messages from kernel and so it is the most critical file we need to access when hit by serious issues. Apart from this there are other respective log file to take care of various aspects we are looking to ensure such as integrity, confidentiality and availability.

Now that we have looked deeply into logging and established as to what we actually need from it, let’s move to auditing (Micahel, 2011). Auditing though of course enabled by software and hardware tools, has its major importance from the process and control that it establishes. The audit process would involve planning as the initial stage which would need to be followed by establishment of objective and benchmark.

This would finally be followed by reviewing the performance and measurement of same which would finally lead us to reporting of audit findings and performance evaluation and associated corrective measures. The aspect that would need to be covered in this process would involve Network vulnerabilities, Controls, Encryption and other IT audits, specific tools auditing and finally legacy security check.

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