Management Report on Security
Firstly, the use of personal information to create a username was a mistake. Personal
information such as that should not have been allowed to be displayed publicly within the game
and all players should have been prompted to create their own, unique username upon account
creation. Secondly, accounts should have been protected from attacks like this using two-factor
authentication to ensure that only the account’s creator could access it using a code generated
and displayed on their personal mobile device.
In regard to forensic procedures, Romwebhost’s cyber security manager acted well in
encourage a password change for all players as this instant prevented the attacker from
accessing and vandalizing more accounts, however efforts should have been made to
determine if each account was being accessed from the same geographical location or IP
address each time so that the perpetrator could be more easily identified, or their IP blacklisted
from connecting to the main CE server at all. Also, during the actions taken by the first-line
technician to restore player accounts the password change should have been enforced straight
away to ensure the account was not again compromised during the restoration.
Peter was right to consider past security breaches of other game developers and learn from
their mistakes in order to build a more secure login system, guarded against similar attacks.
However, it was wrong of him to focus only on password security and instead he should have
looked at the security and privacy of players’ personal information. Also, upon the third failed
login attempt an email notification should be sent to the account holder to ensure they are
made aware of the attempts to access their account so that they could act and change their
username or password if they feel it necessary to ensure security of their account.
When Alex checked the SQL filters and server security, he should have made detailed notes on
what he found. Even if these were completely unaffected in the breach that is still important
evidence in confirming that the breach was not the fault of Rom webhost or CE, which would
have proved useful if the case had in fact gone to court.
In first glance the security documentation seemed to be good however then I realized one
glaring problem there is no response procedure for the theft of personal information/data, for
the breach they seemed to have followed the section ‘Theft of company data’ whilst this still
gets the job done and has some very similar points in it there needs to be a different section
modelled towards handling situations involving personal information/data.
Firstly, the use of personal information to create a username was a mistake. Personal
information such as that should not have been allowed to be displayed publicly within the game
and all players should have been prompted to create their own, unique username upon account
creation. Secondly, accounts should have been protected from attacks like this using two-factor
authentication to ensure that only the account’s creator could access it using a code generated
and displayed on their personal mobile device.
In regard to forensic procedures, Romwebhost’s cyber security manager acted well in
encourage a password change for all players as this instant prevented the attacker from
accessing and vandalizing more accounts, however efforts should have been made to
determine if each account was being accessed from the same geographical location or IP
address each time so that the perpetrator could be more easily identified, or their IP blacklisted
from connecting to the main CE server at all. Also, during the actions taken by the first-line
technician to restore player accounts the password change should have been enforced straight
away to ensure the account was not again compromised during the restoration.
Peter was right to consider past security breaches of other game developers and learn from
their mistakes in order to build a more secure login system, guarded against similar attacks.
However, it was wrong of him to focus only on password security and instead he should have
looked at the security and privacy of players’ personal information. Also, upon the third failed
login attempt an email notification should be sent to the account holder to ensure they are
made aware of the attempts to access their account so that they could act and change their
username or password if they feel it necessary to ensure security of their account.
When Alex checked the SQL filters and server security, he should have made detailed notes on
what he found. Even if these were completely unaffected in the breach that is still important
evidence in confirming that the breach was not the fault of Rom webhost or CE, which would
have proved useful if the case had in fact gone to court.
In first glance the security documentation seemed to be good however then I realized one
glaring problem there is no response procedure for the theft of personal information/data, for
the breach they seemed to have followed the section ‘Theft of company data’ whilst this still
gets the job done and has some very similar points in it there needs to be a different section
modelled towards handling situations involving personal information/data.
