Combating fraud and theft threats at host level using intrusion prevention system

Abstract

This thesis is destined to develop a host based Intrusion prevention system (HIPS) to overcome the current problems caused by fraud and theft. Intensive research was carried out to investigate the effectiveness of currently used HIPS to prevent the above problems amongst end users. The conclusion derived was that protection levels did not meet the requirements of the end users. A new host based intrusion prevention system (HIPS) was subsequently developed to address the issues which was left unresolved by the available systems in the market named as City HIPS.

Prior to developing the system, this research critically assesses and studies the means behind the ever-evolving methods deployed for intrusion versus current intrusion prevention systems. Primary data was collected using self-administered questionnaires in order to learn about existing tools, engineer’s perception as well as the problems encountered. The instruments were distributed to 30 engineers who were randomly selected from SITI, HP and DELL.

Based on the above study and investigation from questionnaires, interviews, web resources, various materials obtained from the library, the results indicate that security breaches such as Fraud and Theft are primarily caused by people who is working within the organisation. Most of the attacks conducted by external hackers were with the help of insiders. This has led to many problems especially for corporate sectors such as missing data folders, virus attacks, system hacks and network crashes.

In conclusion, this research examines the viability of using this new City host based intrusion prevention system, while also documenting the issues encountered during implementation. There is a strong recommendation for this new system to be used at an enterprise level to protect important data from risk factors such as fraud and theft. Conversely, this system will be equally beneficial for home users as well.