research project

Research Project. For this project, you will research a solution to address the recent threat to the security of an e-commerce operation that you defined in Research Project 1. This is the continuation of your Week 3 project, and your revised Week 3 work will be included with the submission of this project. You will provide appropriate policies, procedures, products, and services that will effectively mitigate the risk of the e-commerce threat.

IMPORTANT: Please remember that this threat must be related to e-commerce, which, with very few exceptions, is now a web-based operation.

Project Procedures
Research: You are expected to use credible sources upon which to base your report. In cases when the source is necessary, but credibility is not assured, you must address this issue in the text of your paper. You are required to use APA style for both in-text citations and the Reference section at the end of your paper. You must use a minimum of four sources.

Originality: Although you will be using outside sources for this project–and using citations to indicate where ideas have come from within the sources–all writing must be in your own words. No direct quotations of outside sources are allowed.

Required Elements

•    Cover page
•    Table of contents
•    Presentation of the threat including how the threat was identified, the technical features that characterize the threat, how it works, vulnerabilities it exploits, and so forth
•    Diagram depicting the mechanism of attack and exploitation
•    Potential or actual consequences including damage to hardware, software, data, personnel, financial losses, and so forth: You should identify the nature of the security compromise (i.e., data confidentiality, integrity, availability).
•    Risk assessment based on the concepts presented in the Week 3 Lecture
•    Deliverables: There full pages paper–not counting the cover page, table of contents, and references.

Grading Rubrics
Category    Points    %    Description
Presentation of the threat    25    25    Include a complete history of the threat including how it was identified, what damage it has caused to date, what vulnerabilities it can exploit, and the nature of the source (criminal, commercial, skilled hackers, unskilled hackers, etc.).
Technical description    25    25    Explain the technical features of the vulnerabilities exploited and the mechanism by which the threat achieves its goals.
Diagram    20    20    Demonstrate the mechanism of the threat.
Presentation    30    30    Writing quality and flow demonstrates a graduate-level writing competency and does not contain misspellings, poor grammar, incorrect punctuation, and questionable sentence structure (syntax errors). There is correct attribution and citation using APA style.
Total    100    100    A quality paper will meet or exceed all of the above requirements.