1Part 2 Final Case Cybersecurity Data Brea

1
Part 2: Final Case: Cybersecurity Data Breach the Case of
Amazon
Joseph Joshua
Stevenson University
CDF 281
Stuart Denrich
04/05/2021
Part 2: Final Case: Cybersecurity Data Breach the Case of
Amazon
Introduction
In the first part of the case study of the Amazon.com data
breach, the company was introduced to the audience providing
the details of the company origin, the founder, and how it has
grown to the current state. The company's mission focuses on
uses technology and the internet to connect people. Its business
structure also exposes it to cybersecurity issues since it
facilitates extensive control of global e-commerce operations

(Ritala et al., 2014). Similarly, the paper focused on explaining
the organizational structure of the company and it was noted
that the company is organized with many different business
segments but are all managed by one brand, Amazon.com. The
company’s critical infrastructures which include Amazon Web
Services (AWS) were explained in detail. The paper also
analyzed the Amazon Web Services (AWS) data breach
detailing what happened, how it happened, why it happened, and
provided an overview of the financial implications of the breach
(Ritala et al., 2014). In the current part two of the case study,
the recommendations to combat the occurrence of data breach
and how the solutions recommended will reduce business risks
and financial damages.
Amazon Web Services Data Breach Case
Before embarking on providing the recommendations and
providing an explanation of how the solutions recommended
will help reduce the risks and financial damages, it is important
to relook at the data breach at Amazon through its Amazon Web
Services and what caused the breach (Ritala et al., 2014).
Several incidences of a data breach in Amazon Inc. have been
reported in the recent past, the latest one being the issue of the
customer service team receiving emails explaining that
customer’s email addresses had been disclosed by an Amazon
third party employee to a third party (Soltys, 2020). Passing
emails to a third party was a very concerning issue as it
involved a breach of customer data and privacy of information.
Leaking information of this nature mostly finds its way into
databases, which are used by cyber hackers in performing
phishing activities; hence leading to a cyber-breach. Ideally,
other data breach incidences that have been reported in Amazon
have occurred mostly due to unauthorized access to their cloud-
based servers hosted at Amazon Web Services (AWS) as well as
their networking devices (Soltys, 2020). In March July 2019,
which culminated in a data breach that affected 8 million
records collected online via marketplace and payment systems
belonging to Amazon as well as other e-commerce systems.

Additionally, another key issue raised was based on
misconfigurations that had not been detected and prevented by
the security controls put in place at Amazon, which led to the
discussion where it is believed that human error might have
been one of the major causes that led to the data breach. Before
this incident, some of the employees from Amazon had raised
concerns regarding employee morale (Islam, 2020). In
particular, employees had raised concerns about the high
turnover from its cybersecurity unit (Novaes et al., 2020). The
data breach issue that occurred is believed as a result of the
failure to promptly installing some key software to help in
spotting and defending against the hacking activity. With the
misconfigurations and management issues that led to the data
breach, the company adopted some key strategies geared
towards ensuring that this cybersecurity issue has been resolved
swiftly.
Recommendations to Mitigate Cybersecurity Data Breach at
Amazon
Today, it is a holistiCyber best practices for any organizati on
using cloud-based storage and computing services to assess its
servers and technologies for any form forms of vulnerabilities
that may be the target of the hackers (Wang & Johnson, 2018).
This is important as the organization will be able to identify
points of weaknesses in the system that may allow a successful
compromise. Similarly, understanding how hackers operate and
the areas in the system that they target is important to develop
priorities and strategies to protect critical technologies and
infrastructures by identifying the risks that matter the most.
Before outlining the recommendations to Amazon to safeguard
its Amazon Web Services (AWS) critical assets, it is important
to highlight some of the lessons that the organization should
learn from the compromise (Wang & Johnson, 2018). It is said
that no attack targeted Amazon AWS since it was not
vulnerable. However, AWS models are very complex and are
very sophisticated by design. It is made up of many layers and
different components which each requires its security strategy.

Using the shared security model place a heavy burden on any
organization like Amazon that uses cloud computing.
Considering the complexity of the system or model, it is
important to have highly experts to help the organization
configure, test, design, and monitor the many layers and
security controls that make up the model. Comment by Stuart
Denrich: What is this?Comment by Stuart Denrich:
paragraphComment by Stuart Denrich: who said it?Comment by
Stuart Denrich: Watch your tenses here ‘they’ ‘it’ etcComment
by Stuart Denrich: ????
Secondly, studies and research that have been done indicate that
AWS can only be well secured by managing identities, access
policies, and roles. If access controls to resources are enforced
by adequately restricted roles and IAM policies then the
attacker’s access is limited, regardless of how he or she initially
penetrated the environment (Wang & Johnson, 2018). Therefore,
it very clear that IAM is a central component involved in
security control to safeguard the system from different attack
vectors including attacks from inside the system. It is therefore
important for organizations to implement fine-grained IAM
security policies to safeguard the systems. Comment by Stuart
Denrich: Spell this out
After looking at some of the lessons that may have sprouted
from the data breach at Amazon.com on their AWS critical
system, the following recommendations are suggested to the
company to combat data breach in the future
· Firstly, the company should implement a high-level multi-
factor authentication with each account and use SSL/ TLS for
communication with AWS resources using TLS 1.2 or later.
This is important as it will limit both inside and hacker targeted
attacks
· Secondly, the company should set up an API and end-user
activity for logging with AWS cloud trail and applied AWS
encryption solutions together with default security controls
within Services.
· Thirdly, the company should implement applied advanced

managed security services, which include Amazon Macie that is
important in helping Amazon to discover and secure personal
data stored in Amazon S3.
· Fourthly, it has been mentioned in the current case that IAM is
important in AWS security. For this reason, it is recommended
that Amazon should do a manual review of its IAM policies,
identities, and roles. This should be done using experts who
understand the application framework and use cases.
· Fifthly, the company should do a review of the utilized IAM
policies and roles periodically using automated tools for
checking to unearth any form of deviations from the original
baselines. Similarly, the company should implement automated
acquiescence scans to distinguish any conformation changes of
cloud resources.
· Finally, Amazon should encrypt S3 buckets by utilizing
customer-managed keys (CMK) with a highly preventive IAM
key policy. It is also important that the company does not forget
to monitor cloud logs (AWS CloudTrail) centrally to identify
any distrustful behavior.
(These measures should have in-text citation and sources in the
Reference section)
How the Proposed
Solution
s Will Reduce Business Risks and Financial Damages
Studies have shown that any successful cyber-attack poses many
business and financial risks to an organization. It is in many
cases likely to impact the bottom-line of an organization,
business standing, and consumer trust (Agrafiotis et al., 2018).

The impacts of a successful cyber-attack on a business can be
divided into three categories and they include legal, financial,
and reputational.
Concerning the reputational impacts, a successful data breach
will dent the trust consumers have in the business. , resulting in
a loss of reputation. As already noted in the literature, trust is
a central component of any good relationship between
organizations are and consumers. In many cases, customers tend
to lose trust with organizations that have experienced cyber -
attacks. This in turn results in loss of consumers, reduced sales
financial losses through reduced revenues to the organization.
This is no different organizations like Amazon given the fact
that it is present is largely online (Agrafiotis et al., 2018).
Cyber breaches reduce the reputation of an organization results
in the loss of customers. However, if the above-listed
recommendations are implemented, it will help the company
maintain strong cybersecurity and avoid any forms of attacks
and enhance consumer confidence in the company. It is worth
noting that Amazon is a big company with many investors,
suppliers, partners, and other people who have invested in the
business or have vested interest. Reputational damage will
therefore erode the relationship between the company and the
stakeholders. Comment by Stuart Denrich: Where?
Earlier?Comment by Stuart Denrich: rephraseComment by
Stuart Denrich: redundant

Apart from the reputational impacts of cyber-attacks, data
breaches have in many cases subjected companies to legal
consequences. The Data protection and privacy laws require
companies to protect all personal data in their systems. This
includes the privacy of the staff and the consumers. In many
cases, data breaches have resulted in the accidental compromise
of the data in the system like was the case of Yahoo (Agrafiotis
et al., 2018). If this is the case, the people, persons whose data
was compromised. may take the organization to court where
they may have to pay a large amount of money in form of fines
and regulatory sanctions if it is proved that enough measures
were not taken to protect data in the system. Therefore by
implementing the above recommendations, the company will
have enough proof that it had taken all the measures in the
event of an attack and avoid fines and regulatory sanctions.
Comment by Stuart Denrich: what laws?Comment by Stuart
Denrich: intentionalComment by Stuart Denrich: details
required. If you are going to cite an example, you must explain
it.Comment by Stuart Denrich: Run on sentence rework
thisComment by Stuart Denrich: You need to prove this
statement.
There is no doubt that cyber-attacks result in huge financial
losses to organizations. These are also called economic impacts
they range from the theft of corporate information which the
hackers may use to damage the reputation of the organization or

ask for ransom and loss money in the process. The other impact
that relates to financial risk is the stealing of financial
information or money from the company accounts. Corruption
of trade for instance by hacking systems that are used to make
online transactions and stealing of business contracts
(Agrafiotis et al., 2018). Based on the nature of the Amazon
business structure, it does most of its transactions online. It,
therefore, means that it has most of the transactions done
online, most of the contracts are electronic and depend on the
internet to complete its business dealing. Any form of hacking
of its systems will not only interrupt its business activities but
may result in loss of money and exposure of customer data
something that may hurt the company economically. However,
by implementing the above-proposed recommendations, the
company will be able to reduce the financial and business risks
because no one will be able to infiltrate its systems and breach
the company data. Comment by Stuart Denrich: Financial loses
are economic impactsComment by Stuart Denrich: This makes
no sense. Is this paragraph about financial issues or
reputational issues?Comment by Stuart Denrich: ?????Comment
by Stuart Denrich: redundantComment by Stuart Denrich: this is
redundant
Conclusion
The currentThis case study has focused on providing
recommendations to Amazon which can be implemented to

combat future data breaches.Due to technological
advancements, cybersecurity data breach issues are reported by
most companies, which tends to affect their business operations.
This paper has keenly looked at data breaches that affected
Amazon Inc., which outsourced had outsourced its services from
Amazon. This data breach occurred as a result of not having
proper security controls and failure to adhere to cybersecurity
governance. With several other cybersecurity and data breach
issues that affected more than eight million customers, Amazon
provided recommended data protection and data encryption
mechanism for AWS to provide secure and private connectivity
between EC2 instances. The case concluded by explaining how
implementing the recommendations will positively impact the
company in the long run.Comment by Stuart Denrich: No
Restate your conclusion using these guidelines;
A good conclusion should do a few things:
· Restate your thesis
· Synthesize or summarize your major points
· Make the context of your argument clear
(link : https://www.umgc.edu/current-students/learning-
resources/writing-center/writing-resources/parts-of-an-
essay/conclusions.cfm)

References
Agrafiotis, I., Nurse, J. R., Goldsmith, M., Creese, S., & Upton,
D. (2018). A taxonomy of cyber-harms: Defining the impacts of
cyber-attacks and understanding how they propagate. Journal of
Cybersecurity, 4(1), tyy006.
Antonescu, M., & Birău, R. (2015). Financial and non-financial
implications of cybercrimes in emerging countries. Procedia
Economics and Finance, 32, 618-621.
Islam, R. (2020). The Impact of Data Breaches on Stock
Performance.
Novaes Neto, N., Madnick, S., de Paula, M. G., & Malara
Borges, N. (2020). A Case Study of the Amazon Data Breach.
Stuart E. and Moraes G. de Paula, Anchises and Malara Borges,
Natasha, A Case Study of the Amazon Data Breach (January 1,
2020).

Ritala, P., Golnam, A., & Wegmann, A. (2014). Coopetition-
based business models: The case of Amazon. com. Industrial
marketing management, 43(2), 236-249.
Salah, K., Hammoud, M., & Zeadally, S. (2015). Teaching
cybersecurity using the cloud. IEEE Transactions on Learning
Technologies, 8(4), 383-392.
Soltys, M. (2020). Cybersecurity in the AWS Cloud. arXiv
preprint arXiv:2003.12905.
Wang, P., & Johnson, C. (2018). Cybersecurity Incident
Handling: A Case Study of the Equifax Data Breach. Issues in
Information Systems, 19(3).
ECO110Assignment 2 Financial Plan Explanation Word
Template
While writing responses to the prompts below, you may need to
refer back to the budget you created in the Assignment 2
Financial Plan Budget Excel Template. Make sure you have
completed your budget before completing this portion of the
assignment.

Questions
1. Identify the savings goal and the time frame you determined
for reaching your goal. Why is the time frame you identified
realistic?
Answer: in the savings goal. I choose to save a down payment
of $40,000 to buy a house. The amount will be saved in ten
years, thereby I will be contributing $4,000 annually towards
attainment of the set goal. The goal is realistic and manageable
as a small proportion of my income will be dedicated to
housing. It will also assist me in reducing the housing
expenditure which covers a quarter of my income.
2. Explain why you chose the housing option you did and how it
will help you achieve your selected financial goal.
a. What considerations, if any, did you give to the following
when selecting your housing option?
i. Time frame for savings goal.
ii. Familial situation.
iii. Quality of life.
iv. Trade-off decisions.
v. Other considerations.
Answer: choosing the Housing option is not easy. For the
housing option, I chose to rent an apartment for $12,000 per
year. Renting a house is very expensive and a room is very

small for a person with a family. In ten years, I will have paid
my down payment and have the house. Renting a house will
have many expenditures as compared to an apartment. Housing
takes a quarter of my income and will require careful analysis to
ensure that in ten years, I have reduced the proportion partially
if not wholly.
3. Explain your choices for non-rent expenditures and how they
will help achieve your savings goal within the time frame.
a. How did you make the choices you did regarding non-rent
expenditures?
b. How do your expenditures align with the financial goal you
selected?
Answer: a. Food is an inevitable proportion. Food expenses are
about 16% of the total expenses as the food is used for the
family of six, one wife, and four children, and the food prices
are increasing with time. Transport will also take a portion of
the income as I will require to travel to work and take my
children to school. I will also take my family upcountry and
will have to fuel the vehicle. The amount is set in such a way
that will offset the changing prices of oil prices. My family has
four children who are currently going to school. Each child is
estimated to use $1,250 in their academic year.

Education is very important and taking the children to the best
school is my preference. That is why a tenth of my income goes
towards educating my children. As for healthcare, my family
will require an insurance cover that covers the health of my
family and ensure that they receive the best medical care.
Choosing an insurance cover that costs $2,000 is fairly
reasonable as it has helped pay the medical bills that arise with
time. Family care expenses are also included which carry a low
percentage but are very helpful. The family undergoes
counseling. There are miscellaneous expenses that are
unavoidable. These expenses carry a portion that must be
factored in.
Answer: b. The expenditures are symmetrical and can be
consistent as I work on a ten-year plan of reducing my housing
expenditure and having my home. The expenditure layout will
help me focus on my goal and ensure that all incremental costs
have been met.
4. Reflect on the productivity strategies you used to break down
your financial plan into smaller steps to help you stay organized
and productive.
a. How closely did you follow the plan you thought through
earlier in the assignment instructions?
b. How did a step-by-step and organized approach help you to
adjust your financial priorities and financial plan?

c. How did the approach you use to draw upon productivity
strategies that you had previously learned?
Answer: a. The previous financial plan was followed to the
letter. Various alternations had to be modified but they were
insignificant.
Answer: b. Having an organized approach helps in ensuring that
I will be consistent and become disciplined in terms of
following the new plan. It is through consistency that I
identified the order of preference of my expenses.
Answer: c. The previous approach allowed me to analyze my
financial income and expenses. t
1
ECO110Assignment 3 Financial Analysis Explanation Word
Template
While writing responses to the prompts below, you may need to
refer back to the budgets and graphs you created in the
Assignment 3 Financial Analysis Graphs Excel Template. Make
sure you have completed your budget before completing this
portion of the assignment.
Questions

1. Explain why you chose these particular graphs or charts. How
do the graphs or charts you created help someone understand the
financial data?
[Write your response to Question 1 here.]
2. Discuss the results of your financial analysis, including
overall progress toward savings goals, potential changes in your
budget that can be made in the future, and possible economic or
life impacts that may affect your budget in the coming year.
3. Reflect on what your financial analysis might reasonably
look like in a year, taking into account income growth and
inflation of consumer prices.
a. What economic trends might you want try to account for
when making your projection?
b. How could you try to plan for unexpected expenses when
making your projection?
1

Assignment 3Assignment 3 Financial Analysis Graphs Excel
TemplateMonth 1 BudgetMonth 2 BudgetMonth 3
BudgetFinancial Goal Savings
ProgressDollarsPercentDollarsPercentDollarsPercentSavingsOv
erall SavingsAmount Remaining to SaveIncome-Income$ - 0-
Income$ - 0-Month 1
0ExpendituresExpendituresExpendituresMonth
20HousingHousingHousingMonth
30FoodFoodFoodTransportationTransportationTransportationEd
ucationEducationEducationUtilitiesUtilitiesUtilitiesTaxesTaxes
TaxesHealth CareHealth Care$ 400Health CareFamily
CareFamily CareFamily
CareMiscellaneousMiscellaneousMisc ellaneous$
100SavingsSavingsSavings Total Total
TotalAssignment 3 Excel Instructions:
In this assignment, you will make three monthly budgets. Your
income increases each month using embedded formulas, as
shown in the tables above. Additionally, in Months 2 and 3,
some cells have been filled in with a formula to represent an
unexpected expense in that expenditure category for the month.
You will need to reallocate your budget around these expenses.
1. Fill in the Month 1 Budget based on your annual budget from
Assignment 2. Remember that Assignment 2 was looking at

your annual budget. So, to get the number for your monthly
budget, you will need to divide by 12.
2. Notice that your income for Month 2 and Month 3 have been
auto-calculated. Use these income numbers to plan your budgets
in these months. Also, as noted in the instructions, notice that
your “Health Care” costs for Month 2 and your “Miscellaneous”
costs for Month 3 have auto-calculated. Do not change these
numbers. You will need to plan around them.
3. For Month 2 and Month 3, fill in the cells for each category
for how you are choosing to allocate your income in each of
those months.
4. Use formulas to calculate the sum for your total in the
“Dollars” columns, and fill in the “Percent” columns for each
monthly budget.
5. Now produce a graphic for each of these three budgets to
show the spending allocation. You could use a pie chart, bar
chart, or other graphic from Excel. You will end up with three
graphics, one for each month. Each graphic should show how
you have allocated your income among the various categories.
6. Complete the Financial Goal Savings Progress table by
entering in the “Savings” amount from each of your three
monthly budgets. Use a formula to calculate how much you
have left to save using the dollar amount of your chosen savings
goal from Assignment 2.
7. Create a graphic that shows your progress toward your

savings goal based on the information you input into the
Financial Goal Savings Progress table. Select the type of
graphic that you think would best illustrate your progress.
8. Put the graphics in the space below on this spreadsheet.
Place graphics here

1Part 2 Final Case Cybersecurity Data Brea

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

More from TatianaMajor22

More from TatianaMajor22 (20)

1Part 2 Final Case Cybersecurity Data Brea