Over the past few years, there have been numerous security breaches in computer systems and databases which questions whether current security practices are sufficient for an increasingly computerized world. People who entrust their data to companies with login information, addresses, credit card numbers, or social security numbers are subject to how these companies decide to protect their data. New, emerging technologies, particularly the cloud, have revolutionized how entities store information in the digital world and results in the urgent need to examine if current methods of computer security are sufficient to protect all of this data.

The overarching idea for both my technical and STS papers pertains to computer security. My technical paper deals with implementing an additional proof of vulnerability onto a current offensive computer security tool. Some systems, called n-variant systems, divide their memory storage into disjoint locations in an effort to diversify where the data is stored. Disjoint locations mean that valid spots in one memory block could be invalid in another. The goal for my technical paper was to create an additional proof of vulnerability that can attack these n-variant systems. This tool will be used to further improve the security on n-variant systems so they can defend better against malicious attacks.

The STS paper will look to evaluate the need for effective computer security policy particularly with the federal government and their cloud computing program. The Office of Personnel Management hack in June 2015 will first be examined and look how it could have been prevented or made less disastrous. Federal government policies on computer security, especially those on cloud computing as the government is slowly switching their computer storage means over to the cloud, will be examined. The goal of my STS paper is to provide recommendations on how the government can improve their cloud security policies to help ensure that no further large scale attacks can take place.

I would like to thank Professor Jongmin Lee for helping me throughout the STS paper process and Professor Jack Davidson and Michele Co for helping me through the technical paper.