Professional Diploma in Cyber Security

The intranet
Module 1 Lesson 5

Summary Notes
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Contents

3 Introduction

Lesson outcomes

Concept of the intranet

8 Concept of virtualisation

9 Network automation

10 Network sharing

16 DEMO

16 Conclusion

17 References

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Lesson outcomes
By the end of this lesson, you should be able to:

• Examine the differences between the internet, intranet, extranet.

• Show how these networks increase productivity in an enterprise network.
• Explore virtualisation and its benefits.
• Be introduced to automation as the future of technology.
• See how traffic is sent over the extranet network.

Introduction
Today’s lesson we are going to be covering networking in depth , we’ll start by looking at the benefits of the following: the
Internet, intranet, Extranet . Convenience of Internet, intranet, Extranet and their differences and show how these network
increases productivity in an enterprise network. Network File Sharing over a wireless network and lastly exploring How
Encrypted information(traffic) is sent over the extranet network.

Concept of the intranet

Exploring the Intranet
There seems to be a lot of complexity associated with the term ‘intranet’. It might be simply because the terms INTERnet
and INTRAnet are so similar that if they are not used and pronounced correctly, they can cause great confusion. So, we are
going to look at the concept of the intranet more closely here - we’ll talk about the logical set up of an intranet and look at
some of its benefits.

So, what is the intranet?

In the simplest terms, the intranet is a private network often used organisations. An intranet would have been created for a
specific organisation for the sharing of data and resources and the use of collaborating tools, along with various other
computing services within the company’s network. Users outside the organisation are not able to access it.

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So, now we know what an intranet is. As you can see from the diagram, an extranet (which we will talk more about later in
this lesson) is an intranet that is accessible to some people from outside the company – but more about that a bit later. We
probably don’t have to explain the internet, but we will do so because of what we said earlier about it often being confused
with an INTRAnet. The internet is a global system of interconnected networks. We will go into all this in more detail a bit
later.

How does the intranet work?

The intranet operates in the same way as the internet using the TCP/IP protocol stack to establish communication. But
clearly only the employees of the company would have access to the intranet network. In a modern intranet, documents
are transmitted easier and faster because they are stored within the organization’s network.

Employees can create profiles, share comments and post comments within the network. When it comes to the intranet, it is
vital for an organization to carefully consider the nature of their business before setting up this system. While it is designed
to provide a secure collaboration between employees who may need to share sensitive or private information it can pose
an information security risk if it is hacked or damaged.

Uses of the intranet

So basically, an intranet helps big organisations to communicate efficiently. The intranet is used to communicate in three
main ways in a company, as a:
• Collaboration platform
• Internal web platform
• Distributed platform

Collaboration platform: The word ‘collaborate’ means working with someone to produce something. Because of the
intranet’s collaboration platform, users are able to publish content and collectively manage tasks to achieve their goals
They do this by using software such as Slack, Trello, Microsoft team, Google docs, etc.
Let’s have a look at a real-life example of this…
User Story
A manager has given a task to a team of four people. They need to come up with a new business idea for the company. Each
member of the team has to compile research on one of these business areas: current
• business-to-business (B2B)
• business-to-consumer(B2C)
• consumer-to-business(C2B)
• consumer-to-Consumer(C2C) models of business.

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The easiest way for the team to communicate effectively on this task will be to run one of the collaboration software
programs mentioned earlier on their private network (intranet).This way they will be able to share their different resource
in real-time.

Internal web platform: Due to the nature of the intranet, companies can host their own private web server that is only
accessible to the employee. In this platform employees can be updated on the changes in the company. There is one-way
publishing although employees can interact with the use of comments, likes, hashtags, etc. A good example of this would-
be newsfeeds, where employees can publish different articles, journals, etc

Distributed platform: Companies often use the distributed platform to manage the centralised user database. Companies
like Amazon, Facebook, need to keep track of different running applications that are being used within the company, who
has access to them. So, by using a directory service such as Microsoft’s Active Directory, companies can manage the phone
directory and access control system, among other things

Benefits of the intranet

Big companies make use of the intranet because it offers various benefits. These include:
• Accessible information: With the use of a content management system (CMS) and document management system
(DMS), employees will be able to host, share, and even collaborate on different documents needed for their day-to-
day task.
• Globalised connection: In big businesses, there is always the need to keep teams informed. Employees working on
different tasks can update their process in real-time. They can also search for other employees across all
geographical locations and view their job title, skill set and other information about them. It’s almost like having a
form of Facebook within the company network.
• Spring framework lifecycle: Businesses can plan projects with the use of CMS and DMS to deliver exceptional
results and meet high turnover rates.
• Mapping employee engagement: Most big businesses usually measure employee engagement to optimise business
performance. Some companies use integrated survey tools to measure their Employees Net Promoter Score(ENPS)
and use this information to segment staff into promoters, passives and critics.
An example of a typical ENPS question is: “On a scale of zero to ten, how likely is it that you would recommend this
company as a place to work?”
• Security: Security is one of the most important benefits of the intranet, because all users have to be in the company
network to be able to access any company resources. This eliminates the chances of an intruder in the company
network – we’ll talk much more about this later in the course.

Exploring the extranet

The extranet is simply just a modification of the intranet, in that the entire intranet is connected to the internet with the
use of a wireless LAN Controller to the ISP (Internet service provider). Basically, the extranet is a secured private network
designed for an organization which leverages the use of internet technology to maximize effective communication. It
benefits both employees within the company and others working remotely who will are able to connect to the company’s
network.

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The extranet is often used when remote work is promoted by companies (such as during COVID-19). Employees connect to
their company through the internet via the organisation’s portals.
Do you remember Lesson 4 when we spoke about WANs – wide area networks? It’s that. It’s when someone working on a
remote site can access their company’s network through the company portals anywhere there is internet connectivity.
Clearly, the introduction of the internet to the intranet brings a whole host of further benefits and we’ll look at those just
now.

How does the extranet work?

As you can see from the diagram below, when company employees are given end-devices such as laptops and smartphones,
a VPN (virtual private network) is configured on these end-devices.

When the employee connects to the extranet every packet is encrypted by the VPN (virtual private network). When the
packet arrives at the company network it goes through a decryption process before it arrives at the intended destination.
This decryption process is carried out by IPsec.

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What is IPsec?

IPsec is the abbreviation for Internet Protocol Security – a secure network protocol that helps to authenticate, encrypt and
decrypt every packet of data provided to communicate between two devices in a network. IPsec is mostly used in
environments using VPNs (virtual private networks) where there is a need for secure communication.

Basically, IPsec establishes a VPN tunnel to transmit a secure packet using end-to-end encryption. We will be touching
base on VPN in more detail later in the course. For now, our focus in on IPsec. Let’s now look at some common features of
IPsec.

Benefits of the IPsec

When it comes to the use of IPsec protocol, there are four fab features. They are:

• Confidentiality: Companies use the IPsec protocol due to the fact it protects sensitive information. For example, in
the case of a network attack, any packet that is captured by a hacker will be all encrypted so that the details of the
packet will not be visible.
• Integrity: Every packet is scrambled using the mathematical hash function. The encrypted packet then travels
between the employee network and the internet and extranet and is only decrypted on arrival at the intended
receiver.
• Authentication: Before an end-to-end secure communication is established, both the sender and receiver need to
authenticate their access before the VPN tunnel is established. This is often done with the use of passwords,
biometrics or two-factor authentication.
• Anti-replay: When an encrypted packet from an authenticated user is captured and a hacker tries to resend the
explicit content in the packet, the VPN will drop it. As you can see in the diagram, the IP packet has different
segments that help to ensure it doesn't resend captured packets. This is done with the use of sequence numbers in
the IPsec authentication. Basically, any duplicated packets will be dropped and not sent through the VPN(virtual
private network).

To summarise, the extranet basically has exactly the same uses as the intranet. Employees will be able to enjoy the same
benefits and more when they switch to the extranet - in other words, when they introduce the internet to their existing
intranet using a VPN.

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Intranet vs internet vs extranet

Here is a useful table comparing the three networks we have just been speaking about. From a Cybersecurity point of view,
take note of the differences in terms of the last three rows – Accessibility, Information sharing and owner.

Concept of virtualisation
What is virtualisation?
Due to the rapid growth of technology, companies were constantly looking for a cheaper way to fully use the resources of
their computer. This gave rise to the idea of virtualisation, creating virtual or software-based alternatives for computer
hardware like servers and networks.

Virtualisation is the process of creating simulated or virtual computer environments as opposed to physical environments.
This is done by creating a partition on the physical hardware component to run two or more virtual representation
applications or operating systems to boost efficiency and reduce costs. As you can see in this diagram, more applications

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are able to be created from the existing hardware in place. With virtualization, there is no wastage of hardware resources in
the system. Every piece of hardware is fully utilised.

Common properties of virtualisation

When exploring virtualisation on systems, you will notice some common characteristics. These are:

• Partitioning: Partitions are created for the computer to split its original resources with the virtual ones, so that
multiple virtual operating systems can be launched on the physical machine.
• Isolation: Because of partitioning, any fault or security issue is isolated at hardware level, so other virtual
representation applications will not be affected. If there is a security issue, only those specific running virtual
applications will be affected. This obviously saves everything else from been corrupted.
• Encapsulation: A virtual machine is basically a software container that holds bundles of application (i.e., a
collection of virtual hardware resources, as well as an operating system and all its applications). By saving the
entire state of the virtual computer to the allocated hardware file, encapsulation makes virtual machines
incredibly portable and easy to manage.

Benefits of virtualisation
There are many benefits companies, particularly big businesses, will enjoy if they opt for virtualisation. These include:

• Increased scalability: Imagine a scenario where an employee needs to use both a Linux distrusted operation
system (Ubuntu) for administrative work and her mac book for other tasks. The company will simply implement
the use of virtualisation to run the Ubuntu on the mac book. So, she will be able to operate both operating
systems on a single device rather than having two computers.
• Cost saving: Implementing virtualisation on a single device is always a cost saver. And of course, this can be rolled
out across the whole IT department.
• Increased performance: Virtualisation enables companies to maximise performance by fully utilising the
resources of the existing hardware rather than acquiring new equipment.
• Minimised downtime and improved disaster recovery: Virtualisation enable companies to create back-ups or
clones of exiting virtual applications run on their system, in the case of a failure on one system. The administrator
managing the network can easily deploy the backed-up or cloned system to replace the failed one.

Network automation
What is network automation?
Network automation is the use of dedicated software to set a specific pipeline of instruction to be executed such as
testing. This means that as soon as the testing phase has been completed, the deployment phase will be initialised
simultaneously without the interference of any operator. Network automation often works in conjunction with network
virtualisation. A modern network automation platform has recently been hosted in the cloud which makes them more
accessible and secure for other vending companies to use. With network automation, everyday network tasks and
functions can be present to avoid repetitive processes and errors in a system.

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Benefits of network automation

Why should companies use network automation? These include the following benefits:

• It’s fast (for speed): Network automation enables companies to speed up the process it takes for an application to
be deployed by automating the network processes through the completion of the application lifecycles across the
entire company.
• It saves costs: Companies that use network automation save a lot of money. Traditionally, a company would have
needed to employ someone to do these tasks but with the use of the automated system, tedious and manual
processes are eliminated. This saves the company time and money.
• It reduces errors: In science, human error is inevitable. With the use of an automated network, companies can
totally minimise human errors by simply setting some pipeline of instruction to the network. The process can be
repeated 100s of times without an error in the system.

Basically, to summarise… Companies need automation in their network to ensure speed, reliability, efficiency and
flexibility.

Network sharing
Exploring the concept of network sharing
Network sharing allows connected users to share resources over a network connection. In this section, we will walk you
through the steps to set up network file sharing on Windows 10. This is a peer-to-peer local area network (LAN) and will
work for users in the same workgroup or working for the same company. For sharing to take place, both devices need to
be in the same network i.e., the same Wi-Fi or LAN connection. Initialising network sharing gives the user the opportunity
to allow certain files or restrict them. These files and folders can be viewed by users on the same network.

Setting up for LAN public folder sharing (using File Explorer)

You can do this with either Linux, Mac, or even your windows laptop. But for this demonstration, we will be working on
Windows 10. The idea is to create a situation where you are able to share files while connected to the local area network.

Let get started.

• On your Windows laptop, look for the search terminal:

• Search for File Explorer on Windows 10 and open it. Navigate to the file/folder you want to share on the network.

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• In our case, we will be sharing a folder named MyshareFile. Right-click on the folder and scroll down to the
Properties section
• A new tab will open, showing the properties of the selected folder/file, like this

Note: You can see the network path. A network path or shared path is a location where your files or folders are stored. A
path points to a file, folder location by following the directory tree hierarchy. Take note of the path in our case

• Click on the SHARE tab to open a new tab.

• From this new tab, you will be able to choose different users you wish to share with.

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• Click on the dropdown to select the user or group you want to share the file or folder with. In this case, we choose
Everyone because let’s pretend we want to be able to share with everyone in our work group.
• Next, you need to give the appropriate permission to everyone.
• At the Permission Level section, select the type of sharing permissions you want the folder to have.
You can select:

• Read: Select this if you want everyone in the user group to be able to view and open the files.
• Read/Write: Select this if you want users in the same workgroup to be able to view, open, modify, or delete the
content on the folder.
• Then click the Done button and it is as simple as that.

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Creating and joining a homegroup/workgroup

The process we have just taken you through may have you wondering how you create a homegroup or a workgroup on a
laptop to share files with. Or how you join a homegroup or workgroup to get files that have been shared with you.

So, let’s walk through that process now…

• On your Windows laptop, find the search terminal.

• Search for control panel.

• Click on Network and Internet and select Homegroup.

• Select folders and files that you want to be able to share (for example: pictures, videos, music,
documents, printer & devices) from this list.

Note: For files/folders you don’t want to share select ‘Not Shared’ option.

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• Click on ‘Next’ and you will see this screen:

The last part of the process is to save the password. Anyone in the workgroup will need to use it to access the files
shared.

So now you know how to create a home or workgroup let’s show you how to join one…

• Repeat the same first three steps as for ‘Creating a homegroup’ – open the control panel, click on
Network and Internet, then scroll down to ‘Homegroup – choose homegroup.

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• You will be invited to ‘Join now’.

Note: Once you click ‘Join now’ don’t forget to enter the saved password. And that’s it.

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DEMO
Setting up for virtualisation
We are now going to dive into two demos to show you how the process of installing various machines using virtualisation.
You will see how to use virtualisation to install multiple operating systems on one laptop – the systems we are going to
install are Ubuntu and Cyber Ops Workstation. We also created a demo showing you how to install Metasploit which you
can find in the Bonus Content for this lesson.

Conclusion
In this lesson, we touch base with We started off comparing the intranet, extranet and internet. Then we moved into
Virtualisation and then we dived into Network automation. Then we explore the concept Network sharing on the same
Local Area Network and lastly, we ended with a demo to walk you through the processes of virtualization to boost
efficiency for users.

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