Google Risk Assessment Report – Project Proposal
Google, founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Bin, provides internet-related services and products. Its name was inspired by the mathematical term googol, equal to. The most popular of its services is the Google Search engine.
Since its inception, Google has given the world more effective and innovative ways to conduct searches.When it comes to the war between numerous search engines on web, Google captures a major market share of 67%. Its mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible in the most useful formats. Based on results from ComScore’s recent monthly analysis, there were a total of 19.4 billion explicit core searches in July 2013, with Google ranking first at around 13 billion searches out of the whole. Like many of its competitors Google uses algorithms, automated programs and a large keyword index to generate search results. Google differentiates itself with its trademark PageRank algorithm, which determines the order of its search results. As an internet based service, its source code is vulnerable and subject to numerous attacks.
The scope of our project is concerning Google’s key business segment, its search engine and its vulnerabilities as it pertains to its users and its infrastructure. Google’s global presence and popularity has deemed it a prime target for hackers. Data management is a key factor to Google’s Search engine success; in order for Google to be an efficient search engine it requires access to users’ data, so it can store and analyze search trends; unauthorized access to this large amount of data is a huge risk for Google and its users. It is our aim to categorize assets, identify threats and corresponding vulnerabilities and provide an assessment of the risks to Google’s search engine.
Our research will explore Google’s reaction to its vulnerabilities and security threats, as well as, information gathered via the internet from…