Although the term 'computer
security' is used a lot, the content of a computer is actually vulnerable to
only a few risks unless the computer is connected to others on a network. As
the use of computer networks (especially the Internet) has increased dramatically
during the past few years, the term computer security is now used to describe
issues referring to the networked use of computers and their resources.
The major technical areas of
computer security are confidentiality, integrity and authentication/availability.
- Confidentiality, also known as
secrecy or privacy, means that the information you own cannot be accessed by
unauthorized parties. Breaches of confidentiality range from the embarrassing
to the disastrous.
- Integrity means that your information
is protected against unauthorized changes that are undetectable to authorized
users. The integrity of databases and other resources are usually compromised
through hacking.
- Authentication means that an user
is who he claims to be.
- Availability means that the
resources are accessible by authorized parties. Examples of availability
attacks are the 'denial of service' attacks.
Other important things that the
computer security professionals are concerned about are access control and non
repudiation. Access control refers not only to the fact that users can only
access the resources and services they are entitled to, but also to the fact
that they can't be denied to access the resources they legitimately expect. Non
repudiation means that a person who sends a message cannot deny he sent it and
vice versa.
In addition to these technical
aspects, the concept of computer security is very large. Computer security's
roots are drawn from disciplines like ethics and risk analysis and the major
topics that are concerning it are computer crime (tries to prevent, detect and
remedy attacks) and identity/anonymity in cyberspace.
Although confidentiality, integrity
and authenticity are the most important things when it comes to computer
security in general, for everyday internet users, privacy is the most important
one, because many people think that they have nothing to hide or the
information they give doesn't seem sensitive when they register with an
internet service/site.
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