Computer security: what it is and what it secures…
Technology has many branches; it has information, data, and applications and so on. All these branches need to have a protection, and that’s where the computer security branch needed to be founded.
As a general idea of what a computer security is, we can say it is a protection of a whole computing system whether it is a hardware or software, and keeping maintain of it.
The protection of information, managing accessibility, assisting network or single work systems, securing privacy, preventing data from damage and controlling authorized and non-authorized applications; all those are the computer security's objectives. To reach or achieve these objectives we have to obtain what's called information security.
We can group three main areas of computer security – that doesn't change the fact that there are many other important areas - and those are: Confidentiality, Integrity and authentication.
Confidentiality is basically the insurance that the information is only accessed by authorized person and no other unauthorized user.
Integrity is an area of information security that guarantees that the information is not maneuvered or manipulated – copyrights and these sorts of things go under this area - .
Authentication is somehow close to what confidentiality is, but it is mainly the confirmation that a user is actually the real authorized user.
How to secure computers…
There are many ways to protect a computer either as hardware or software, and applications of that are rapidly developing. To secure information you need to:
1- Use an active antivirus – be sure to have an active license and keep it up to date.
2- Use the firewall and never turn it off
3- Always back up your information – because it is a way of protecting information from lost.
4- Don't visit entrusted websites or open entrusted e-mails.
Questions:
What is the physical domain?
Which is better, a hardware based computer security or a software based one?
What is the most important use of a firewall, and what does it exactly do?
Links:
n http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_security
n http://www.istl.org/02-fall/internet.html
n http://www.ccl.net/cca/documents/dyoung/topics-orig/security1.html