Information Security

Information Security-

Information security is a concept that becomes ever more enmeshed in many aspects of our society, largely as a result of our nearly ubiquitous adoption of computing technology.  In our everyday lives, many of us work with computers for our employers, play on computers at home, go to school online, buy goods from merchants on the Internet, take our laptops to the coffee shop and check our e-mail carry our smart phones on our hips and use them to check our bank balances, track our exercise with sensors in our shoes, and so on.  Although   this  technology enables us  to  be  more  productive   and  allows  us to access a host  of information with only  a click of the  mouse,  it also carries with it a host of security issues. If the information on the systems used by our employers or our banks becomes exposed to an attacker, the consequences can be dire indeed. We could  suddenly find ourselves  bereft of funds,  as the contents of our  bank  account  are transferred  to a bank  in another country  in  the middle  of the  night.  Our  employer  could  lose millions of dollars,  face legal prosecution, and suffer damage  to its reputation because  of a system configuration  issue allowing  an  attacker  to gain  access to a database containing Personally Identifiable Information (PII) or  proprietary information. We see such issues appear in the media with disturbing regularity.  If we look back 30 years, such  issues related  to computer systems were nearly nonexistent, largely due to the low level of technology and the few people who were using what was in place. Although  technology changes  at an increasingly rapid  rate, and specific implementations arise on a seemingly daily basis,  much of the  theory that  discusses how we go about keeping ourselves secure  changes at a much slower  pace  and  does  not  always  keep  up  with  the  changes to our technology. If we can gain a good understanding of the basics of information security, we are on a strong footing to cope with changes as they come along.