Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
INTRODUCTION Computer security is the process of preventing and detecting unauthorized use of your computer. Prevention measures help you to stop unauthorized users (also known as "intruders") from accessing any part of your computer system. Detection helps you to determine whether or not someone attempted to break into your system, if they were successful, and what they may have done. We use computers for everything from banking and investing to shopping and communicating with others through email or chat programs. Although you may not consider your communications "top secret," you probably do not want strangers reading your email, using your computer to attack other systems, sending forged email from your computer, or examining personal information stored on your computer (such as financial statements). Intruders (also referred to as hackers, attackers, or crackers) may not care about your identity. Often they want to gain control of your computer so they can use it to launch attacks on other computer systems. Having control of your computer gives them the ability to hide their true location as they launch attacks, often against high-profile computer systems such as government or financial systems. Even if you have a computer connected to the Internet only to play the latest games or to send email to friends and family, your computer may be a target. Intruders may be able to watch all your actions on the computer, or cause damage to your computer by reformatting your hard drive or changing your data. Unfortunately, intruders are always discovering new vulnerabilities (informally called "holes") to exploit in computer software. The complexity of software makes it increasingly difficult to thoroughly test the security of computer systems.
considerably: some affect the confidentiality or integrity of data while others affect the availability of a system.
Employee Sabotage
Employees are most familiar with their employer's computers and applications, including knowing what actions might cause the most damage, mischief, or sabotage. The downsizing of organizations in both the public and private sectors has created a group of individuals with organizational knowledge, who may retain potential system access (e.g., if system accounts are not deleted in a timely manner). The number of incidents of
employee sabotage is believed to be much smaller than the instances of theft, but the cost of such incidents can be quite high.
Malicious Hackers
The term malicious hackers, sometimes called crackers, refers to those who break into computers without authorization. They can include both outsiders and insiders. Much of the rise of hacker activity is often attributed to increases in connectivity in both government and industry. One 1992 study of a particular Internet site (i.e., one computer system) found that hackers attempted to break in at least once every other day. The hacker threat should be considered in terms of past and potential future damage. Although current losses due to hacker attacks are significantly smaller than losses due to insider theft and sabotage, the hacker problem is widespread and serious.
Industrial Espionage
Industrial espionage is the act of gathering proprietary data from private companies or the government for the purpose of aiding another company(ies). Industrial espionage can be perpetrated either by companies seeking to improve their competitive advantage or by governments seeking to aid their domestic industries. Foreign industrial espionage carried out by a government is often referred to as economic espionage. Since information is processed and stored on computer systems, computer security can help protect against such threats; it can do little, however, to reduce the threat of authorized employees selling that information.
Malicious Code
Malicious code refers to viruses, worms, Trojan horses, logic bombs, and other "uninvited" software. Sometimes mistakenly associated only with personal computers,
malicious code can attack other platforms. Actual costs attributed to the presence of malicious code have resulted primarily from system outages and staff time involved in repairing the systems. Nonetheless, these costs can be significant.