Computer security

COMPUTER SECURITY Name: Subject: Lecturer: Date of submission: Introduction In the world today, people`s lives are being literally run by computers. Most of our systems in this century are computer aided and rely on computers a lot for efficiency, from our banking system to our online schools to our social lives that have been graced with social sites leaving a good percentage of the world`s population living their lives on the internet. This is majorly through the computers and the phones. With this kind of connection and dependency comes challenges that the world needs to deal with; computer security. With the dependency on computer systems, it is safe to say, without the fear of contradiction that the world cannot do without computer security. CITATION Mat03 \l 1033 (Bishop, 2003) What is computer security? Computer security can be looked at from different angles but it all boils down to the safety of data transmitted through the given system or the stored in the particular system. Take for example, the data in one`s ATM card system, if this is not properly secured, the world could lose lots of billions of dollars, or even the health system where doctors could access medication diagnosis for patients, if somebody tampers with this kind of life depending system lots and lots of people could die due to wrong diagnosis. This makes computer security, to some considerable level, a matter of life and death. CITATION Ric06 \l 1033 (Rick Lehtinen, 2006) It therefore begs the question, how exactly to we ensure that our systems are secure, what information do we give priority to and who should we trust to secure such valuable information? Most importantly we are faced with the question, is computer security a thing of organizations and cooperation alone or is it an everybody`s job, what are some of the techniques that an attacker might employ to access information on a system? This current paper seeks to clarify this out and answer the questions. CITATION Joh \l 1033 (Carroll, 1996) Security threats on a p...