Computer Security – Definition And Other Useful Stuff

When owning a computer, some of the things that you hear very often of relate mostly to “Computer Security” and ways to provide this to your personal computer. But as often as this term is used, you should know that your computer content is not that easily threatened by risks of having it infected, provided that you have your device connected to a network.

This means the direct access to internet that can be a gateway to many viruses and spyware existing in the virtual world of information.

Computer Security

Nowadays many people depend on internet access, and as a result many attacks from these viruses can occur increasing the chances of getting your personal information stolen or used into devious purposes. A computer security has its main technical areas brought in by confidentiality, availability, integrity and authentication.

• Confidentiality that is also referred to as privacy or secrecy comes with the feature of not allowing any other unauthorized parties to have access to your personal data. Once this feature is broken, it can lead to devastating outcomes.
• Availability relates to the resources that can become accessible merely for the authorized parties. Some of the attacks that target this feature are known under the terms of  “Denial Of Service”.
• Integrity reveals that feature through which information is secured against any changes made by an unauthorized party, changes that can not be detected by the user. Hacking is that activity that breaches this feature.
• Authentication reveals the user as the real one who accesses the device.

Computer security also relates to other important things that many professionals in the industry are worried about. These things are non-repudiation and access control. The latter one refers to the fact that users have access to those services and sources they have the right to access.

More than this, “Access Control” reveals the fact that users are allowed the access to other sources they expect to access since they are legitimate to obtain this. As to non-repudiation, this means that a user while sending a message can not deny that he has actually sent the message and vice-verse.

Apart from these technical terms, computer security comes as well with other features. They relate to ethics and topics that reveal the risks of vulnerability to computer crimes while trying to protect, detect and fix the problems issued as result of attacks.

When we talk of computer security, the main features that usually come with its definition are integrity, confidentiality and authenticity. However, for those users accessing internet world on daily basis, privacy should be their main concern to look after.

Although they think that all they do through online access is not that relevant for hackers or other devious parties, therefore there should be no need to hide their information, information exchanged online can be easily seen by other parties. If you work for instance inside a company and you exchange on daily basis important information, this one can be easily seen and stolen by competitors putting your company at risk.