Fresh Start

Confidentiality Confidentiality means some things need protection against unauthorised access. It can be anything ranging from financial transactions to bank records to medical records, tax returns etc. But It varies from person to person. For example, A Student might scream out of the class saying "I got an A", so he is ok exposing his grades to all but other student might not choose to reveal. Other things like order of military food might not seem confidential, but an sudden increase in the order could be the sign of an military conflict or war.  Integrity Examples of Integrity failures are easy to find and too many. A number of years ago, Macro in a document added the word "not" after is in the statements after random instances. This might not appear integrity failure, but you can image the kind of havoc it can do if the word document consisted of Pentium computer chip details that produced an incorrect result due to the word "not" in a statement conta...

 In this Computer Security Article, we are going to discuss Threats, Assets, Value, Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability, Value, etc. In the previous articles, we had discussed all about computer security assets, value. We are not going to make this article boring, so lets discuss in a very general, easy to understand way. Harm or Attacks to the valuable assets can be seen in two perspectives or ways.  1. What bad things can happen to assets 2. Who or what can cause those bad things to happen. These two views enable us to determine how to protect assets, implement computer security. Let us think What bad things can happen, What makes your computer valuable to you. First, you use it for sending and receiving emails, searching web, writing and publishing papers, performing many other tasks like running business online, teaching online, you store and access private data, etc... and you expect the computer to be available for your use when you want. Without your computer, thes...

Algorithms : The building blocks of the Computer Software In the previous blog about algorithms, It described the great ideas of computer science but computer scientists describe this ideas, call them "Algorithms". So what's the difference between idea and an algorithms? The simplest answer to this question is to say that an algorithm is a precise recipe that specifies exact sequences of steps required to solve a problem. The great example for supporting this answer is how children's get taught to add two large numbers in school as shown below. 345611 + 989811 = xxxxx2 -> xxxx22 -> The above addition shows first two steps involved in adding two large numbers. So we can see that the process of addition contains precise number of steps that is also universal irrespective of input. The key feature of an algorithm is that no human intuition or guesswork required. Its just like a mechanical machine. Therefore each of the mechanical steps can be programmed into the co...

 Let us understand how the Computer Science ideas grew over the timeline. In 1930's, a British genius founds the field of computer science then goes on to prove that certain problems cannot be solved by any computer to be built in future, no matter how fast, powerful or cleverly designed. In 1948, A Scientist working at a telephone company published a paper that founds the field of Information theory. His work will allow computers to transmit message with perfect accuracy even when most of the data is lost due to interference. In 1956, A group of people attends a conference at Dartmouth with goal of Founding the field of Artificial Intelligence.  In 1969, A Researcher at IBM discovers elegant way to structure information in a database. This technique is now used to store and retrieve the information present in online transactions. In 1974, researchers in British governments lab founds the secret way for communicating securely between two computers without any other computers k...

 Computing is transforming our society in ways that are never were before in 17th or 18th century. There is hardly any aspects of our life that has not been influenced Digital Technology/ Computers, that's indeed. But There is a mystery out there because of little awareness about Fundamentals of Computers that makes it all possible. The Reason behind the lack of awareness, appreciation of Computer Science as a discipline is that it is not taught in schools as a subject and not mandatory also. At College level, it is introduced as a subject. The general pattern of teaching is also quite overlooked because most of the schools, colleges teach skills related to use of Software Packages rather than the Studying Heart of Computer Science. Let me give you an example for explaining the above points Consider the web-based commerce like amazon.com or Flipkart or net banking that is only possible because of the ability to send confidential information ( such as credit card numbers or otp or p...

In this blog, We are going to discuss  1. What is computer security in a basic sense 2. What are Assets 3. What are the goal of computer security 4. What are Threats Welcome back to another blog, in this blog i am going answer to basic questions related to Computer Security. What is Computer Security? Before answering this question, lets discuss about computers We encounter computers daily in countless situations where it is involved in moving money, controlling planes, radio, communication, monitoring health, Heating buildings, locking doors, playing music, regulate heart, tally votes, Health, finance,etc. Most of the time computers work well as they should but occasionally it does something horrible, weird that causes havoc everywhere because of an attack. Therefore Computer Security plays an very important role by not letting attackers compromise computers in any possible way. Computer Security is the protection of items that we value called Assets of computer system. There are ...

As the Title suggests, Lets discuss the early days of Computer Security and by early days I mean from 1950's and 1960's. I have taken the reference from computer security book "Security in Computing " by "Charles Pfleeger" and two other authors. "Willis Ware" had written a brief overview about early days of computing which i am going to discuss it next. Lets go back in 1950's In 50's and 60's, there were mainly two conferences yearly in US named Joint Computer Conferences (JCC) later renamed to National Computer Conference (NCC) where Computer Technology Enthusiastic, Researchers, Scientists, Engineers visit Conference. Nowadays The Term "Computer Security" has got changed to "Information Systems Security". Due to wide spread of computers, Entire Computer Security Industry moved from Private Defence classified Interest to Public View. Three People namely "Robert Patrick, John Haverty, Willis Ware" observed ...