Definition of computer security
Computer security is understood as the measures and precautions that are taken to protect, care for and maintain the confidentiality and safeguard of the personal data of users. Likewise to safeguard the systems free of dangers and threats. This branch of computer science is very important in today’s world, because if it fails it can have great consequences.
What is computer security and what are its objectives?
Information security or computer security is defined as the set of measures used to prevent, correct and detect failures and threats. In addition to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information in a system and the users who use these systems.
In computer security different tools are used to generate protection depending on the element that you want to protect, we will talk about them later.
What are the objectives of computer security?
Information security has been created with the objective of keep user content secure as well as systems and programs used to perform a wide variety of tasks. There are also other reasons that we present below.
Computer security is designed to safeguard the assets of certain companies, among which are the following:
- The computing infrastructure: It covers the storage and management of data. Its importance is focused on ensuring that the equipment works correctly and preventing any theft, failure, fire, sabotage and/or natural disasters. Even any inconvenience that may occur with the power supply or other factors. Which, if it happens, can generate loss of information or theft of it.
- The users: They are all those people who make use of technological equipment and communication elements, they are also what manage the information that travels on these roads. Therefore, the system must provide the greatest possible protection so that its use by users cannot jeopardize the security of the information.
- Information: This is the main asset and the most important factor to protect, especially insuring large against malicious attacks.
Computer security principles What are they?
These principles must always be present in order to provide reliability to computer systems, since if any of them fails to comply with any principle, said system cannot generate a level of security with the necessary standards. This means that at any time the information provided to the company or used on any device may be at risk.
The safety principles are as follows:
- Confidentiality of information: All data that is sent or used must be known only by authorized persons, regardless of the means of transmission or computer system being used at the time of carrying out said task.
- Information integrity: The information must be kept exactly as it was generated and avoid, under all available means, that it be manipulated or altered by unauthorized persons or processes.
- Availability of information: It is the ability to always have the site accessible at any time and in the way that authorized users need it. It is essential that both software and hardware are kept running efficiently, as failure to do so can result in significant financial loss, physical damage, and in the worst case, threats to human life.
- I do not repudiate: The participation of all parties in a communication must be guaranteed. That is, in all communication there is a sender and a receiver, so there are two types of non-repudiation: A) Non-repudiation at source: guarantees that the person who sends the message cannot deny that he is the sender of the message, since the receiver will have proof of delivery. B) Non-repudiation at destination: The receiver cannot deny that he received the message because the sender has proof of receipt of the message.
types of computer security
There are different types of computer security, each one is based or specializes in a specific area Developing the necessary elements to protect equipment, systems, programs and even users.
In itself, the Y It is an art of complex technique used for the protection or concealment of information. In modern times and specifically during the last century; it was used exclusively to protect data and source documents with military information or political matters.
The security necessary for the proper functioning of a company, to give an example, and the resources that it owes are divided into three fundamental elements, these are: resources to protect (physical security or logical security)security according to the moment of protection (active or passive safety) and security according to the type of resource to protect (either ).
These types of security complement each other, so it is vitally important that they are all followed correctly.
By resources to protect
These two types of security focus on the resource to be protected, in this case the hardware and software together with the information that they can store or transmit.
- Physical security: It basically refers to the protection of all our elements (equipment), but from the point of view of possible natural disasters such as: fires, earthquakes or floods, as well as other types of external threats such as theft, electrical problems, etc.
The idea behind this procedure is Locate the servers in rooms or data centers with adequate security measures, which prevent or minimize the damage that the elements may suffer from different threats.
- Logical security: This is in charge of protecting everything related to the software and the information contained in the equipment. It perfectly complements physical security through the use of antivirus, information encryption, external hacker attacks and other mechanisms for the protection and privacy of the data of each network user.
It is necessary that for a correct operation of the equipment (hardware) they have a high physical security, This is because if, for example, the equipment is in a place where it is overheated, its performance will be affected and, in turn, errors can be caused in logical security, creating different losses and damage to the equipment and data.
Security according to the moment of protection
It specializes in the moment in which the protection is being used continuously, its activation requires supervision or special permission, or when some protection is always left running (activated), regardless of whether the system is in use or turned off.
- Active security: It focuses on preventing or avoiding damage to computer systems as a whole, be it hardware, software, or even the network. The most common tools related to active safety are, for example: access controls to server rooms, information encryption, hardware redundancy systems, etc.
- passive safety: It is a complement to active security that is part of it. This comes into play when active security measures have not been enough to stop a threat. A clear example is the topic of , carrying them out is putting active security in place, since we anticipate the risk of losing information. Another example are electrical protectors and electrical generators, these prevent the risk of high voltage or equipment shutdown abruptly, and even vital systems that stop working due to lack of energy.
When these security measures are activated, for example, recovering information from a backup becomes passive security, due to which the damage or error has already occurred. Well, once the damage has occurred, the necessary means are used to solve it.
Security according to the type of resource to protect
This last branch of security specializes in three elements and this is totally complementary to those already mentioned.
Focusing especially on the type of element that has been designed to protect:
- Hardware Security: This is when we adopt different measures to protect all physical elements against possible damage of any kind. It is similar to the concept of physical security, but it complements it by including additional protection mechanisms, such as the use of UPS or uninterruptible power supplies that protect physical equipment from surges or power failures, and even short circuits. , overheating, etc.
- Software security: It is the one that focuses on protecting software (programs) from threats. This type of security is gaining more importance because there are more software that are gaining and covering the systems. Here you can find different protection mechanisms against threats such as: viruses, and theft of sensitive information.
- network security: This focuses on the protection mechanisms of corporate networks of companies or even of more domestic. is the the most complex to manage, since an attack on a computer connected to the network can easily spread through it to other devices.
What are the most common types of attacks and computer viruses?
In principle, we offer you a list with each and every one of the most recognized and common computer viruses and attacks today. This, in order for you to know the main threats that surround the digital world and thus, you can avoid them in a certain way.
Now, then we indicate the most relevant characteristics of the most common computer viruses:
Without a doubt, this computer threat is one of the most feared, due to its economy of execution and, above all, because it is extremely difficult to trace the attacker. Which consist of making various requests to a server in order to make it collapse and especially, that it is blocked.
Thus, the so-called “DDoS attacks”, can be defined as an attack on a computer system or network that causes or achieves that a certain service or resource is completely inaccessible by legitimate users. In that way, may cause loss of network connectivity for the consumption of the transfer of information or bandwidth of the victim’s network.
In addition to this, it should be noted that denial of service attacks are very effective and said effectiveness is due to the fact that they do not have to overcome the security measures that normally protect a server. Well, these do not try to penetrate inside but rather, block it and that’s it.
Among other things, although there are various techniques, the most common of…
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