Computer Security

With computer systems increasingly under attack, it's no wonder that people are starting to take computer security more seriously. But despite this increased interest, many computer users still don't really understand what computer security is-and why it should be important to them. The headlines about the Internet worm, KGB agents, and million-dollar funds transfer frauds tell only part of the story, and it's a part most of us can't identify with as a day-to-day concern.

Computer security protects your computer and everything associated with it-your building, your terminals and printers, your cabling, and your disks and tapes. Most importantly, computer security protects the information you've stored in your system. That's why computer security is often called information security.

There's a longstanding view of computer security that its purpose is to protect against one particular danger-outside intruders who break into systems to steal money or secrets, or simply to prove they can do it. And although such intruders do exist, they aren't the only, or even the primary, danger to computer systems. There are many more immediate dangers, ranging from sharing your password with a friend, to failing to back up a disk, to spilling a soda on a terminal keyboard. These dangers aren't as newsworthy as flamboyantly named viruses, but
they're more likely to cause you problems on a daily basis. The following sections define computer security and outline the wide range of dangers to computer systems