A Taste of Computer Security

A Taste of Computer Security

There are miscreants everywhere — in all domains — from vandals in a representative parking lot to high-profile terrorists on the international scene.

Today, computers are used in all walks of life: they are in your homes, and in various critical domains such as defense, education, finance, government, health care, and so on. This reliance of the world's infrastructure on computer systems, and the consequent pervasiveness of the latter, makes their "security" an issue of great importance.

The security of computer systems is a unique aspect of computing in that it enjoys remarkable attention from all quarters: at least everybody who uses computers cares about security. If you research or design systems, you care about creating mechanisms for providing security. If you are a marketeer or a salesman selling a system, you would need as many security-related bullet-points as you can gather (preferably backed by real technology). If you are an operating system holy warrior, you might find demonstrable security flaws in "other" systems to be excellent warfare tools. Popular media likes the negative, and they have been especially fond of computer security (its downfall, usually), a topic that has been romanticized consistently.