Elements of Security

Elements of Security

• Security is a state of well-being of information and infrastructures in which the possibility of successful yet undetected theft, tampering, and disruption of information and services is kept low or tolerable
• Any hacking event will affect any one or more of the essential security elements.
• Security rests on confidentiality, authenticity, integrity, and availability
  • Confidentiality is the concealment of information or resources.
  • Authenticity is the identification and assurance of the origin of information.
  • Integrity refers to the trustworthiness of data or resources in terms of preventing improper and unauthorized changes.
  • Availability refers to the ability to use the information or resource desired

Security is a state of well-being of information and infrastructures in which the possibility of successful yet undetected theft, tampering, and disruption of information and services is kept low or tolerable.

Note that it is not implied that total protection is required, as this is not practically possible considering the evolution of technology and the dynamic environment of the system. "The network is the computer" is a phrase coined by Sun Microsystems in the mid eighties, which is even truer now than then.

There are several aspects to security in the current context. The owner of a system should have the confidence that the system will behave according to its specification. This is termed as assurance. Systems, users, applications need to interact with each other in a networked environment. Identification or authentication is a means to ensure security in such a scenario. System administrators or other authority needs to know who has accessed the system resources when and where for what purpose. An audit trial or log files can address this aspect of security termed as accountability. Not all resources are usually available to all users. This can have strategic implications. Having access controls on predefined parameters can help achieve these security requirements.

Another security aspect critical at the systems operational level is with regard to reusability. Objects used by one process may not be reused or manipulated by another process such that security may be violated. This is also known as availability in security parlance. Information and processes need to be accurate in order to derive value from the system resource. Accuracy is a key security element. The two aspects discussed above constitute for the integrity of the system.