AOI: ATL
SIGNIFICANT CONCEPT: THE WAY TO BE SAFE IS NEVER SECURE.
UNIT QUESTION: HOW CAN WE LREARN TO SERVE THE SECURE VITUAL ENVIRONMENT.
INVESTIGATION
Types Of Viruses Not all computer viruses behave, replicate, or infect the same way. There are several different categories of viruses and malware. Below I list and discuss some of the most common types of computer viruses. Trojan Horse: A trojan horse program has the appearance of having a useful and desired function. While it may advertise its activity after launching, this information is not apparent to the user beforehand. Secretly the program performs other, undesired functions. A Trojan Horse neither replicates nor copies itself, but causes damage or compromises the security of the computer. A Trojan Horse must be sent by someone or carried by another program and may arrive in the form of a joke program or software of some sort. The malicious functionality of a Trojan Horse may be anything undesirable for a computer user, including data destruction or compromising a system by providing a means for another computer to gain access, thus bypassing normal access controls. Worms: A worm is a program that makes and facilitates the distribution of copies of itself; for example, from one disk drive to another, or by copying itself using email or another transport mechanism. The worm may do damage and compromise the security of the computer. It may arrive via exploitation of a system vulnerability or by clicking on an infected e-mail. Bootsector Virus: A virus which attaches itself to the first part of the hard disk that is read by the computer upon bootup. These are normally spread by floppy disks. Macro Virus: Macro viruses are viruses that use another application's macro programming language to distribute themselves. They infect documents such as MS Word or MS Excel and are typically spread to other similar documents. Memory Resident Viruses: Memory Resident Viruses reside in a computers volitale memory (RAM). They are initiated from a virus which runs on the computer and they stay in memory after it's initiating program closes. Rootkit Virus: A rootkit virus is an undetectable virus which attempts to allow someone to gain control of a computer system. The term rootkit comes from the linux administrator root user. These viruses are usually installed by trojans and are normally disguised as operating system files. Polymorphic Viruses: A polymorphic virus not only replicates itself by creating multiple files of itself, but it also changes it's digital signature every time it replicates. This makes it difficult for less sophisticated antivirus software to detect. Logic Bombs/Time Bombs: These are viruses which are programmed to initiate at a specific date or when a specific event occurs. Some examples are a virus which deletes your photos on Halloween, or a virus which deletes a database table if a certain employee gets fired. computer hardware What is IT Security? Broadly speaking, IT security is about keeping electronic information private and protected from falling into the hands of those without authorization to see or use that information. To implement IT security, the Institute looks at how to meet requirements of various regulations and laws relating to information protection. To ensure compliance, policies must be implemented and adhered to. IT security is about protecting the integrity, accessibility, and reliability of electronic information and with the behaviors and actions of computer users as they impact the privacy and safety of all members of the Internet community. IT security works with physical security to ensure protection of information, whether electronic or hardcopy. IT security -- and specifically cyber or internet security -- has become one of the main concerns at businesses and organizations today. Consider these statistics: · 112 universities reported a data breach in 2007 alone, an increase of 72.3% over 2006. · 48% of data breaches at universities last year were due to employee behavior, including unauthorized disclosure, employee fraud, loss, and a lack of knowing where sensitive data is being stored. Theft, impersonation, and attacks are the other factors leading to exposure. · 8.1 million U.S. residents were victims of identity theft in 2007. That represents 3.6% of adults. The total cost of identity theft in 2007 was $45 billion. · The average cost per company suffering a data breach is more than $6.3 million per breach. Why Protect Sensitive Data? Protecting sensitive data is the end goal of almost all IT security measures. The two main reasons for protecting sensitive data are to: · avoid identity theft · protect privacy. Identity theft occurs when someone uses your personal information without your permission to commit fraud or other crimes. The improper disclosure of sensitive data can also cause harm and embarrassment to students, faculty, staff and the Institute. Unintended exposure of regulated data may result in fines, lawsuits and other expensive costs to the Institute. It is to everyone's advantage that sensitive data is protected. This depends on the risk of identity theft or fraud, regulations imposed by industry, state and federal laws, as well as an organization's own data policies. Data Classification: Data is assigned a level of sensitivity based on who should have access to it and how much harm would be done if it were disclosed. This assignment of sensitivity is called Data Classification. Regulated Data: Information that is legally protected and requires notifying the affected individuals in the event of a data breach. Sensitive data comes in many forms, such as electronic, printed, voice, or fiche. The following measures will help to keep data from falling into the hands of people who may disclose it or use it for personal gain. Know what data you have: You can't protect what you don't know you have. The first step to data protection is finding the data and making sure protections are in place to keep it confidential and safe from loss or theft. Scale down the data: If you don't need it, remove it. Keep only the data you need for routine business, safely archive older data, and remove unneeded data completely from all computers, devices and paper filing areas. Lock up!: All the passwords in the world won't get your laptop back if it was stolen. Lock it up when not in use, back up the data to a safe place and encrypt the contents of laptops and other portable devices if they contain sensitive data. Apply safe computing techniques: If data resides on a server or local computer, it should meet minimum security standards to protect it from a malware attack, inadvertent virus infection, or unauthorized access. Tips for safe computing can be found on this site. Avoid transferring data: If at all possible, minimize the transfer of data through insecure channels, such as leaving sensitive paper documents in unsecured places to be picked up later, or by sending sensitive data via unsecured email. A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information.[1] Where at least one process in one device is able to send/receive data to/from at least one process residing in a remote device, then the two devices are said to be in a network.Networks may be classified according to a wide variety of characteristics such as the medium used to transport the data, communications protocol used, scale, topology, and organizational scope. Communications protocols define the rules and data formats for exchanging information in a computer network, and provide the basis for network programming. Well-known communications protocols are Ethernet, a hardware and Link Layer standard that is ubiquitous in local area networks, and the Internet Protocol Suite, which defines a set of protocols for internetworking, i.e. for data communication between multiple networks, as well as host-to-host data transfer, and application-specific data transmission formats. Computer networking is sometimes considered a sub-discipline of electrical engineering, telecommunications, computer science, information technology or computer engineering, since it relies upon the theoretical and practical application of these disciplines.
What is Hardware? Your PC (Personal Computer) is a system, consisting of many components. Some of those components, like Windows XP, and all your other programs, are software. The stuff you can actually see and touch, and would likely break if you threw it out a fifth-story window, is hardware. Not everybody has exactly the same hardware. But those of you who have a desktop system, like the example shown in Figure 1, probably have most of the components shown in that same figure. Those of you with notebook computers probably have most of the same components. Only in your case the components are all integrated into a single book-sized portable unit. Figure 1 The system unit is the actual computer; everything else is called a peripheral device. Your computer's system unit probably has at least one floppy disk drive, and one CD or DVD drive, into which you can insert floppy disks and CDs. There's another disk drive, called the hard disk inside the system unit, as shown in Figure 2. You can't remove that disk, or even see it. But it's there. And everything that's currently "in your computer" is actually stored on that hard disk. (We know this because there is no place else inside the computer where you can store information!). Figure 2 The floppy drive and CD drive are often referred to as drives with removable media or removable drives for short, because you can remove whatever disk is currently in the drive, and replace it with another. Your computer's hard disk can store as much information as tens of thousands of floppy disks, so don't worry about running out of space on your hard disk any time soon. As a rule, you want to store everything you create or download on your hard disk. Use the floppy disks and CDs to send copies of files through the mail, or to make backup copies of important items. Random Access Memory (RAM) There's too much "stuff" on your computer's hard disk to use it all at the same time. During the average session sitting at the computer, you'll probably use only a small amount of all that's available. The stuff you're working with at any given moment is stored in random access memory (often abbreviated RAM, and often called simply "memory"). The advantage using RAM to store whatever you're working on at the moment is that RAM is very fast. Much faster than any disk. For you, "fast" translates to less time waiting and more time being productive. So if RAM is so fast, why not put everything in it? Why have a hard disk at all? The answer to that lies in the fact that RAM is volatile. As soon as the computer is shut off, whether intentionally or by an accidental power outage, every thing in RAM disappears, just as quickly as a light bulb goes out when the plug is pulled. So you don't want to rely on RAM to hold everything. A disk, on the other hand, holds its information whether the power is on or off. The Hard Disk All of the information that's "in your computer", so to speak, is stored on your computer's hard disk. You never see that actual hard disk because it's sealed inside a special housing and needs to stay that way. Unlike RAM, which is volatile, the hard disk can hold information forever -- with or without electricity. Most modern hard disks have tens of billions of bytes of storage space on them. Which, in English, means that you can create, save, and download files for months or years without using up all the storage space it provides. In the unlikely event that you do manage to fill up your hard disk, Windows will start showing a little message on the screen that reads "You are running low on disk space" well in advance of any problems. In fact, if that message appears, it won't until you're down to about 800 MB of free space. And 800 MB of empty space is equal to about 600 blank floppy disks. That's still plenty of room! Obviously you know how to use your mouse, since you must have used it to get here. But let's take a look at the facts and buzzwords anyway. Your mouse probably has at least two buttons on it. The button on the left is called the primary mouse button, the button on the right is called the secondary mouse button or just the right mouse button. I'll just refer to them as the left and right mouse buttons. Many mice have a small wheel between the two mouse buttons, as illustrated in Figure 3. Figure 3 The idea is to rest your hand comfortably on the mouse, with your index finger touching (but not pressing on) the left mouse button. Then, as you move the mouse, the mouse pointer (the little arrow on the screen) moves in the same direction. When moving the mouse, try to keep the buttons aimed toward the monitor -- don't "twist" the mouse as that just makes it all the harder to control the position of the mouse pointer. If you find yourself reaching too far to get the mouse pointer where you want it to be on the screen, just pick up the mouse, move it to where it's comfortable to hold it, and place it back down on the mousepad or desk. The buzzwords that describe how you use the mouse are as follows:
The Keyboard Like the mouse, the keyboard is a means of interacting with your computer. You really only need to use the keyboard when you're typing text. Most of the keys on the keyboard are laid out like the keys on a typewriter. But there are some special keys like Esc (Escape), Ctrl (Control), and Alt (Alternate). There are also some keys across the top of the keyboard labeled F1, F2, F3, and so forth. Those are called the function keys, and the exact role they play depends on which program you happen to be using at the moment. Most keyboards also have a numeric keypad with the keys laid out like the keys on a typical adding machine. If you're accustomed to using an adding machine, you might want to use the numeric keypad, rather than the numbers across the top of the keyboard, to type numbers. It doesn't really matter which keys you use. The numeric keypad is just there as a convenience to people who are accustomed to adding machines. Figure 4 Most keyboards also contain a set of navigation keys. You can use the navigation keys to move around around through text on the screen. The navigation keys won't move the mouse pointer. Only the mouse moves the mouse pointer. On smaller keyboards where space is limited, such as on a notebook computer, the navigation keys and numeric keypad might be one in the same. There will be a Num Lock key on the keypad. When the Num Lock key is "on", the numeric keypad keys type numbers. When the Num Lock key is "off", the navigation keys come into play. The Num Lock key acts as a toggle. Which is to say, when you tap it, it switches to the opposite state. For example, if Num Lock is on, tapping that key turns it off. If Num Lock is off, tapping that key turns Num Lock on. Combination Keystrokes (Shortcut keys) Those mysterious Ctrl and Alt keys are often used in combination with other keys to perform some task. We often refer to these combination keystrokes as shortcut keys, because they provide an alternative to using the mouse to select menu options in programs. Shortcut keys are always expressed as: key1+key2 where the idea is to hold down key1, tap key2, then release key1. For example, to press Ctrl+Esc hold down the Ctrl key (usually with your pinkie), tap the Esc key, then release the Ctrl key. To press Alt+F you hold down the Alt key, tap the letter F, then release the Alt key. | |||||
