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Computer Security Essay

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Computer Security

In the last few decades, the world saw a revolution in information and technology, and the main factor of this revolution was the computer. Computers made life easier for millions of people all over the world, especially in the United States, where the latest innovations in the field of computers take place. Information circulates with extreme speed, and a person with a computer and access to the Internet can follow what is happening on Wall Street, even if he is thousands of miles away from there. Any user of this network can buy, sell, and make money by staying in his bed. But in order to guarantee the stability of such a world where a lot of transactions occur, billions of dollars are at stake, there must be …show more content…

The authenticity of the message is also important; a user has to verify that the information is received from the correct sender. Another aspect of computer security services is the integrity of a message; only authorized users can modify a message. Non-repudiation of the data is also fundamental; it “requires that neither the sender nor the receiver of a message be able to deny the transmission” (Stallings 5). It is also important that “the information resources be controlled by or for the target system” (Stallings 5); this corresponds to the idea of access control. In addition, the availability of the message is an important concept; only authorized users can access “the computer system assets” (Stallings 6). Different computer security techniques are used to guarantee these aspects.

The main way to protect the data being transmitted is to hide the message. There are two fundamental techniques used in computer security: Stenography and Cryptography. Both techniques require a transformation in the information to be sent, an identification character included in the message to recognize the sender, and also some secret information to scramble the message when sent and to unscramble it when received (Stallings 12). When the method of Stenography is used, the very existence of the message is cancelled. For example, the resolution of a Kodak CD format is 2048 by 3072 pixels, and each pixel contains 24 bits. If one bit of each pixel is used to

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