Computer, Network and Information Security
Because information is your greatest business asset
What is security?
Security deals with the prevention, detection and reaction of unauthorized activities related to information and systems that provide access to information.
Security has three main goals:
- Confidentiality: preventing unauthorized disclosure of information
- Integrity: preventing unauthorized modification of information.
- Availability: preventing unauthorized withholding of information, and ensuring legitimate access to resources.
Why bother with security?
Security is often ignored because it is perceived as difficult to understand, or seen as expensive insurance against something that might not happen. Most small business owners believe they don't need to worry about security. Their reason, "who would want to target my business when there are so many bigger targets".
Please read our "Why Security Matters" page.
What are the threats?
- Physical: fire, flood, human, breakage
- Electrical: constant steady power
- Software: virus, trojan, malware (malicious software), hacker
How to Secure systems
There are a number of strategies that can be deployed for managing security risk:
- Reduce the threat – manage information in a different way.
- Reduce the vulnerability – introduce security controls with a technical device, so that the weakness is reduced.
- Reduce the impact – move sensitive information to a place that is less vulnerable to attack, so that if an attack takes place, only information of a less sensitive nature is compromised.
- Detect the fact that a vulnerability has been exploited – monitor for changes to sensitive files.
- Recover from the damage done by an exploited vulnerability – restore data from a backup tape.
In a study by Pepperdine University economics professor and labor economist David Smith, it is estimated that six percent of PCs will suffer an episode of data loss in any given year. Hardware failure, human error, software corruption and viruses are the leading causes of data loss. Most often these episodes are a nuisance, causing your business brief disruptions. Because of our dependence on technology the possibility exists for a significant disruption that could cause your business to stop for a brief or extended period. |
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