MY PROTECTION & SECURITY

Security policy and mechanism

The term security and protection are often used interchangeable.

Nevertheless, it is frequently useful to make a distinction between the general

problems involved in making sure that files are not read or modified by

unauthorized persons, which include technical, managerial, legal and political

issues on the one hand, and the specific operating system mechanism used to

provide security on the other to avoid confusion, we will use the term security to

refer to the overall problem, and the term protection mechanisms to refer to the

specific operating system mechanisms used to safeguard information in the

computer. The boundary between them is not well defined

Some common categories are:

1. Casual prying by non technical users. Many people have terminals to

timesharing systems on their desks, and human nature being what it is, some of

them will read other people’s electronic mail and other files if no barriers are

placed in the way. Most UNIX systems, for example, have the default that all

files are publicly readable.

2.

Snooping by insiders. Student, systems programmers, operators, and other

technical personal often consider it to be a personal challenge to break the

security of the local computer system. They often are highly skilled and are

willing to devote a substantial amount of time to effort.

3.

Determined attempt to make money. Some bank programmers have attempted

to break into a banking system to steal from the bank. Scheme have varied from

changing the software to truncate rather than round interest, keeping the fraction

of a cent for themselves, to siphoning off accounts not used in years, to

blackmail