Security

Throughout history, humanity has invented valuable technologies and ways to organize society. These innovations are typically accompanied by risks. Fire cooks food, and also provides heat on cold nights. Yet, when left unchecked, fire can cause huge damage as well as loss of life. Cities enabled new forms of community and commerce. However, they brought us more thievery, and made it easier for epidemics to spread. The automobile allowed a separation of locales for work and residence; trucks allowed goods to be shipped long distances. But vehicular accidents have caused far greater injury and loss of life than did mishaps with horses and mules. Information technology, like other technologies, has potential for good and for harm. In the first six chapters, we introduced aspects of human activity, such as education, medicine, and government, in which IT has been transformative and mostly positive. The next three chapters examine areas in which the negatives of IT are dominant, in which risks seem everywhere. This chapter focuses on security. IT security flaws are exploited by outsiders for personal or political gain. In Chapter 8 we shall look at safety, where the risks are often injury or loss of life. In Chapter 9, we shall look at privacy, where the risks are exposure of private, confidential, and even sensitive information. Security is the attribute of a computer system that ensures that it can continue to function properly after an attack. Attacks against computer systems happen routinely now, are in the news almost every week, and are accelerating in numbers and in impact. Damage to both individuals and organizations—financial losses, chaos, and deteriorating morale— is severe. We shall provide a primer on the multitude of ways computer systems, from large networks to mobile phones, can be ‘hacked’ so that they no longer function properly. We shall define the most common kinds of destructive software, often called malware. We will discuss large-scale data breaches, which now happen frequently and expose the personal data of millions to billions of people. The word hackers refers to individuals who disrupt digital technologies and thereby damage the functioning of an institution or a society.