Computer Security Basics, 2nd Edition

Preface

About This Book

This book is about computer security—what it is, where it came from, where it’s going, and why we should care about it. It introduces the many different areas of security in clear and simple terms: access controls, worms and viruses, cryptography, firewalls, network and web security, biometric devices, and more. If you’re at all interested in computer security or if computer security is a part of your job (whether you want it to be or not!), you should find this book useful. I’ve tried to give you the big picture and quite a few helpful details.

This book is not a technical reference. I’ve tried to pull together the basics about many different areas of computer security and put that information together comprehensively. If you need particularly technical information about a specific area of computer security (for example, making your specific system or operating system more secure, securing your web site, or configuring a router or firewall), you should refer to other, more specialized books.

Summary of Contents

This book is divided into 10 chapters and 3 appendixes.

Part I, Security for Today

This section presents a brief overview of what computer security is, where it came from, and where it’s going.

Chapter 1, Introduction

This chapter introduces computer security: what it is and why it’s important. It summarizes the threats to computers and the information stored on them, and it introduces the different types of computer security.

Chapter 2, Some Security ...