Computer Security Handbook, Fifth Edition

PREFACE

Computers are an integral part of our economic, social, professional, governmental, and military infrastructures. They have become necessities in virtually every area of modern life, but their vulnerability is of increasing concern. Computer-based systems are constantly under threats of inadvertent error and acts of nature as well as those attributable to unethical, immoral, and criminal activities. It is the purpose of this Computer Security Handbook to provide guidance in recognizing these threats, eliminating them where possible and, if not, then to lessen any losses attributable to them.

This Handbook will be most valuable to those directly responsible for computer, network, or information security as well as those who must design, install, and maintain secure systems. It will be equally important to those managers whose operating functions can be affected by breaches in security and to those executives who are responsible for protecting the assets that have been entrusted to them.

With the advent of desktop, laptop, and handheld computers, and with the vast international networks that interconnect them, the nature and extent of threats to computer security have grown almost beyond measure. In order to encompass this unprecedented expansion, the Computer Security Handbook has grown apace.

When the first edition of the Handbook was published, its entire focus was on main-frame computers, the only type then in widespread use. The second edition recognized the advent of ...