Security in Computing

2. Toolbox: Authentication, Access Control, and Cryptography

Chapter topics:

• Authentication, capabilities, and limitations

• The three bases of authentication: knowledge, characteristics, possessions

• Strength of an authentication mechanism

• Implementation of access control

• Employing encryption

• Symmetric and asymmetric encryption

• Message digests

• Signatures and certificates

Just as doctors have stethoscopes and carpenters have measuring tapes and squares, security professionals have tools they use frequently. Three of these security tools are authentication, access control, and cryptography. In this chapter we introduce these tools, and in later chapters we use these tools repeatedly to address a wide range of security issues.