Security+ Training Guide

A Brief History of Networks and Security

We've often found in teaching, as well as in consulting, that it helps to have an understanding of where a need or concept comes from. The history of networking security stems from information security, which dates back thousands of years. We can even look to Caesar and the great Roman army. Even then, knowledge was power and protecting that knowledge was crucial to the business of Rome. Caesar employed a basic form of encryption to protect his messages sent to and from the battlefield.

This desire and need to protect information continues, but the methods by which data is protected have changed. In the early days of computing, little changed to affect the methods by which information was protected. This ...