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The threat of online security: How safe is our data ?

Nowadays, we cannot deny that internet technology has improved the quality of our lives. However, we are facing the threat of online security too. Computer users tend to worry about their personal data to be leak out and used in negative purposes. On the other hand, organizations are worried about the online security too.

Today, computer users are facing the threats of cybercrime, internet and network attacks such as computer viruses, worms and Trojan horses and back doors.

A virus is a program that attach itself to a legitimate program to penetrate to the operating system and destroy application programs, data files, and the operating system itself.

A worm is a software program that virtually burrows into the computer’s memory and replicates itself into areas of idle memory. The worm systematically occupies idle memory until the memory us exhausted and the system fails.

Trojan Horse is a program whose purpose is to capture IDs and passwords from unsuspecting users. These programs are designed to mimic the normal log-on procedures of the operating system. The author of Trojan Horse uses these IDs and passwords to access the system and masquerade as an authorized user.

However, as the technology grow along quickly, the security requirement has been increased to protect the safety of the information. The security requirements are summarized into 3 category namely Confidentiality, Integrity, and Authentication.

Confidentiality makes sure that a message is kept confidential such that only intended recipient can access it. Encryption is a favourite tool to provided confidentiality.

Integrity is aiming to ensure that if the content of a message is altered, the receiver can detect it. Thus, when the payment information is changed, the message is no longer valid.

Authentication is about verification of the identity where the identity of the company can be verified before carrying out a transaction. In an open c-commerce system, a digital certificate is used to satisfy the authentication requirement.

Besides that, the best way users can do if they get on the Internet at all is to use security software and hardware such as firewalls and authentication servers, as this is the most effective approach to protect the computer and their personal information


In conclusion, safeguards developed must be always up to date to enhance the defences against online security threats. By the way, users must be educated and informed about the crucial damages and loss caused by imposing online security threats.

1 comments:

weihao said...

It's informative, just realised what is trojan.:)
Must becareful next time..

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