Essay on Computer Safety

Free Computer Safety papers

Computer Virus
Computer Virus Computer viruses are well known for their wrong doings. They are thought of as harmful programs that can affect your computer greatly. That is partly true except that they can be removed very quickly and easily. There is an interesting history of how viruses got there name a

Computer Technology 3
Over the past half century, computer technology has transformed our world by providing us with incredible tools for processing and communicating information. A number of organizations have recognized the importance of computer technology by establishing museums or archives dedicated to the history o

About two hundred years before, the word "computer" started

to appear in the dictionary. Some people even didn't know what is

a computer. However, most of the people today not just knowing

what is a computer, but understand how to use a computer.

Therefore, computer become more and more popular and

important to our society. We can use computer everywhere and

they are very useful and helpful to our life. The speed and

accuracy of computer made people felt confident and reliable.

Therefore, many important information or data are saved in the

computer. Such as your diary, the financial situation of a oil

company or some secret intelligence of the military department. A

lot of important information can be found in the memory of

computer. So, people may ask a question: Can we make sure that

the information in the computer is safe and nobody can steal it

from the memory of the computer?

Physical hazard is one of the causes of destroying the data

in the computer. For example, send a flood of coffee toward a

personal computer. The hard disk of the computer could be

endangered by the flood of coffee. Besides, human caretaker of

computer system can cause as much as harm as any physical hazard.

For example, a cashier in a bank can transfer some money from one

of his customer's account to his own account. Nonetheless, the

most dangerous thief are not those who work with computer every

day, but youthful amateurs who experiment at night --- the

hackers.

The term "hacker "may have originated at M.I.T. as students'

jargon for classmates who labored nights in the computer lab. In

the beginning, hackers are not so dangerous at all. They just

stole computer time from the university. However, in the early

1980s, hackers became a group of criminals who steal information

from other peoples' computer.

For preventing the hackers and other criminals, people need

to set up a good security system to protect the data in the

computer. The most important thing is that we cannot allow those

hackers and criminals entering our computers. It means that we

need to design a lock to lock up all our data or using

identification to verify the identity of someone seeking access

to our computers.

The most common method to lock up the data is using a

password system. Passwords are a multi-user computer system's

usual first line of defense against hackers. We can use a

combination of alphabetic and number characters to form our own

password. The longer the password, the more possibilities a

hacker's password-guessing program must work through. However it

is difficult to remember a very long passwords. So people will

try to write the password down and it may immediately make it a

security risk. Furthermore, a high speed password-guessing

program can find out a password easily. Therefore, it is not

enough for a computer that just have a password system to protect

its data and memory.

Besides password system, a computer company may consider

about the security of its information centre. In the past, people

used locks and keys to limit access to secure areas. However,

keys can be stolen or copied easily. Therefore, card-key are

designed to prevent the situation above. Three types of card-keys

are commonly used by banks, computer centers and government

departments. Each of this card-keys can employ an identifying

number or password that is encoded in the card itself, and all

are produced by techniques beyond the reach of the average

computer criminals. One of the three card-key is called watermark

magnetic. It was inspired by the watermarks on paper currency.

The card's magnetic strip have a 12-digit number code and it

cannot be copied. It can store about two thousand bits in the

magnetic strip. The other two cards have the capability of

storing thousands of times of data in the magnetic strip. They

are optical memory cards (OMCs) and Smart cards. Both of them are

always used in the security system of computers.

However, it is not enough for just using password system and

card-keys to protect the memory in the computer. A computer

system also need to have a restricting program to verify the

identity of the users. Generally, identity can be established by

something a person knows, such as a password or something a

person has, such as a card-key. However, people are often forget

their passwords or lose their keys. A third method must be used.

It is using something a person has --- physical trait of a human

being.

We can use a new technology called biometric device to

identify the person who wants to use your computer. Biometric

devices are instrument that perform mathematical analyses of

biological characteristics. For example, voices, fingerprint and

geometry of the hand can be used for identification. Nowadays,

many computer centers, bank vaults, military installations and

other sensitive areas have considered to use biometric security

system. It is because the rate of mistaken acceptance of

outsiders and the rejection of authorized insiders is extremely

low.

Individuality of vocal signature is one kind of biometric

security system. The main point of this system is voice

verification. The voice verifier described here is a

developmental system at American Telephone and Telegraph. Only

one thing that people need to do is repeating a particular phrase

several times. The computer would sample, digitize and store what

you said. After that, it will built up a voice signature and make

allowances for an individual's characteristic variations. The

theory of voice verification is very simple. It is using the

characteristics of a voice: its acoustic strength. To isolate

personal characteristics within these fluctuations, the computer

breaks the sound into its component frequencies and analyzes how

they are distributed. If someone wants to steal some information

from your computer, the person needs to have a same voice as you

and it is impossible.

Besides using voices for identification, we can use

fingerprint to verify a person's identity because no two

fingerprints are exactly alike. In a fingerprint verification

system, the user places one finger on a glass plate; light

flashes inside the machine, reflects off the fingerprint and is

picked up by an optical scanner. The scanner transmits the

information to the computer for analysis. After that, security

experts can verify the identity of that person by those

information.

Finally, the last biometric security system is the geometry

of the hand. In that system, the computer system uses a

sophisticated scanning device to record the measurements of each

person's hand. With an overhead light shining down on the hand, a

sensor underneath the plate scans the fingers through the glass

slots, recording light intensity from the fingertips to the

webbing where the fingers join the palm. After passing the

investigation of the computer, people can use the computer or

retrieve data from the computer.

Although a lot of security system have invented in our

world, they are useless if people always think that stealing

information is not a serious crime. Therefore, people need to pay

more attention on computer crime and fight against those hackers,

instead of using a lot of computer security systems to protect

the computer.

Why do we need to protect our computers ?

It is a question which people always ask in 18th century. However,

every person knows the importance and useful of a computer security

system.

In 19th century, computer become more and more important and...