The primary goals of security are to ensure:
- Data confidentiality. Only authorised individuals should be able to view data.
- Data integrity. All authorised users should feel confident that the data presented to them is accurate and not improperly modified.
- Data availability. Authorised users should be able to access the data they need, when they need it.
Security can be broken up into six requirements, or tenets. All of the tenets are equally important for ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data. The tenets are listed as follows:
- Identification. Identification is concerned with user names and how users identify themselves to a computer system.
- Authentication. Authentication is concerned with passwords, smart cards, biometrics, and so forth. Authentication is how users prove to the system that they are who they claim to be.
- Access control (also called authorisation). Access control is concerned with access and privileges granted to users so that they may perform certain functions on a computer system.
- Confidentiality. Confidentiality is concerned with encryption. Confidentiality mechanisms ensure that only authorised people can see data stored on or travelling across the network.
- Integrity. Integrity is concerned with checksums and digital signatures. Integrity mechanisms ensure that data is not garbled, lost, or changed when travelling across the network.
- Nonrepudiation. Nonrepudiation is concerned with digital signatures. It is a means of providing proof of data transmission or receipt, such that occurrence of a transaction cannot later be denied.
Another very important aspect of security is auditing. Audit logs may give the only indication that a security breach has occurred. Or, if the breach is discovered some other way, proper audit settings generate an audit log that can help administrators pinpoint the location and the perpetrator of the breach.
Relationship to Other Processes
Security administration can impact an entire information system and many other processes as well.
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| Relationship to other System Management Functions |
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