What is computer security?

Computer security is preventing and detecting unauthorized use of your computer. Prevention measures help you to stop unauthorized users (also known as “intruders”) from accessing any part of your computer system. Detection enables you to determine whether or not someone attempted to break into your system, if they were successful, and what they may have done.

Why should I care about computer security?

We use computers for everything from banking and investing to shopping and communicating with others through email or chat programs. Although you may not consider your communications “top secret,” you probably do not want strangers reading your email, using your computer to attack other systems, sending forged emails from your computer, or examining personal information stored on your computer (such as financial statements).

Computer Security

Who would want to break into my computer at home?

Intruders (also referred to as hackers, attackers, or crackers) may not care about your identity. Often, they want to gain control of your computer to use it to launch attacks on other computer systems. Control of your computer allows them to hide their location as they launch attacks, often against high-profile systems such as government or financial systems. Even if you only have a computer connected to the Internet to play the latest games or send emails to friends and family, your computer may be a target. Intruders may be able to watch all your actions on the computer or cause damage to your computer by reformatting your hard drive or changing your data.

How easy is it to break into my computer?

Unfortunately, intruders constantly discover new vulnerabilities (informally called “holes”) to exploit in computer software. The complexity of software makes it increasingly difficult to test the security of computer systems thoroughly.

Computer vendors will usually develop patches to address the problem(s) when holes are discovered. However, it is up to you, the user, to obtain and install the patches or correctly configure the software to operate more securely. Most incident reports of computer break-ins received at the CERT/CC could have been prevented if system administrators and users kept their computers up-to-date with patches and security fixes.

Also, some software applications have default settings that allow other users to access your computer unless you change the settings to be more secure. Examples include chat programs that let outsiders execute commands on your computer or web browsers that could allow someone to place harmful programs on your computer that run when you click on them.

Technology

This section provides a basic introduction to the technologies that underlie the Internet. It was written with the novice end-user in mind and is not intended to be a comprehensive survey of all Internet-based technologies. Subsections provide a short overview of each topic. This section is a basic primer on the relevant technologies. We include links to additional information for those who want a deeper understanding of the concepts.

What does broadband mean?

“Broadband” is the general term used to refer to high-speed network connections. In this context, Internet connections via cable modem and Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) are frequently called broadband Internet connections. “Bandwidth” is the term used to describe the relative speed of a network connection — for example, most current dial-up modems can support a bandwidth of 56 kbps (thousand bits per second). No set bandwidth threshold is required for a connection to be called “broadband,” but it is typical for connections over 1 Megabit per second (Mbps) to be so named.

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