Reference no: EM133244886

Case: Today, many of us work with computers, play on computers at home, go to school online, buy goods from merchants on the internet, take our laptops to the coffee shop to read emails, use our smartphones to check our bank balances, and track our exercise with sensors on our wrists. In other words, computers are ubiquitous.

Although technology allows us to access a host of information with only a click of the mouse, it also poses major security risks. If the information on the systems used by our employers or our banks becomes exposed to an attacker, the consequences could be dire indeed. We could suddenly find the contents of our bank account transferred to a bank in another country in the middle of the night. Our employer could lose millions of dollars, face legal prosecution, and suffer damage to its reputation because of a system configuration issue that allowed an attacker to gain access to a database containing personally identifiable information (PII) or proprietary information. Such issues appear in the news media with disturbing regularity.

Thirty years ago, such breaches were nearly nonexistent, largely because the technology was at a relatively low level and few people were using it. Although technology changes at an increasingly rapid rate, much of the theory about keeping ourselves secure lags behind. If you can gain a good understanding of the basics of information security, you're on a strong footing to cope with changes as they come.

In this chapter, I'll cover some of the basic concepts of information security, including security models, attacks, threats, vulnerabilities, and risks. I'll also delve into some slightly more complex concepts when discussing risk management, incident response, and defense in depth.

Question: What are the key points of agreement among the sources?