CHAPTER 3: SECURITY STRATEGIES
As the Internet has evolved and computer technology has become more sophisticated, IT managers, computer experts, and security specialists have developed a set of security strategies to prevent damage and losses, including
- Data backups
- Disaster recovery plan
- Data encryption
- Firewalls
- User IDs and passwords
- Network sniffers
- Mini webcams
- Biometric authentication
Data Backups
One of the crucial elements of any prevention scheme is to be prepared for the worst. What if a fire burned up your company’s offices and computers? Do all employees have recent backups on hand to replace their critical files? Backing up data and placing the backup in a safe spot is a necessary chore, because if antivirus software misses a bug or if a disaster occurs, you do not want to be left with nothing.
Organizations can choose from many backup schemes. Besides the obvious move of having a complete copy of programs and data in a safe place, companies tend to take additional measures, particularly concerning a primary database. If something goes wrong with the backup, a company could find itself out of business quickly. Organizations normally keep more than one backup of important databases and usually update them on a daily or weekly basis.
A variation of the backup strategy is to create rotating backups of perhaps seven copies of company data, one for each day of the week. When it comes around to the eighth day, the administrator takes the previous backup and overwrites it, saving the new backup on an old tape and erasing the oldest copy. This scheme has several advantages. It saves time, as only one backup is made each day. It allows for multiple disasters to strike simultaneously, as you always have the original and seven copies of the data available, making it unlikely that all are damaged and destroyed at once. If the database is lost or corrupted, many copies exist, some of which may predate the beginning of the problem.
Disaster Recovery Plan
A disaster recovery plan is a safety system that allows a company to restore its systems after a complete loss of data. The elements of a typical disaster recovery plan include
- Data backup procedures
- Remotely located backup copies
- Redundant systems
Besides backing up the data multiple times and storing backup copies in a different building, other precautions can be a big benefit when everything goes horribly wrong. These precautions include keeping extra pieces of critical hardware that can be quickly replaced in the damaged machines. Another safeguard is establishing redundant systems. One part of a redundant system might include having a fully mirrored hard drive that can be swapped with a damaged or corrupted hard drive thereby keeping downtime to a minimum. A mirrored hard drive is one that contains exactly the same data as the original and is updated automatically every time the original is updated. That way if one disk fails, the other can keep going with no loss of data. Many corporations have safeguards of this type to protect their critical databases.
Data Encryption
To prevent people from spying on sensitive transactions, such as the transmission of a user name and password across the Internet, companies use data encryption to scramble the information before it is transmitted. Data encryption schemes include an encryption key that is generated automatically and shared between the two computers that wish to communicate. This security can also work with cell phones and other forms of communication devices. Without this key, breaking the encryption code is very difficult.