subject: Computer Security [print this page] A computer (or computer system) and said sure if it meets the three basic requirements related to the resources that comprise: confidentiality, integrity and availability. Confidentiality says the information is only available to those duly authorized, says that the integrity of the information and not destroyed or corrupted and the system has a correct performance and availability with the services / system resources are available whenever needed. Some examples of violations of each of these requirements are: Privacy: someone gets unauthorized access to your computer it all the information contained in the Declaration of Income Tax; Integrity: someone gets unauthorized access to your computer and change information in your declaration of income tax, moments before you send it to Internal Revenue Service; Availability: Your service provider suffers a large overhead of data or a denial of service and for this reason you may be unable to send its statement of Income Tax Revenue. Why should I worry about the security of my computer? Home computers are used to perform numerous tasks, such as financial transactions, whether credit or purchase of products and services, communication, eg via e-mail, storage of data, whether personal or business, etc.. It is important that you worry about the safety of your computer because you probably would not want that: your passwords and numbers of credit cards were stolen and used by third parties; your account to access the Internet was used by unauthorized persons; your personal details, or even business, to be modified, destroyed or viewed by others; your computer to crash because it was committed and the needed files system were deleted, etc.. Why would anyone want to hack into my computer? The answer to this question is not simple. The reasons why someone would try to invade your computer are many. Some of these can be: use your computer in any unlawful activity, to conceal the real identity and location of the attacker to use your computer to launch attacks against other computers; use your hard disk as a repository of data; destroy information (vandalism); disseminate messages alarming and false; read and send e-mails in his name; spread computer viruses; steal credit card numbers, credit and banking passwords; steal the account password for your ISP to access the Internet pretending to be you; steal data from your computer, for example, information from your income tax.
