Monday, January 2, 2012
Basic Terms in Information Security
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Information Security
Please Note: To explain some terms I am using examples based on Online Banking
Confidentiality - aims to prevent unauthorized reading of the information. For example a customer of an online bank doesn't want some others (customers or intruders) to know his account balance. If the bank failed to protect confidentiality of such informations, it will face legal problems.
Integrity - Information has integrity if unauthorized writing is prohibitted. For e.g. a customer must not be able to improperly change his account balance.
Availability - Data must be available in a timely manner when needed. The attack which tries to reduce access to informations is known as denial of service (DOS) attacks. For e.g. If a customer is not able o do his transaction, the customer might then take his business elsewhere, i.e. he might change the bank for his business.
Cryptology - The art and science of making and breaking "secret codes".
Cryptography - is the making of secret codes.
Crytanalysis - is the breaking of secret codes.
Crypto - synonym for any or all of the following: cryptology, cryptography and cryptanalysis.
Cipher (Cryptosystem) - system used to encrypt the plaintext.
Ciphertext - The result of encryption. We decrypt ciphertext to recover plaintext.
Key - A key is used to configure a cryptosystem.
Symmetric Key - A symmetric key cryptosystem uses the same key to encrypt and to decrypt.
Public Key - A public key cryptosystem uses a public key to encrypt and private key to decrypt.
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