Computers were intially used to simplify the task of computing, storing, and processing data. The number of computers and computer users was limited. As a result, the security of systems was not given much importance. The nature of computing has drastically changed over the past few years. With the introduction of network and the internet, there has been

an enormous increase in the number of computers users. Today, most organizations rely on computerized systems for storing data and coordinating businnes activities. In additions, a number of individual users use computers to avail different services, such as online shopping, online banking, and messaging.

Most computers connected to networks are vulnerable to attacks by viruses, worms, or unauthorized users. Individual users also face security threats, such as the theft and mususe of data and virus attacks.

What Is Security

The term security refers to the protection of system resources from intentional or accidental disclosure, destruction, or modification. The resources are infrastructure, hardware, software applications, files/directories, the data stored in the database, and the data in trainst. Securing resources involves implementing resource-usage policies to ensure that the resources are used per the organizational norms, unauthorized users are unable to misuse the resources, and authorized users are not denied access to the resources of the organizations.

To understand the need for security, consider the scenario of an organization that is using the IT setup. This organization is in the business of developing computer games and allows customer to download the games from its web site, which is hosted on the Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) Web server. In case a virus infects the files on the web server, the other IT resources of the organization also become vulanerable to the virus attack. The virus can also infect the PCs of all users donwloading games from this Web site. To prevent this type of virus attack, it is important to implement security on the Web server. In addition, PC users must implemetn security on the web server. In addition, PC users must does not infect their computer systems.