BIOMETRICS

THIS IS THE FLOWCHART DIAGRAM OF BIOMETRICS. . . 

BIOMETRICS

Biometrics is the automated method of recognizing a person based on a physiological or behavioral characteristic. Biometric technologies are becoming the foundation of an extensive array of highly secure identification and personal verification solutions.

Biometric technologies should be considered and evaluated giving full consideration to the following characteristics:

§  Universality: Every person should have the characteristic. People who are mute or without a fingerprint will need to be accommodated in some way.

§  Uniqueness: Generally, no two people have identical characteristics. However, identical twins are hard to distinguish.

§  Permanence: The characteristics should not vary with time. A person's face, for example, may change with age.

§  Collectibility: The characteristics must be easily collectible and measurable.

§  Performance: The method must deliver accurate results under varied environmental circumstances.

§  Acceptability: The general public must accept the sample collection routines. Nonintrusive methods are more acceptable.

§  Circumvention: The technology should be difficult to deceive.

THE ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF BIOMETRICS. . . .

The advantages of biometrics are the person is the key so you need never remember your card or key again. Each body part is unique and Biometrics uses your unique identity to enable a purchase activate something or unlock something. Biometrics encompasses Voice, Vein, Eye, Fingerprint, Facial recognition and more.

The disadvantages are numerous however: criminals have been known to remove fingers to open biometric locks, Biometrics requires a lot of data to be kept on a person, these systems are not always reliable as human beings change over time if you are ill; eyes puffy, voice hoarse or your fingers are rough from laboring for example it maybe more difficult for the machinery to identify you accurately. Every time you use Biometrics you are being tracked by a database bringing up a range of privacy issues. The final disadvantage is the expense and technical complexity of such systems.

Disadvantages of a biometric system.

·         The finger print of those people working in Chemical industries are often affected. Therefore these companies should not use the finger print mode of authentication.

·         It is found that with age, the voice of a person differs. Also when the person has flu or throat infection the voice changes or if there there are too much noise in the environment this method maynot authenticate correctly. Therefore this method of verification is not workable all the time

·         For people affected with diabetes, the eyes get affected resulting in differences.

·         Biometrics is an expensive security solution.

·         Advantages of Biometrics :

* Increase security - Provide a convenient and low-cost additional tier of security.

* Reduce fraud by employing hard-to-forge technologies and materials. For e.g.Minimise the opportunity for ID fraud, buddy punching.

* Eliminate problems caused by lost IDs or forgotten passwords by using physiological attributes. For e.g. Prevent unauthorised use of lost, stolen or "borrowed" ID cards.

* Reduce password administration costs.

* Replace hard-to-remember passwords which may be shared or observed.

* Integrate a wide range of biometric solutions and technologies, customer applications and databases into a robust and scalable control solution for facility and network access

* Make it possible, automatically, to know WHO did WHAT, WHERE and WHEN!

* Offer significant cost savings or increasing ROI in areas such as Loss Prevention or Time & Attendance.

* Unequivocally link an individual to a transaction or event.

FIREWALL

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THIS IS A SAMPLE DIAGRAM OF A FIREWALL. . . .. 

 A firewall is a device or set of devices designed to permit or deny network transmissions based upon a set of rules and is frequently used to protect networks from unauthorized access while permitting legitimate communications to pass.

Many personal computer operating systems include software-based firewalls to protect against threats from the public Internet. Many routers that pass data between networks contain firewall components and, conversely, many firewalls can perform basic routing functions.

The term firewall originally referred to a wall intended to confine a fire or potential fire within a building  firewall (construction). Later uses refer to similar structures, such as the metal sheet separating the engine compartment of a vehicle or aircraft from the passenger compartment.

Firewall technology emerged in the late 1980s when the Internet was a fairly new technology in terms of its global use and connectivity. The predecessors to firewalls for network security were the routers used in the late 1980s:

§  Clifford Stoll's discovery of German spies tampering with his system.

§  Bill Cheswick's "Evening with Berferd" 1992 in which he set up a simple electronic to observe an attacker

§  In 1988, an employee at the NASA Ames Research Center in California sent a memo by email to his colleagues.that read, "We are currently under attack from an Internet VIRUS! It has hit Berkeley, UC San Diego, Lawrence Livermore, Stanford, and NASA Ames."

§  The Morris Worm spread itself through multiple vulnerabilities in the machines of the time. Although it was not malicious in intent, the Morris Worm was the first large scale attack on Internet security; the online community was neither expecting an attack nor prepared to deal with one.

 

There are three kinds of generations of firewall

 

 

First generation: packet filters

The first paper published on firewall technology was in 1988, when engineers from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) developed filter systems known as packet filter firewalls

Second generation: "stateful" filters

From 1989-1990 three colleagues from AT&T Bell Laboratories, Dave Presetto, Janardan Sharma, and Kshitij Nigam, developed the second generation of firewalls, calling them circuit level firewalls.

Third generation: application layer

The key benefit of application layer filtering is that it can "understand" certain applications and protocols (such as File Transfer Protocol,DNS, or web browsing), and it can detect if an unwanted protocol is sneaking through on a non-standard port or if a protocol is being abused in any harmful way.

There are different types of firewall

And these are. . .

 

Ø  Network layer and packet filters

Network layer firewalls, also called packet filters, operate at a relatively low level of the TCP/IP protocol stack, not allowing packets to pass through the firewall unless they match the established rule set. The firewall administrator may define the rules; or default rules may apply. The term "packet filter" originated in the context of BSD operating systems.

Network layer firewalls generally fall into two sub-categories, stateful and stateless.

Stateful firewalls maintain context about active sessions, and use that "state information" to speed packet processing while the Stateless firewalls require less memory, and can be faster for simple filters that require less time to filter than to look up a session.

 

Ø  Application-layer

Application-layer firewalls work on the application level of the TCP/IP stack  and may intercept all packets traveling to or from an application. They block other packets (usually dropping them without acknowledgment to the sender). In principle, application firewalls can prevent all unwanted outside traffic from reaching protected machines.

On inspecting all packets for improper content, firewalls can restrict or prevent outright the spread of networked computer worms and trojans. The additional inspection criteria can add extra latency to the forwarding of packets to their destination.

Ø  Proxies

A proxy device (running either on dedicated hardware or as software on a general-purpose machine) may act as a firewall by responding to input packets (connection requests, for example) in the manner of an application, while blocking other packets.

Proxies make tampering with an internal system from the external network more difficult and misuse of one internal system would not necessarily cause a security breach exploitable from outside the firewall “as long as the application proxy remains intact and properly configured”.

Ø  Network address translation

Firewalls often have network address translation (NAT) functionality, and the hosts protected behind a firewall commonly have addresses in the "private address range", as defined in RFC 1918. Firewalls often have such functionality to hide the true address of protected hosts. Originally, the NAT function was developed to address the limited number of IPv4 routable addresses that could be used or assigned to companies or individuals as well as reduce both the amount and therefore cost of obtaining enough public addresses for every computer in an organization. Hiding the addresses of protected devices has become an increasingly important defense against network reconnaissance.

Firewalls Advantages and Disadvantages

What are the advantages of Firewall Use?

1. A feeling of increased security that your PC and contents are being protected.
2. Relatively inexpensive or free for personal use.
3. New releases are becoming user friendly.
4. You can monitor incoming and outgoing security alerts and the firewall company will record and track down an intrusion attempt depending on the severity.
5. Some firewalls but not all can detect viruses, worms, Trojan horses, or data collectors.
6. All firewalls can be tested for effectiveness by using products that test for leaks or probe for open ports.

Disadvantages of use

1. Firewalls evolve due to cracker's ability to circumvent them increases.
2. "Always on" connections created by Cable and DSL connections create major problems for firewalls. This can be compared to leaving you car running with the keys in it and the doors unlocked which a thief may interpret as an invitation to "Please steal me".
3. Firewalls cannot protect you from internal sabotage within a network or from allowing other users access to your PC.
4. Firewalls cannot edit indecent material like pornography, violence, drugs and bad language. This would require you to adjust your browser security options or purchase special software to monitor your children's Internet activity.
5. Firewalls offer weak defense from viruses so antiviral software and an IDS (intrusion detection system) which protects against Trojans and port scans should also complement your firewall in the layering defense.

6. Some firewalls claim full firewall capability when it's not the case. Not all firewalls are created equally or offer the same protection so it's up to the user to do their homework.
7. Cost varies. There are some great free firewalls available to the PC User but there are also a few highly recommended products, which can only be purchased. The difference may be just the amount of support or features that a User can get from a free product as opposed to a paid one and how much support that user thinks he or she will require.
8. A firewall protection is limited once you have an allowable connection open. This is where another program should be in place to catch Trojan horse viruses trying to enter your computer as unassuming normal traffic.
9. There have been claims made by IDS (Intrusion Detection System) companies where Trojan's were detected such as the RuX FireCracker v 2.0 which disabled certain Firewalls programs thus leaving the PC vulnerable to malicious actions.

ENCRYPTION

ENCRYPTION

Encryption is the conversion of data into a form, called a cipher text, that cannot be easily understood by unauthorized people. Decryption is the process of converting encrypted data back into its original form, so it can be understood.

The use of encryption/decryption is as old as the art of communication. In wartime, a cipher, often incorrectly called a code, can be employed to keep the enemy from obtaining the contents of transmissions.  “Technically, a code is a means of representing a signal without the intent of keeping it secret; examples are Morse code and ASCII.” Simple ciphers include the substitution of letters for numbers, the rotation of letters in the alphabet, and the "scrambling" of voice signals by inverting the sideband frequencies.

More complex ciphers work according to sophisticated computer algorithms that rearrange the data bits in digital signals.

In order to easily recover the contents of an encrypted signal, the correct decryption key is required.

The key is an algorithm that undoes the work of the encryption algorithm. Alternatively, a computer can be used in an attempt to break the cipher. The more complex the encryption algorithm, the more difficult it becomes to eavesdrop on the communications without access to the key.

Encryption/decryption is especially important in wireless communications. This is because wireless circuits are easier to tap than their hard-wired counterparts.

 However, as the strength of encryption/decryption increases, so does the cost.

Decryption keys would be stored in a supposedly secure place, used only by authorities, and used only if backed up by a court order.

Opponents of this scheme argue that criminals could hack into the key-escrow database and illegally obtain, steal, or alter the keys. Supporters claim that while this is a possibility, implementing the key escrow scheme would be better than doing nothing to prevent criminals from freely using encryption/decryption

Ethics Lesson

Law, Ethics and Computer Technology

What is “Law”?


It is possible to describe law as the body of official rules and regulations,
generally found in constitutions, legislation, judicial opinions,
and the like, that is used to govern a society and to control the behaviour of its members, so Law is a formal mechanism of social control.
Legal systems are particular ways of establishing and maintaining social order.






Defining Ethics


I have been blogging about ethics for some time so it is reasonable to ask what is my perspective on ethics? The term ethics is derived from the Greek word ethikos which itself is derived from the
Greek word ethos, meaning custom or character.
In philosophy, ethical behavior is that which is “good.”
The field of ethics or moral philosophy involves developing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior.  These concepts do not change as one’s desires and motivations change.  They are not relative to the situation.  They are immutable.
In a general sense, ethics (or moral philosophy) addresses fundamental questions such as: How should I live my life? That question leads to others such as: What sort of person should I strive to be? What values are important? What standards or principles should I live by? There are various ways to define “ethics.”  The simplest may be to say that ethics deals with “right” and “wrong.”  However, it is diffi cult to judge what may be right or wrong in a particular situation without some frame of reference.





Computer technology



There is no doubt that computer technology has had a great impact on society and also brought many technical developments with it. It has brought many changes to the way we live as individual as well as members of societies and organizations. It has had major effects and changes on the economy, health, education, industry, agriculture and many other fields. The ability of computers in gathering, processing, presenting and sending large amount of information has had major changes in the way large organizations as well individuals organize their lives. Computers are at work, in schools and hospitals and many other places. We therefore need to have some basic understanding of how they function and the language associated with them.
For people with not enough technical knowledge on computers, the amount of technical knowledge involved in the field of computer technology is overwhelming. It is also a field that changes fast enough for people to keep pace with. This site has been organized to help you understand, in a simple way, the concepts involved and language used in computer technology.