Survey of secure computing

Personal computers brought about a revolution in the use of general-purpose computers. They moved into homes and offices, and more and more people began using them, putting more and more data onto computing systems. The fact that protocols and systems were never designed to cater to this explosion in adapting the computing systems also left much vulnerability in the systems, which created threats in the computing realm. Then started parallel efforts to secure existing infrastructure, with the aim to provide three main components of security in computing, namely, confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The difference in the threats and exploits of the digital world makes traditional systems of secure measures fall short, and it is required to provide digital defense mechanisms to ensure secure computing. Secure computing spans a wide spectrum of areas, including protocol-based security issues, denial of service, web and cloud, mobile, database, and social- and multimedia-related security issues, just to name a few. Even as threats present themselves, active mechanisms and good preparation can help to minimize incidents and losses arising from them, but it is also to be noted that security in computing is still a long way from complete. This chapter aims at presenting a survey of common issues in security attacks and defenses in computing through the application of cryptography and the aid of security models for securing systems.