We have spent a lot of episodes going through a lot of stuff to make our networks and by doing that
we're making networks we've got web servers running and people are transferring files to each other
and domains are being named and life is good except for one big thing.
There's no real security here.
So what I want to do is warn you that we're about to start this big process of taking everything we've
learned and making it secure. And sure we've covered a little bit of security here and there.
But what I want you to do right now and for the next few episodes is I want you to put on your security
hat and start thinking about how do we lock this down.
How do we protect this.
How do we keep people from the evils of the Internet and how do we keep our nice Internet from the evils
of our people.
So one of the things we do is we have certain philosophies when we talk about security.
And one of them is the famous CIA of security. CIA stands for confidentiality integrity and availability.
As we begin to take what is basically was invented as a very insecure thing TCP/IP and make it secure
we keep chanting confidentiality integrity and availability.
So let's talk about this for a minute.
First of all when I say confidentiality I want to keep stuff confidential.
Now there's a lot of different ways to do that.
But one of the big ways that we're going to cover in the next few episodes is the concept of encryption.
How do we take unencrypted data that's flying through the Internet and encrypt it so that nobody can
see it
but the folks we want to see it.
So we're going to be covering all kinds of interesting stuff like different kinds of encryptions and
all that stuff. It's a lot of fun.
And I think you're going to enjoy those episodes.
But then after that is integrity just because something is encrypted.
Do I know it came from Mike Meyers popular author if that file was being transferred did somebody messed
it up midstream.
So there's a whole lot of stuff that has to do with integrity.
Integrity means is this good in the way that it should be good.
We use the word non repudiation a lot here.
Basically it says if somebody is handing me something I have no doubt that that's the person who handed
it to me.
So we're going to be going into a lot of integrity tools.
You're going to hear about things like certificates and hashes and stuff like that that are important
for us to deal with in
the CIA of security. Last is availability. Now one of the most dangerous things you can do is if you put
enough locks on the door you can make it so hard to unlock the door that you're not going to use the
door.
So a big issue for us for security is to make sure that we balance the confidentiality and integrity
tools in a way that we can use it.
Also security when we talk about availability is is this thing ready to use.
Is it out there when we need it.
Is it ready to go.
So we're going to be talking about things like high availability and stuff like that that say this network
device this server this whatever it might be is out there and ready to go.
Also availability would cover something as simple as a backup.
If we lose it do we have a backup available so we can get our data back. A big chunk that deals with
the CIA and a lot of people add this to the end of CIA are two things called authorization and authentication.
Now authentication is the concept of giving someone the right to access something.
So for example a username and password or smart card or something something that gives you a key to
unlock the door to get into a system whatever that system might be.
And then along with that is something called authorization. Authorization means OK now that you're in
what do you get to do.
So file accesses time of day all of these things kind of come into play.
So what I need you to do starting right now and for the next number of episodes I need you to be thinking
about security.
Keep in mind the idea of CIA and don't forget that also authentication and authorization come into play
just as well.
So get ready and let's get secure.