Library items tagged: factsheet

Anonymous
PB/INFO/067 (05/07) Security was a major requirement in the design of eduroam, to ensure that organisations that provide visitor facilities, and the guests who make use of them, are not exposed to additional risks outside their control. eduroam should present fewer risks than the existing ad hoc arrangements for guest users. This factsheet explains the security measures within eduroam and how organisations can use them to protect their own security.
Anonymous
There’s little doubt that passwords are an inconvenience. Unfortunately they remain the most practical way for most of us to keep our on-line identities to ourselves. Without them, or if you don’t keep them secret, it would be far easier for someone else to masquerade as you, to read and modify any of your information and to take any action in your name.
Anonymous
PB/INFO/026 (10/05) Why passwords matter Every time we use a computer, a network or an electronic service we should have to prove who we are. This is important to ensure that we are entitled to use the particular service, and to give us access to our own personal information and settings.
Anonymous
PB/INFO/028 (10/05) On most network access links the traffic flowing in and out shows a similar pattern. Most communications consist of a request going in one direction and a response coming back in the other. The size of the request and response may be different but the pattern of traffic in time should be roughly similar. However, sometimes the inbound and outbound patterns are completely different. This often indicates that there is a security problem somewhere on the network that needs urgent attention.
Anonymous
PB/INFO/022 (05/07) The role of a computer network should, in its simplest terms, be to carry commands and information from client software running on one computer to server software running on another computer, and to return information in response to those commands. Servers can be divided into two types: those that are freely available to any client and those where access is restricted by some test such as a password, a certificate or an IP address. In an ideal world this would be all the security that was needed: however, this ideal fails in reality for two reasons.
Anonymous
PB/INFO/012 (10/06) Every few months a computer virus outbreak is publicised in the national press. One in every thirty e-mail messages contains a virus. Every computer user should therefore be aware of the danger and take simple steps to protect themselves against it.
Anonymous
PB/INFO/004 (10/06) What is a digital certificate? It is a collection of electronic information, usually containing a statement of the identity of the owner and some additional data. This is generated using cryptography, not to conceal the statement, but to make it hard for anyone other than the owner to forge it. Digital certificates are usually stored as files, either on a computer disk or a smartcard.
Anonymous
PB/INFO/003 (06/06) It is relatively easy to create an electronic mail message that appears, superficially at least, to come from someone else. It is therefore useful to be able to ‘sign’ e-mails, as we use ink signatures on paper documents and letters, to give stronger proof of their origin. There are systems that allow such signatures to be created using certificates and certification agencies, however the most commonly used system, Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), uses a different approach and terminology.