Реферат: The Necessity Of Computer Security Essay Research

cheques or contracts. There exists retina scanners that check the blood vessels

in out eyes, as well as fingerprint analysis devices. These use our physical

characteristics to prove our identity. A digital signature generated by a

public key cryptosystem is much harder to counterfeit because of the mathematics

of factoring – which is an advantage over conventional methods of tests for out

identity.

Another analogy the PGP has with the real world is the need for security.

Banks and corporations employ a trusted courier – in the form of an armoured

truck or a guard – to transfer sensitive documents or valuables. However, this

is expensive for civilian purposes, and the PGP provides the same or better

security when securing civilian information.

While many argue that limiting the PGP’s abilities are against the people’s

right to privacy, the PGP must also be seen as a necessity as we enter the

Information Age. There is currently little or no practical and inexpensive way

to secure digital information for civilians, and the PGP is an answer to this

problem.

Computer privacy must not be treated differently than any other method to

make private any documents. Rather, we must consider the computer as a tool and

use it as an extension of society’s evolution. Clearly the techniques we employ

for computer privacy such as encryption, secure transfers and authentication

closely mirrors past efforts at privacy and non-criminal efforts.

The government is putting more pressure against the distribution of PGP

outside of the United States. One of their main reasons was that since it is

freely distributed and thus can be modified in such a way that even the vast

computational resources of the US government cannot break the PGP’s secured

message. The government could now reason that the PGP can provide criminal

organizations a means of secure communications and storage of their activities,

and thus make the law enforcement’s job much harder in tracking criminals down

and proving them guilty.