User guide

Introduction to Information Security
Chapter 2: Safe@Office Security 75
• Applications are hosted on a main computer rather than on personal
workstations. This helps organizations share application resources. For example,
in service departments, the customer database is located on a main computer,
while all customer relations transactions are managed by software clients
running on the agents' computers.
• In order to withdraw money from any ATM machine, your PIN and the details
on your magnetic card are scanned and verified against the details on the main
bank computer.
• A department store in New York can query the inventory of the main warehouse
located in Chicago and enter orders for missing products, all in real time.
In other words, on top of the damage done by computer information theft or abuse,
unauthorized access to a computer or a computer network can seriously damage the entire
organization's essential operations, communications, and productivity. For example:
• An online store's Web site can be hacked, so customers cannot enter orders.
• An unauthorized user can take advantage of an organization's email server to
send unsolicited bulks of email. As a result, the organization's Internet
communication lines will be overloaded, and employees in the organization will
be unable to send or receive emails.
Since computer and network security has become a central part of information and general
security, security managers must either have an understanding of computers and
networking, or work closely with network administrators and network security specialists.
Network Security and the Small Business
Network security has been and continues to be a major concern for large, enterprise-sized
organizations. However, small businesses are no less of a target for Internet attacks, and
they require a similar network security level, for the following reasons:
• Small business owners lack awareness of network security and unwittingly leave
the door open to threats from within the network. For example, peer-to-peer
applications are a source of virus-infected files, Trojans, and worms, any of
which can be used to steal confidential information such as credit card numbers;
however, many small business owners are unaware of the risk, and therefore do
not block their employees from using peer-to-peer applications.