Cybersecurity threats

The first step in ensuring the cybersecurity of a computer system is to understand the threats it is likely to encounter and must defend against. We can place these threats into a few broad categories and identify the key features of each category. With this information, we can design a computer system architecture with attributes that will provide an appropriate level of protection against those threats.

Unfortunately, developing a completely secure computer system is not a straightforward process. This is because new vulnerabilities are identified regularly in existing operating systems, software libraries, user applications, and web applications. It is not unusual for flaws to be identified in widely used cryptographic components such as encryption algorithms and authentication protocols. As new software products are developed, they often contain entirely new vulnerabilities that will be discovered sooner or later. Most importantly, experience shows the...