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This is an article that I wrote for class enjoy.

Security

In today’s world one of the few things we hold dear is security. True security in the computer world is just a myth. Have we gone too far? Have we left our search for security and entered into the realm of paranoia? "In 1992, when the computer virus Michelangelo was described in the newspaper headlines as threatening networks, companies bought policies to protect themselves."

Are we actually hurting ourselves by being too secure? Consider the following information. "Hackerphobia has spawned a big business. The visible tip of this iceberg is the $6 billion a year spent on protective hardware and software worldwide." True that those figures are worldwide but do we actually need that much security. Do we need to hire armed guards to go to the store, when a can of mace will do? Just " before the recent restructuring of AT&T, its firewall enclosed some 500,000 computers—more than the Internet had in 1998."²

Some places need more security then others. The Pentagon and the White House both need high security. "Foreign intelligence services routinely break into American public and private sector computers, mapping power grids to find weak links and leaving trap doors at just about all U.S. military bases."² For reason of National security places that need high security often need to upgrade their security on a daily basis. "Intrusions into government computes are detected only about 10 percent of the time. The Pentagon is ‘pinged’ roughly 250,000 times a year; some 500 of these intrusions are deemed serious," Plus at the White House, where if the wrong information got out it would cause major upset to President Clinton and Ken Star. " A hacker recently cracked the White House beeper paging system and put the message involving the Secret Service and the president on the Internet." Do we need all this security? The answer is yes and no. Where information is power, that power has to be protected at all costs. " Yes there are criminal hacker around, but they make noise out of all proportion to the damage they do."¹ There is no doubt that you can buy peace of mind. How much peace of mind can you afford?

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