Technology is just about everywhere and as time progresses the advancement of technology is creating new problems making it harder to create a true secure environment. Computers are devices used to solve practical problems which makes them part of technology. Changes in technology create risks that are almost impossible to predict and are not understood. With almost all pieces of technology a new security issue or vulnerability is created. With that change an attacker will think of a way to act upon the vulnerability and compromise the system.
Data security has always been an issue and in the earlier days of computers with diskettes the focus was on confidentiality, integrity and availability and has never changed. The recent thumb drive boom is an example of a hardware technology affecting the methods of securing a system. Thumb drives give thieves or attackers the ability to move a large chunk of data virtually undetected and enables them to install malicious software. To combat this problem organisations have banned their use or disabled their mounting by ordinary users, others have disconnected physically the USB ports inside the computers and even filling the USB sockets with epoxy glue these new methods of solving a data security issue have adapted as demand grew for thumb drives and security problems became evident.
As technology alters (for hopefully the better) attacker do as well. With each new release of technology vulnerabilities on a system are created and this creates targets for attackers. This is most likely due to the fact that no amount of prototyping can compare with having the new technology functioning in the real world. This is evident in 2001 when Microsoft released its new operating system XP. For a number of years Microsoft was criticised for lack of security features (such as poor firewall and spyware protection) it took almost three years for an update to be released. In the three years that security was not available; vulnerabilities were discovered and acted upon which made ActiveX, which is an update which allows Microsoft to communicate with other networks, to spread viruses, trojan horses and other malware
It is important to not that not all changes in technology affect security or the methods of security. In a recent press release by Intel a new processor family called Mobile Penryn was released. These processors have quad cores (four) are twenty five per cent smaller and achieve faster speeds (have large cache) on less power staggering achievements on all accounts. This advancement in technology is probably not going to create hugely noticeable security issues since it is fundamentally just increasing the speed of the processor.
What does this mean for us? Maybe new names for new breeds of security systems and malware, the line between the different types of malware have become quite thin. What we do know though is the principles applied to making a system safe, confidentiality, integrity and availability have not been affected by technology. Instead the methods of achieving a secure system have been shaped by the constantly altering computer environment we live in.