What does 'security' really mean?

Ben Smith, Maxim Integrated
embedded.com (October 05, 2014)

"Electronic security." This topic seems to be on every tongue today, and for good reason. In our increasingly interconnected world, security is essential if we are to preserve privacy, promote business, and reduce criminal activity. In a simpler time, enhancing security might have meant putting better locks on the front door. But we live in a world where every home has a high-speed connection to millions of other computers, where business transactions take place at the speed of light through glass fiber, and where stored value can mean a sequence of digits embedded in a bar code. So what does “security” really mean today?

In this first article in a series, we will explore the basic concept of security, when physical locks are less important than the logical and virtual fences that we place around our online lives. In subsequent articles we will look at what security means in a massively interconnected world, the factors that threaten security, and the factors that pose apparent threats but are actually benign. We will also explore how security should work and what may be coming in the future [1].

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