Information security - 1

In the wake of the Mumbai terror tragedy, people in India have become very conscious of their safety. Safety, however, is important also when it comes to your personal information. Besides obvious threats to life and health, when safety and security are not taken seriously, violation of personal information can occur, which poses its own unique hazards. Let us look at a few of these in brief.

Hidden dangers

Phishing: A dreaded term in the online world is phishing. Just like the fish that cannot see the fishing net coming into the water to trap them, the internet surfer does not know that he is clicking his way to a phoney website that asks him for confidential information like username, password, account number etc. Beware of emails that lure you to an unknown website or an email from an address that reads like one of the banks you have an account with. Clicking may lead you onto a similar-looking, but phoney website.

Hacking: This is different from phishing in that here, a person uses a special software or device that gives him access to your computer. He can then use your computer to suit his needs. E.g. the hacker may use a program that can read your keystrokes when you type your password while logging you’re your net banking account. Techies with constructive motives have designed the "virtual keyboard" where you click on the onscreen keyboard and the characters fill up the password field. Hackers cannot ead the clicks. So your password is safe. But as with phishing, the choice to exercise caution is yours.

Further in this series, you will learn about real dangers as opposed to virtual ones. We will also give you tips on how to exercise caution and be two steps ahead of potential cyber criminals. Technology can be abused. But abuse leads to R & D and new discoveries.

So stay tuned-in for more!

Why Digital Signatures ??

Designing new systems to authenticate users has proven to be costly and cumbersome, requiring too many technical skills for users. Most consumers don't want to take on commitments without physically signing a document in person. A range of techniques for authentication have been developed and tested. But none of them has been efficient and effective enough. Thus, nowadays its Digital Signature that is trying to provide answers to all.

Digital signatures are a form of electronic signature. The term electronic signature is used to describe the full range of electronic means to confirm the sender of the message. They range from a file including a graphical image of the sender's handwritten signature (simple but unreliable) to biometric techniques, such as iris scans (complex but reliable).

Digital signatures are based on public key technology, a special form of encryption invented in the 1970s, which uses two different keys (because two different keys are used, this form of encryption is also known as asymmetric cryptography). One key is kept secret (the private key), whereas the other key is made publicly available (the public key). The two keys are generated simultaneously and collectively are known as a "key pair." Once a message has been encrypted using one of the two keys, it can only be decrypted by the other key.