Cryptography Security Services: Network Security, Attacks, and Mechanisms

Introduction

Modern age is the age of data or information. We deal with various types of data, daily. This data is stored in the database and can be used for communication purpose. And we need to implement security at each step to secure this data. Thousands of millions of data travel over the network for accomplishing successful transmission of data, sent across the world. This data needs an assurance that the data sent should not be altered or accessed by any unauthorized party. And the area that deals with this security issues of data is Cryptography.

Cryptography is a science which is useful for designing and developing the cryptographic systems or frameworks. These systems are called cryptosystems, which contains various methods for encryption and decryption purpose. It is the area where we study theoretically and practically about the techniques which generally provide a secure communication over the network. Cryptography means to provide privacy and protect data from unauthorized access. Cryptography is a subdomain of cryptology. Because cryptography refers to the cryptographic techniques such as encryption and decryption but cryptology covers the study of both cryptography and cryptanalysis. The word cryptology made up of two Greek words: KRYPTOS (means hidden) and LOGOS(means word). Cryptanalysis is the process of getting the plaintext from the cipher text without being in control of the key or the system (called code breaking). Prof. D. Chandrasekhar Rao (2018) has discussed basic areas or levels at which we need security:

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  Computer Security: It is a part of information security that provides data security, hardware, software, and firmware security using a collection of designed tools.

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  Network Security: It is an activity designed to secure the integrity and usability of your network i.e. protect data during transmission over a network using different software and hardware technologies.

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  Internet or web Security: Activity to secure data while transmitting through a number of interconnected networks. It means to provide complete security against threats, malware and viruses for all devices.

Need Of Network Security

Millions of important information is exchanged daily on internet in today’s world. This information can be misused by attackers. With Internet advancements, Computer networks become bigger and network security has turned out to be critical. Software should be secured against outside attacks also. By increasing network security, the chances of privacy spoofing, identity or information theft could be decreased. Security is important for the following reasons (Sandeep,2010):

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  To secure the information from unwanted modification by unauthorized users

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  To secure the secret information so that third person cannot access it.

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  To make information to be delivered to intended destination properly without any loss

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  To keep record of acknowledgments or responses received by any user for a message so that user cannot deny later on that he has not received such messages.

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  To restrict a user to send information to another user with name of a third one.

Another level of security is Computer security which means to secure your computer system from any harm or unwanted damages caused due to network. Such damages could be caused due to the viruses and spywares that may even delete all the information from your system drive or may create hardware problems too. Therefore the network should be secured from such type of harmful software. The persons who intentionally install these software on the network are called Hackers. Sandeep (2010) has presented in his paper that to save information from attackers or hackers, need of computer security is must as:-

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  It needs a complete protection from viruses infected files.

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  To provide proper protection from malwares like worms and bombs.

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  It needs a proper protection from Trojan Horses as they are very harmful for your computer.

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  Three goals of network security: Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability (CIA) model(will be discussed later on in this chapter)