Technologies for Safeguarding

Information has been a precious asset to society since the existence of mankind. Thousands of years ago, ancient people started sharing information about where to find food and shelter. As society became more complex, some information was shared as knowledge, while some was kept with strict confidence for security reasons. For example, books exist for the purpose of sharing existing knowledge and to enlighten new ideas built upon known facts; bank vaults are designed for locking up private effects so that whatever stored inside is only accessible by authorized persons. In the past, most medical information is stored in physical formats such as cards and logbooks. As a result of rapid expansion in the amount of information being collected and created, there are more incentives to use computer-based data storage media for safe-keeping of medical information. The topic ‘Information Security and Privacy’ is simply the course of protecting information availability, data integrity, and confidentiality, so that it will only be accessible to authorized personnel, data cannot be tampered with, and it will not be leaked out.

Information security involves compromise between security and usability. To illustrate this, we look at an example where a little girl called Melody wants to safeguard a candy from being taken by others. Melody’s idea is to make it as safe as possible so that she has drawn up a simple plan. Melody realizes that if she places the candy in a treasure box, and this box is then concealed inside a bigger box, there is a smaller chance that the candy will be found by others. Alternatively, she can dig a hole to hide the candy underneath the ground. She realizes that the deeper she digs the smaller the chance of it being taken by others. So, Melody has hidden the candy in a safe place. However, when she wants to eat the candy she finds that it becomes more troublesome and time-consuming to retrieve the candy. From this scenario, Melody learns that having more security in place will make it more difficult for someone to get access. It will also take longer to be retrieved. Information (or data) security works in exactly the same way.