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IT-Security – Let’s talk about it!

Let’s talk about IT-security once more!
Other terms, which relate to the same problem are cyber-security, data processing security or data-protection.
It is all about the whole spectrum of illegal access to personal data, also called data theft, falsifying data, industrial and political espionage up to breach of secrecy. – Possible motivation for such crimes are a topics for themselves, but they are irrelevant here, because we will talk about this topic from a technical point of view.

Let’s talk about the technical basics of missing IT-security!
Why are hackers and their attacks that successful? To answer this question, we first have to admit that there has to be some incentive for hackers to start their activities. Besides those criminal intents above, it may simply be playful instinct, or trying own capabilities. May be, even some terroristic assault.
Instructions for hacking attacks are found in the internet, and they all aim at or exploit the technological imperfection of the currently available hardware architectures. This is – even if not expressively stressed – the missing separation of data categories, an important requirement for any secure data processing task.

Let’s talk about hardware-architectures!
Virtually all currently employed IT-systems are built in accordance with a hardware architecture, which has not been substantially altered over the past eighty years. This is the reason, why hackers are capable to successfully attack IT-infrastructures. Any software – be it part of a program or part of the data to be processed – is allocated to the same working storage, respectively the same permanent storage. This is one reason, why software-measures against hacker attacks are modifiable by smarter software of the attackers and thus easily passed by. For the same reason, they are only of limited temporary effect, and nobody knows, when their protective effect has expired.

Let’s also talk about research, which is not only restricted to universities or large companies, but also found in small scale and privacy:
Following the hacker attack aimed at RSA in spring 2011, a single person, who had studied chemistry in his youth, analyzed IT-infrastructures, especially concerning their relevance in context with IT-security. This work succeeded in not only identifying major shortcomings, but also in the development of instructions concerning the design of IT-components, which do not display those shortcomings. In other words: Hardware, built in accordance with this architecture, resists any malware driven attack.

Let’s talk about malware:
Concerning this article, malware is used as a collective term to designate any software, which has been brought into an IT-system without the intent of the system’s user, no matter whether this happened via networks or infected external storage devices.

Let’s also talk about the fact, that this architecture is protected by patents and ranked among the leaders in category “hardware” in the German contest „INNOVATIONSPREIS-IT 2015”.

Do you want to find out more? – Let’s talk about that as well!
Preferably addressing friedhelm.becker2@t-online.de.
October 2015