Why Should I Worry About Security?

Why Should I Worry About Security?
The Internet is a global collection of Interconnected Networks that facilitate information exchange and computer connectivity. The Internet is comprised of many different computers, all of which fall into two categories: servers (also known as "hosts") and clients (also known as "guests") -- technically, everything on the Internet can be considered a "host," but for this discussion, we'll use "hosts" and "guests." Guest machines send bursts of computer data called "packets" which are analyzed by the server belonging to the guest's Internet service provider. If the data is located locally (on the ISP's machine), the ISP's server will return the packets. If the information sought is not local (on another machine), the ISP's server hands off the packets to a router, which then sends the packets to the server containing the information. Once the information is located, it is sent back to the guest machine.
There are many different types of computers that fill these two categories: mainframes, minicomputers, PCs, Macintosh, Unix and others. Despite the many varieties of computers that combine to form the Internet, every computer connected to the Internet needs to be able to communicate with every other computer -- without this ability, there is no Internet. All of these computers are able to communicate because in a sense they can all speak the same language -- TCP/IP. TCP/IP actually isn't a language; it is in computer terms what is known as a "protocol." A protocol is simply a standard for transmitting and receiving bits of information. As long as all of the interconnected computers follow the same protocol, they can exchange information. Unfortunately, when data is sent from one computer to another on the Internet, every other computer in between has an opportunity to see what's being sent. This poses an obvious security problem.
Say you decide to purchase concert tickets on the Web. To do so, you need to fill out an electronic form with your name, address and credit card number. When you submit the form, your information passes from computer to computer on its way to the concert ticket web server. It is possible that someone could be watching the data passing through one of the computers that is in between your computer and the concert ticket server. No one knows how often this happens, but everyone concedes it is technically possible. And its also possible off the web, too -- E-mail can be captured (and read, if not encrypted), as can file transfers via unsecure FTP. If someone wanted to, it wouldn't be too difficult to connect a capture device to someone's phone line (assuming they use a modem to connect to the Internet) and steal an electronic copy of the data exchanged on the Internet. Even if you make your purchase on a secure web site supporting the latest security features, it has been recently shown that secure sites can cause Internet Explorer (and other browsers) to send sensitive information to a non-secure server in plain text format.
The point is, there are a lot of security issues related to a network such as the Internet. No FAQ could possibly cover them all. That is why this FAQ concentrates on Internet Explorer. Because there are millions of people who use Microsoft Windows family products, and because those millions have the ability to blend Internet Explorer with these products, the seriousness about security should be of paramount importance to everyone. Remember, software products are only as secure as the environment in which they operate.