Perspectives on Security (slides)

These slides were made for the history day at the 2015 Symposium on Operating Systems Principles.

In the beginning, security was by physical isolation.

Timesharing brought the basic dilemma of security: Isolation vs. sharing.

Since then, things have steadily gotten worse:

• Less isolation, more sharing, no central management.
• More valuable stuff in the computer.
• Continued misguided search for perfection.

Themes

• Goals: Secrecy (confidentiality), integrity, availability.
• Gold standard: Authentication, authorization, auditing.
• Principals: People, machines, program
• Groups/roles: make policy manageable.