Principle of Information Security: Module 1 Introduction to Information Security (Part 3)

The 1990s

At the close of the 20th century, networks of computers became more common, as did the need to connect them to each other. This gave rise to the Internet, the first global network of networks. The internet was made available to the general public in the 1990s after decades of being the domain of government, academia, and dedicated industry professionals. The Internet brought connectivity to virtually all computers that could reach a phone line or an Internet-connected local area network (LAN). After the Internet was commercialized, the technology became pervasive, reaching almost every corner of the globe with an expanding array of uses.

Since its inception as ARPANET, a tool for sharing defense department information, the Internet has become an interconnection of millions of networks. At first, these de facto standards did little to ensure the security of information, through some degree of security was introduced as precursor technologies were widely adopted and became industry standards. However, early Internet deployment treated security as a low priority. In fact, many problems that plague e-mail on the Internet today result from this early lack of security. At that time, when all Internet and e-mail users were presumably trustworthy computer scientists, mail server authentication and e-mail encryption did not seem necessary.

Early computing approaches relied on security that was built into the physical environment of the data enter that housed the computers. As networked computers became the dominant style of computing, the ability to physically secure a networked computer was lost, and the stored information became more exposed to security threats. In 1993, the first DEFCON conference was held in Las Vegas. Originally, it was established as a gathering for people interested in information security, including authors, lawyers, government employees, and law enforcement officials. A compelling topic was the involvement of hackers in creating an interesting venue for the exchange of information between two adversarial groups - the "white hats" of law enforcement and security professionals and the  "black hats" of hackers and computer criminals. In the late 1990s, and into the 2000s, many large corporations began publicly integrating security into their organizations. Antivirus products became extremely popular, and information security began to emerge as an independent discipline.