Chapter 1: Protecting Your Computer Hardware

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Chapter 1:

Protecting Your Computer Hardware

Introduction

In small and home based businesses, the aspect of physical protection is often overlooked. Sufficient measures should also be put in place and maintained for protection against climate and environmental factors such as fire, dust, power, excessive heat and humidity, electrical emanations, and natural calamities.

Regulation of power supply is vital.

In a good security policy, special emphasis should be given to protect all equipment handling or containing sensitive information. It should lessen the possibilities for an intruder to access these devices.

In order to have a secure computer network, it is necessary to have a proper mechanism for protecting the computer hardware and other equipments from external physical threats such as theft, natural calamities (earthquake, floods, or even accidents in the home, etc.)

Physical Access & Data Security

The first line of defense locally to protect network equipment such as servers, switches, and routers is to keep them in a locked, climate controlled, and fire protected environment. If equipment is not physically accessible to unauthorized personnel, there is less chance of accidental or intentional tampering.

It is important that access to critical system components such as the server is restricted to a small number of individuals (usually the administrator and his backup). The server should be located in a locked room to which access is restricted. Other considerations should include protection of equipment against theft, fire, and electrical hazards.

No one must be able to remove a disk containing sensitive information or to install devices to record confidential information. For this problem to be solved security policy must created to maintain an environment secure enough to contain and keep the information handled by the equipment safe from any damage or loss. See the section entitled "Controlling Access to your PC" for a more in-depth look at dealing with access.

There are other specific items left to deal with in protecting computer data besides keeping data from the eyes of unethical immoral people -- that of machine failure. Computers crash.� Especially when you least want them to, like when you have a big project due or an important email that needs to be responded to immediately.� It seems that Murphy's Law is the only law that holds any sway when it comes to your computer's hard drive.� Unlike other issues discussed in this book, there are no common sense approaches to keep it from happening, no programmers out there hard at work trying to protect your computer from crashing.� There aren't even any hackers or attackers to blame.� The fact is that human beings are fallible and so are the things they make and therefore, hard drives are not perfect.� Just like you would never expect to drive a car without it breaking down once in a while, so you should expect and learn to deal with crashing hard drives.

There are several very important things you can do to protect your hard drive, the most important being: back up all your data regularly, keep your computer in a cool environment, make an emergency bootable floppy disk, keep a fire extinguisher nearby, and keep programs to a minimum, uninstalling those you don't use, monitor and regulate the power supply and restrict authentication and access to your computer(s). Keeping programs to a minimum: running multiple programs also cause stress on your computer, decreasing your hard drive's life span.� Keep beta versions and cracked software off your computer and if you don't use a program anymore, uninstall it.�

There are several other security implications that arise from the fact that computers run on electricity. These include radio interference, which can be used for eavesdropping and sabotage, plus radiation, a potential liability threat.