In terms of grammar, the words’ safety’ and ‘security’ are used synonymously, but when talking in terms of technology, safety and security are separate issues. The virtual world is becoming widely connected, with increased access to the internet. Despite being an advantage to the people, it has raised few concerns in the domain of security and safety.
Safety
The safety of any software can be defined as the predefined procedure under which the software is designed to work. The software might behave differently in abnormal conditions but not staking its safety. Any unintentional breach in the system should not impact its performance.
Importance of Safety and how to achieve it
The safety of a particular software is taken into account when the system is targeted to work for a cause which directly or indirectly impacts the living beings and their health. Safety is also a vital measure when one has to make software for a system which is used for environmental causes. To get a better understanding of the term, let us assume that we have to create software for some medical equipment. Safety, in this case, is of utmost importance. The software must be designed in such a way that it benefits humanity. Any software causing damage can harm the patients or doctors using that equipment. Hence, the critical term ‘safety’ is used in this context.
The safety of a particular software can be measured in terms of its accuracy and reliability. One of the methods is applying checksums; the data when transferred from server to client then the chunks of data are supplemented with headers which consist of checksums which are responsible for detecting the error incurred during data transfer. Another safety measure is to prevent the failures in the server by regularly taking backups of the data. The integrity of the data must be maintained at all times.
The safety must be maintained at all times in a system where the living beings and nature are involved even at the stake of its security. Let us take another example where a central server is required to store the data of a big organisation, here the safety can be taken care of by taking backups of the data unlike in the case of medical equipment. The data must be encrypted to keep it secure, and that is the difference. To further understand in detail, let’s move to security.
Security
Internet users prominently use this term, security. Whether the websites we use are secure, if they store our data, is our personal information in safe hands, are we prone to be hacked by someone- all these questions frequently come across our minds. All the major software firms are working on the security aspect of their application/website to provide the service. This kind of intentional harm to data of users is a breach of security. For example, some e-commerce companies have the details of their customers which include some sensitive information like details of debit/credit cards, the mobile number along with the address. The techniques of data encryption can be used to prevent sensitive information from harm.
Importance of Security and How to Achieve It
Security issues can be broadly classified as confidential, where the data is accessible to limited users; Integrity, where the data can be changed only by the authorised users; and availability of the data to the clients on demand.
These categories are created to secure the data. For any information present, the amendments in data must be allowed by a set of authentic users only, and after that, only a few of them must be able to access that. However, the data is made available to all its clients for viewing but with restrictions. Taking the example of e-commerce sites further, the users can view the profile of others but not the card details of other users.
Coming back to the example of medical equipment, the data stored in the software, mainly information of the patient might be accessed by unauthorized users which can be stolen. This unethical use of data can be prevented by using appropriate security testing services and safety measures.
How to Increase Safety and Security Testing Services
- The security of any software or system can be enhanced by adding authentication for the users, encrypting the data at the backend. The failures in the system must be reported immediately to check whether the security is being compromised or not. It must be tackled by the creator of software to improve the overall infrastructure of the program to enhance the safety of software.
- The visibility of the data to any third party must be limited to enhance the security testing services. This can be achieved by implying different types of user profiles for the database management. The end-user should have limited visibility to the data and can only edit their information. The authentic users (of the organisation) have access to amend databases.
- Safety and security testing services of the software system can be determined by analysing risk with the help of Hazard and Operability study (HAZOP), Event Tree Analysis (ETA), Fault Tree Analysis (FTA), Failure Mode Effect Analysis (FMEA), Failure Mode Effect and Criticality Analysis (FMECA,) and Threat modelling. The method of threat modelling is used to detect a breach of security while others are used to ensure the safety of software.
- Another interesting way to check the safety parameters is self-testing and self-correction by computing checksums on parts of memory and comparing them with pre-decided results. The system can correct the faults itself; otherwise, it gets shut down. The checksums are useful in security issues also as they are designed to give alert messages when some unauthorised action is taken.
- Field tests should be performed to test the safety. The security testing services tested via the risk analysis of the software in different types of environment. For example, the white box testing where the team has access to the system; black box where there is no knowledge of the system to the team at all and the grey box where partial knowledge is available to the team.
- The safety of the system is taken care of during the development phase of the software with the help of a defensive programming approach where the software is improved by testing the range, input validation and using different technologies to implement the same software. This reduces the chance of working in an unsafe environment. The new version of the software is released, while ensuring regular security updates, keeping in mind the maintenance charges. An iterative approach helps to improve the security where each issue is handled separately.
Conclusion
The safety barriers protect the environment from any damage that may be caused by the system. The security techniques used for perimeter protection, like firewalls and intrusion detection systems, are there to protect the system from a malicious environment, and attacks from other systems.
Both aspects of security and safety take care of the abrupt behaviour of the system. The security, however, is not limited to this. The intentional or accidental harm to a system is also a concern of security.
