Methods of access control

Physical access to a system is an important but often overlooked security issue; most other security protections can be bypassed if one has physical access to a system and its components.

• Administrative access can often be gained on the console
• One can boot another operating system and access system contents bypassing other security protections
• One can even resort to physical disassembly to extract disks or other components with desired information

If physical access is limited to a few authorized people, then other OS mechanisms can reliably protect system information. Typically these are mechanisms like file permissions or use of network filtering to grant access to only trusted hosts.

Next ->