SECURITY AWARENESS

DSA 102
LESSON 11
INTERNET AND E-MAIL USE
Prepared by:
Prof. Rey-an V. Baricanosa, MSIT
 Lesson Objectives

1. To determine the importance of Internet and e-mail

2. To be familiar on safe internet habits.

3. Understanding the advantages and disadvantages of using e-mail.

 Internet, a system architecture that has revolutionized
communications and methods of commerce by allowing various computer
networks around the world to interconnect. Sometimes referred to as a
“network of networks,” the Internet emerged in the United States in the
1970s but did not become visible to the general public until the early
1990s. By 2020, approximately 4.5 billion people, or more than half of the
world’s population, were estimated to have access to the Internet.

The Internet provides a capability so powerful and general that it

can be used for almost any purpose that depends on information, and it is
accessible by every individual who connects to one of its constituent
networks. It supports human communication via social media, electronic
mail (e-mail), “chat rooms,” newsgroups, and audio and video transmission
and allows people to work collaboratively at many different locations. It
supports access to digital information by many applications, including the
World Wide Web. The Internet has proved to be a spawning ground for a
large and growing number of “e-businesses” (including subsidiaries of
traditional “brick-and-mortar” companies) that carry out most of their
sales and services over the Internet.
Origin and Development

Early networks

The first computer networks were dedicated special-purpose systems

such as SABRE (an airline reservation system) and AUTODIN I (a defense
command-and-control system), both designed and implemented in the
late 1950s and early 1960s. By the early 1960s computer manufacturers
had begun to use semiconductor technology in commercial products, and
both conventional batch-processing and timesharing systems were in
place in many large, technologically advanced companies. Time-sharing
systems
allowed a computer’s resources to be shared in rapid succession with
multiple users, cycling through the queue of users so quickly that the
computer appeared dedicated to each user’s tasks despite the existence of
many others accessing the system “simultaneously.” This led to the notion
of sharing computer resources (called host computers or simply hosts)
over an entire network. Host-to-host interactions were envisioned, along
with access to specialized resources (such as supercomputers and mass
storage systems) and interactive access by remote users to the
computational powers of time-sharing systems located elsewhere. These
ideas were first realized in ARPANET, which established the first host-to-
host network connection on October 29, 1969. It was created by the
Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the U.S. Department of
Defense. ARPANET was one of the first general-purpose computer
networks. It connected time-sharing computers at government-supported
research sites, principally universities in the United States, and it soon
became a critical piece of infrastructure for the computer science research
community in the United States. Tools and applications— such as the
simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP, commonly referred to as e-mail), for
sending short messages, and the file transfer protocol (FTP), for longer
transmissions—quickly emerged. In order to achieve costeffective
interactive communications between computers, which typically
communicate in short bursts of data, ARPANET employed the new
technology of packet switching. Packet switching takes large messages (or
chunks of computer data) and breaks them into smaller, manageable
pieces (known as packets) that can travel independently over any
available circuit to the target destination, where the pieces are
reassembled. Thus, unlike traditional voice communications, packet
switching does not require a single dedicated circuit between each pair of
users.

Commercial packet networks were introduced in the 1970s, but

these were designed principally to provide efficient access to remote
computers by dedicated terminals. Briefly, they replaced longdistance
modem connections by less-expensive “virtual” circuits over packet
networks. In the United States, Telenet and Tymnet were two such packet
networks. Neither supported host-to-host communications; in the 1970s
this was still the province of the research networks, and it would remain
so for many years.

DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; formerly

ARPA) supported initiatives for ground-based and satellite-based packet
networks. The ground-based packet radio system provided mobile access
to computing resources, while the packet satellite network connected the
United States with several European countries and enabled connections
with widely dispersed and remote regions. With the introduction of
packet radio, connecting a mobile terminal to a computer network
became feasible. However, time-sharing systems were then still too large,
unwieldy, and costly to be mobile or even to exist outside a climate-
controlled computing environment. A strong motivation thus existed to
connect the packet radio network to ARPANET in order to allow mobile
users with simple terminals to access the time-sharing systems for which
they had authorization. Similarly, the packet satellite network was used by
DARPA to link the United States with satellite terminals serving the United
Kingdom, Norway, Germany, and Italy. These terminals, however, had to be
connected to other networks in European countries in order to reach the
end users. Thus arose the need to connect the packet satellite net, as well
as the packet radio net, with other networks.

Foundation of the Internet

The Internet resulted from the effort to connect various research

networks in the United States and Europe. First, DARPA established a
program to investigate the interconnection of “heterogeneous networks.”
This program, called Internetting, was based on the newly introduced
concept of open architecture networking, in which networks with defined
standard interfaces would be interconnected by “gateways.” A working
demonstration of the concept was planned. In order for the concept to
work, a new protocol had to be designed and developed; indeed, a system
architecture was also required.

In 1974 Vinton Cerf, then at Stanford University in California, and

this author, then at DARPA, collaborated on a paper that first described
such a protocol and system architecture—namely, the transmission
control protocol (TCP), which enabled different types of machines on
networks all over the world to route and assemble data packets. TCP,
which originally included the Internet protocol (IP), a global addressing
mechanism that allowed routers to get data packets to their ultimate
destination, formed the TCP/IP standard, which was adopted by the U.S.
Department of Defense in 1980. By the early 1980s the “open
architecture” of the TCP/IP approach was adopted and endorsed by many
other researchers and eventually by technologists and businessmen
around the world.

By the 1980s other U.S. governmental bodies were heavily

involved with networking, including the National Science Foundation
(NSF), the Department of Energy, and the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA). While DARPA had played a seminal role in
creating a small-scale version of the Internet among its researchers, NSF
worked with DARPA to expand access to the entire scientific and academic
community and to make TCP/IP the standard in all federally supported
research networks. In 1985–86 NSF funded the first five supercomputing
centres—at Princeton University, the University of Pittsburgh, the
University of California, San Diego, the University of Illinois, and Cornell
University. In the 1980s NSF also funded the development and operation
of the NSFNET, a national “backbone” network to connect these centres.
By the late 1980s the network was operating at millions of bits per
second. NSF also funded various nonprofit local and regional networks to
connect other users to the NSFNET. A few commercial networks also
began in the late 1980s; these were soon joined by others, and the
Commercial Internet Exchange (CIX) was formed to allow transit traffic
between commercial networks that otherwise would not have been
allowed on the NSFNET backbone. In 1995, after extensive review of the
situation, NSF decided that support of the NSFNET infrastructure was no
longer required, since many commercial providers were now willing and
able to meet the needs of the research community, and its support was
withdrawn. Meanwhile, NSF had fostered a competitive collection of
commercial Internet backbones connected to one another through so-
called network access points (NAPs).

From the Internet’s origin in the early 1970s, control of it

steadily
devolved from government stewardship to private-sector participation
and finally to private custody with government oversight and forbearance.
Today a loosely structured group of several thousand interested
individuals known as the Internet Engineering Task Force participates in a
grassroots development process for Internet standards. Internet
standards are maintained by the nonprofit Internet Society, an
international body with headquarters in Reston, Virginia. The Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), another
nonprofit, private organization, oversees various aspects of policy
regarding Internet domain names and numbers.
Commercial Expansion

The rise of commercial Internet services and applications helped to fuel a

rapid commercialization of the Internet. This phenomenon was the result
of several other factors as well. One important factor was the introduction
of the personal computer and the workstation in the early 1980s—a
development that in turn was fueled by unprecedented progress in
integrated circuit technology and an attendant rapid decline in computer
prices. Another factor, which took on increasing importance, was the
emergence of Ethernet and other “local area networks” to link personal
computers. But other forces were at work too. Following the restructuring
of AT&T in 1984, NSF took advantage of various new options for national-
level digital backbone services for the NSFNET. In 1988 the Corporation
for National Research Initiatives received approval to conduct an
experiment linking a commercial e-mail service (MCI Mail) to the Internet.
This application was the first Internet connection to a commercial
provider that was not also part of the research community. Approval
quickly followed to allow other e-mail providers access, and the Internet
began its first explosion in traffic.

In 1993 federal legislation allowed NSF to open the NSFNET

backbone to commercial users. Prior to that time, use of the backbone was
subject to an “acceptable use” policy, established and administered by
NSF, under which commercial use was limited to those applications that
served the research community. NSF recognized that commercially
supplied network services, now that they were available, would ultimately
be far less expensive than continued funding of special-purpose network
services.

Also in 1993 the University of Illinois made widely available

Mosaic, a new type of computer program, known as a browser, that ran on
most types of computers and, through its “point-and-click” interface,
simplified access, retrieval, and display of files through the Internet.
Mosaic incorporated a set of access protocols and display standards
originally developed at the European Organization for Nuclear Research
(CERN) by Tim Berners-Lee for a new Internet application called the
World Wide Web (WWW). In 1994 Netscape Communications
Corporation (originally called Mosaic Communications Corporation) was
formed to further develop the Mosaic browser and server software for
commercial use. Shortly thereafter, the software giant Microsoft
Corporation became interested in supporting Internet applications on
personal computers (PCs) and developed its Internet Explorer Web
browser (based initially on Mosaic) and other programs. These new
commercial capabilities accelerated the growth of the Internet, which as
early as 1988 had already
been growing at the rate of 100 percent per year.

By the late 1990s there were approximately 10,000 Internet

service providers (ISPs) around the world, more than half located in the
United States. However, most of these ISPs provided only local service and
relied on access to regional and national ISPs for wider connectivity.
Consolidation began at the end of the decade, with many small to
medium-size providers merging or being acquired by larger ISPs. Among
these larger providers were groups such as America Online, Inc. (AOL),
which started as a dial-up information service with no Internet
connectivity but made a transition in the late 1990s to become the leading
provider of
Internet services in the world—with more than 25 million subscribers by
2000 and with branches in Australia, Europe, South America, and Asia.
Widely used Internet “portals” such as AOL, Yahoo!, Excite, and others
were able to command advertising fees owing to the number of “eyeballs”
that visited their sites. Indeed, during the late 1990s advertising revenue
became the main quest of many Internet sites, some of which began to
speculate by offering free or low-cost services of various kinds that were
visually augmented with advertisements. By 2001 this speculative bubble
had burst.
The 21st century and future directions

After the collapse of the Internet bubble came the emergence of

what was called “Web 2.0,” an Internet with emphasis on social
networking and content generated by users, and cloud computing. Social
media services such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram became some of
the most popular Internet sites through allowing users to share their own
content with their friends and the wider world. Mobile phones became
able to access the Web, and, with the introduction of smartphones like
Apple’s iPhone (introduced in 2007), the number of Internet users
worldwide exploded from about one sixth of the world population in 2005
to more than half in 2020.

The increased availability of wireless access enabled applications

that were previously uneconomical. For example, global positioning
systems (GPS) combined with wireless Internet access help mobile users
to locate alternate routes, generate precise accident reports and initiate
recovery services, and improve traffic management and congestion
control. In addition to smartphones, wireless laptop computers, and
personal digital assistants (PDAs), wearable devices with voice input and
special display glasses were developed.
 While the precise structure of the future Internet is not yet clear,
many directions of growth seem apparent. One is toward higher backbone
and network access speeds. Backbone data rates of 100 billion bits (100
gigabits) per second are readily available today, but data rates of 1 trillion
bits (1 terabit) per second or higher will eventually become commercially
feasible. If the development of computer hardware, software, applications,
and local access keeps pace, it may be possible for users to access
networks at speeds of 100 gigabits per second. At such data rates, high-
resolution video—indeed, multiple video streams—would occupy only a
small fraction of available bandwidth. Remaining bandwidth could be
used to transmit auxiliary information about the data being sent, which in
turn
would enable rapid customization of displays and prompt resolution of
certain local queries. Much research, both public and private, has gone
into integrated broadband systems that can simultaneously carry multiple
signals—data, voice, and video. In particular, the U.S. government has
funded research to create new high-speed network capabilities dedicated
to the scientific-research community.

It is clear that communications connectivity will be an important

function of a future Internet as more machines and devices are
interconnected. In 1998, after four years of study, the Internet Engineering
Task Force published a new 128-bit IP address standard intended to
replace the conventional 32-bit standard. By allowing a vast increase in
the number of available addresses (2128, as opposed to 232), this
standard makes it possible to assign unique addresses to almost every
electronic device imaginable. Thus, through the “Internet of things,” in
which all machines and devices could be connected to the Internet, the
expressions “wired” office, home, and car may all take on new meanings,
even if the access is really wireless.

The dissemination of digitized text, pictures, and audio and video

recordings over the Internet, primarily available today through the World
Wide Web, has resulted in an information explosion. Clearly, powerful
tools are needed to manage network-based information. Information
available on the Internet today may not be available tomorrow without
careful attention’s being paid to preservation and archiving techniques.
The key to making information persistently available is infrastructure and
the management of that infrastructure. Repositories of information,
stored as digital objects, will soon populate the Internet. At first these
repositories may be dominated by digital objects specifically created and
formatted for the World Wide Web, but in time they will contain objects of
all kinds in formats that will be dynamically resolvable by users’
computers in real time. Movement of digital objects from one repository
to another will still leave them available to users who are authorized to
access them, while replicated instances of objects in multiple repositories
will provide alternatives to users who are better able to interact with
certain parts of the Internet than with others. Information will have its
own identity and, indeed, become a “first-class citizen” on the Internet.

Based on a recent survey of Internet traffic, the 10 most popular uses of

the Internet in descending order of use are:

1. Electronic

Mail At least 85% of the inhabitants of cyberspace send and receive e-

mail. Some 20 million e-mail messages cross the Internet every week.
2. Research

3. Downloading files

4. Discussion groups.

These include public groups, such as those on Usenet, and the private
mailing lists that ListServ manages.

5. Interactive games

Who hasn’t tried to hunt down at least one game?

6. Education and self-improvement.

On-line courses and workshops have found yet another outlet.

7. Friendship and dating

You may be surprised at the number of electronic “personals” that you can
find on the World Wide Web.

8. Job-hunting

Classified ads are in abundance, but most are for technical positions.
9. Electronic newspapers and magazines

This category includes late-breaking news, weather, and sports. We’re

likely to see this category leap to the top five in the next several years.

10. Shopping

It’s difficult to believe that this category even ranks. It appears that
“cybermalls” are more for curious than serious shoppers.

The survey shows that individuals, corporations, business people, and

groups use Internet primarily as a communications vehicle as these users
reduce their use of fax machines, telephones, and the postal service. Email
should remain at the top of the list. The Internet has continued and will
continue to change how we view the world.

Electronic mail (email or e-mail)

It is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people

using electronic devices. Despite all the methods of communication email
is still popular and has become as necessary as a phone number or mailing
address. Similar to calling somebody, email has become a standard mode
of communication with the expectation being that everybody should have
an email address. Email started out as a simple communication tool but is
now used for much more than that.

In many ways, email has made our life easier. It allows us to:

• Contact people all over the world for free (or inexpensively)

• Communicate with more than one person at a time

• Document interactions (e.g. the highly prized CYA paper-trail)

• Leave messages any time of day without bothering people

It was only when people started using it in alternative ways that things
started to get messy, really messy. Instead of looking for a different model
email kept evolving to meet new demands and expectations such as:

• Working collaboratively
• Sending attachments
• Keeping a conversation together for multiple people (e.g. thread)
• Searching capabilities
• Automating actions with rules
• Integrating calendars and appointments, etc.
It was almost possible to live in your email. Some of these new demands
were a natural fit for this mode of communication, while others stretched
the limitations and made it seem really clunky. For example, sharing digital
photos through email was never a good solution. The attachments are
large to send and can quickly clog up an inbox making it problematic for
both the sender and the recipient(s).

The Challenging “Problem Child”

Email has now become a “problem child” for information management

professionals. But in a lot of ways, email gets a bad rap. Email is not
necessarily the problem. It’s the way we use it and think about it that is the
real issue. Since email is a way to replace verbal communication, in some
ways we want it to emulate qualities associated with having a conversation
such as being able to seamlessly transition between topics, mixing
personal and professional, and responding in the moment. Although email
is capable of doing these same things, it doesn’t do it as well and the end
result is a large volume of poorly created emails, which makes the
information management aspect challenging.

So what’s so different about email? Why is it so challenging for us to

manage?
1. Email is used for more than just correspondence.

2. People have grown to rely on email for any number of uses

Email is an important method of business communication that is fast,

cheap, accessible and easily replicated. Using email can greatly benefit
businesses as it provides efficient and effective ways to transmit all kinds
of electronic data.

Advantages of using email

Email can increase efficiency, productivity and your business readiness.
Using email in business is:

• cheap - sending an email costs the same regardless of distance and the
number of people you send it to
• fast - an email should reach its recipient in minutes, or at the most
within a few hours
• convenient - your message will be stored until the recipient is ready to
read it, and you can easily send the same message to a large number of
people
• permanent - you can keep a record of messages and replies, including
details of when a message was received
One of the main advantages of email is that you can quickly and easily send
electronic files such as text documents, photos and data sheets to several
contacts simultaneously by attaching the file to an email. Check with your
internet service provider if there is a limit to the size of email attachment
you can send. Some businesses may also limit the type and size of
attachments that they are willing to receive.

You can gain further advantages and increase your efficiency by setting up
your email software to:
• automatically create entries in your address book for every message
you send or receive
• respond to incoming emails automatically, eg to confirm receipt of an
order, or to let people know that you are on leave or out of the office

Disadvantages of using email

Despite the host of benefits, there are certain weaknesses of email that you
should be aware of, such as:

• Spam - unsolicited email can overwhelm your email system unless you
install a firewall and anti-spam software. Other internet and email security
issues may arise, especially if you're using the cloud or remote access.
• respond to incoming emails automatically, eg to confirm receipt of an
order, or to let people know that you are on leave or out of the office

Disadvantages of using email

Despite the host of benefits, there are certain weaknesses of email that you
should be aware of, such as:

• Spam - unsolicited email can overwhelm your email system unless you
install a firewall and anti-spam software. Other internet and email
security issues may arise, especially if you're using the cloud or remote
access.
• Viruses - easily spread through email attachments. See how to detect
spam, malware and viruses.

• Sending emails by mistake - at a click of a button, an email can go to

the wrong person accidentally, potentially leaking confidential data and
sensitive business information. You should take care to minimize the
likelihood of business data breach and theft.

• Data storage - electronic storing space can become a problem,

particularly where emails with large attachments are widely
distributed.
Less formal nature of email can lead to careless or even libelous remarks
being made which can damage your business. To minimize these risks, you
should create and implement an email and internet acceptable use policy
for your business.