CS401 Operating Systems

Introduction

Security is an important issue for the computer and other similar system. The most significant thing in maintaining the security of the software depends on the security capability of the operating system used in the machine (Alves-Foss et al.,2014). The main objective of this paper is to evaluate different operating system on the basis of the security standards. The significant of discussion this topic is that recently most of the system are becoming the victim of cyber crime and data breaching. Operating system plays an important role in these cases. Selecting the right operating system will be beneficial for maintaining the security of the system.

It has been seen that the choosing the right operating system helps to mitigate the chances of external threats. This also helps to reduce the rate of cyber crime and data breaches. Different operating system software has different approaches towards maintaining the security of the system. Some of the operating system have inbuilt antivirus protection system. Some of the operating systems prevent the users from accessing malicious sites.

The improvement of the security of the operating system is done by adding additional features in the system (Ferdous & Shekhar, 2018).  Different operating system has different features for maintaining the security in the system. In most of the cases, it has been seen that the operating system with high user rate are affected by the virus, ransom ware and other kind of cyber security attacks. While choosing the secured operating system, the flexibility of the respective operating system is needed to be considered.

The mechanism and different characteristics of different operating systems will help to understand the security vulnerabilities those can happen in case of operating system in the computer. The identification of the vulnerability will help to mitigate the security threats.

Discussion

The discussion is regarding the security mechanisms of each operating system. This discussion will help to identify the best operating system with respect to security and flexibility. Some of the operating system in the discussion is well known operating system such as Windows, Linux and Mac OS.

The main advantage of Windows system is that it is the most stable operating system. However, there is lack of security in the system. Moreover, Windows is not providing security patches and upgrade for Windows XP. All these things are making this operating system prone to the cyber security attack. Linux operating system is good for the users with some programming knowledge (Chong, 2016). This can be an option for tailor made service through the operating system for the users. However, this operating system is open source so it is prone to the cyber attack. The Unix and Linux users were affected through the piece of code named Operation Windigo (Wessel et al.,2015).  Another flaw in this operating system is holiday hampering Grinch Bug that affects the root level control of the operating system. Mac OS is a good choice as it provides sustainable operating system. Mac operating system can be considered as one of the safest operating system available nowadays (McBride, Arief & Hernandez-Castro,2018). The control of the manufacturing company Apple over the operating system is good. Chrome operating system can be considered as the newest operating system in the industry. From the security point of view this operating system is safe. However, the operating system is not flexible as it does not allow third party software installation for the security purpose. However, the market share of Chrome OS is small. In case, if the security is the prime concern Wrap Up operating system can be an option. OS X operated by Wrap Up is a modern operating system.

Analysis of the operating systems available in the market it can be said that no operating system is free from the cyber attack. Some of the operating system have better security management mechanism (Brookes & Taylor, 2016). However, it can be said that enhancing the degree of the security is not only the concern thing regarding this matter. The required flexibility of the operating system is also needed. It can be said the operating system which is popular and used by most of the users are prone to the cyber threats. In that case, the security specifications are needed to be enhanced in this type of operating system.

Conclusion

It can be concluded from the above discussion that the no operating system can provide full protection against cyber security threats. However, there are some of the operating systems that provide good security protection. Some of the operating system has lack of user flexibility which is not desirable. It has been seen that Windows is the mostly used operating system and is mostly affected by the cyber attacks. The popularity of the operating system also makes that operating system prone to the cyber threats. It can be said that every operating system has flaws and advantages; however, the security of the operating system is also dependent on the users and the way of the using of operating system.

References

Alves-Foss, J., Song, J., Steiner, S., & Zakeri, S. (2014). A new operating system for security tagged architecture hardware in support of multiple independent levels of security (mils) compliant system. IDAHO UNIV MOSCOW CENTER FOR SECURE AND DEPENDABLE SYSTEMS.

Brookes, S., & Taylor, S. (2016, September). Rethinking operating system design: Asymmetric multiprocessing for security and performance. In Proceedings of the 2016 New Security Paradigms Workshop (pp. 68-79). ACM.

Chong, S. (2016). Integrating Programming Language and Operating System Information Security Mechanisms. Harvard University Cambridge United States.

Ferdous, M. D., & Shekhar, N. (2018). Comparison on Booting process & Operating systems Features.

McBride, J., Arief, B., & Hernandez-Castro, J. (2018, February). Security Analysis of Contiki IoT Operating System. In Proceedings of the 2018 International Conference on Embedded Wireless Systems and Networks (pp. 278-283). Junction Publishing.

Wessel, S., Huber, M., Stumpf, F., & Eckert, C. (2015). Improving mobile device security with operating system-level virtualization. Computers & Security, 52, 207-220.