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Saturday, January 25, 2020

Risk Factors of Asthma

Risk Factors of Asthma Table of Contents (Jump to) Introduction: Thesis/ Hypothesis: Motivation: Background information Terminology Arguments Argument 1 Gender and age Allergy and asthma Genetic and asthma Argument 2 Smoking and asthma Overweight and asthma Argument 3 Poverty and asthma Air pollution and asthma Climate and asthma Conclusion Limitations Works Cited Appendix Introduction: Asthma has been one of the common disease of today, there is about one in 15 people has asthma in the world. Asthma is a chronic condition whose symptoms are attacks of wheezing, breathlessness, chest tightness, and coughing. There is no cure for asthma, but most people can control the condition and lead normal, active lives. This report we will be investigating the factors of asthma and also will be reaching variety of data and graphs. Thesis/ Hypothesis: The probability of developing asthma is influenced by uncontrollable factors such as age, sex or having other respiratory diseases; however, living habits of patients as well as the environment around them are also important factors that affect the severity or the chance of having asthma. Motivation: The main reasons why we choose asthma as our topic is because asthma has been a common disease in our life. There are millions of asthma sufferers around the world and some of them are around us. We believe by exploring the risk factors and the ways that can cause asthma like: age and sex, personal habit and environment, we can know more about the disease and how to prevent it. Background information What causes asthma? Asthma symptoms develop when the airways become inflamed as a result of exposure to specific environmental triggers, such as dust, smoke or even exercise. However, not all individuals exposed to the same triggers develop asthma symptoms. The main reason for this is that some individuals are genetically more like Asthma becomes more and more common disease in the world. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 1 in 13 people have asthma. Also, there are no ways to heal asthma but there are only some ways that can calm it down. Terminology Asthma: a disease of the airways or branches of the lung (bronchial tubes) that carry air in and out of the lungs. Asthma causes the airways to narrow, the lining of the airways to swell and the cells that line the airways to produce more mucus. These changes make breathing difficult and cause a feeling of not getting enough air into the lungs. Common symptoms include cough, shortness of breath, wheezing, chest tightness, and excess mucus production. Asthma rate/ asthma prevalence: the percentage or number of people that have asthma. Allergy: an exaggerated response to a substance or condition produced by the release of histamine or histamine-like substances by affected cells. Air pollution: The condition in which air is contaminated by foreign substances, or the substances themselves. BMI: BMI stands for body mass index; it is used to indicate a persons fatness. BMI is calculated using the persons height and weight. Chronic disease: a disease that can be controlled, but not cured. Arguments Argument #1: Age and sex (other allergies) Age, sex are uncontrollable factors that will have an effect a persons chance of suffering from asthma, while having other respiratory disease can even increase the patients chance of developing asthma. Asthma is a chronic disease that a large part of the population suffers from it. Like many other diseases, the chance of developing Asthma differs according to the age group the person belongs to. On the other hand, the risk of having asthma for male and female are also different. These are due to the conditions of each persons airway will change according to their age and sex. Moreover, because asthma develops from airway inflammation, any other disease that is related to the respiratory system will also greatly increase the risk of developing asthma. Argument #2: PERSONAL habits (smoking, obesity) Asthma can also be acquired non-genetically due to personal habits such as smoking or being overweight. Some of the asthma patients developed it from the blood relatives, but the chance of developing asthma and the severity of the disease can be controlled by a person. For instance, smoking can do damage to the entire respiratory system and greatly reduce lung function. It can narrow the airway which will increase the risk of asthma. Also good personal habit, such as and lifestyle can keep you body in good shape and keep the airway unobstructed therefore avoiding asthma. Argument #3: ENVIRONMENT Living in a poor environment that has poor air quality or constantly exposed to allergen and dusts can also cause Asthma and even make it deteriorates. Asthma is a long term disease of a persons airway and lungs; therefore, although the direct cause of asthma is still not completely clear, breathing in dust such as wood dust or chemicals for a long period of time will affect the health of your respiratory system and then increase the chance of asthma developing. Argument 1 Gender and age Asthma is a disease that affects people from all age groups. However the chance of having asthma differs depending on which age group one is in. Figure 1.1.1 Graph of asthma prevalence and average humidity From figure1.1.1 above we are able to see that asthma actually usually happens before 30 years old, which is mainly childhood and early adulthood. Adults in their middle age will be less vulnerable to asthma, then the percentage of asthma patient slightly increase as it reaches old age. Moreover based on the data from statistic Canada, there are more male asthma sufferers than female. The average difference between female and male are 2.16, which means male have 2.16% more chance of having asthma. It can be a huge difference while dealing with the population of the entire country. Figure 1.1.2 Figure 2 based on the data from CDC and it showed asthma prevalence of age group below 12 years old. In this graph we are able to see that although very little infant have asthma, 16 to 17% of the entire population around 5 to 24 years old suffers from asthma, that means there are 3 asthma patient in every 20 person. Similar with the data from statistic Canada, the graph showed that people in their early ages are more likely to be suffered from asthma. This might be due to the incomplete development of the lung and airway so the airway is more sensitive and vulnerable and easily infected so as during old age. Figure 1.1.3 Figure1.1.3 above displayed the asthma prevalence of male and female. Among male, the asthma rate is more than 5% higher than female. It might be due to males respiratory systems slower growth. While among female, the asthma rate is higher after puberty. This can be due to males airway become much stronger after puberty. To conclude, although uncontrollable, gender and age is a risk factor that we should know in order to prepare for and preventing asthma. Allergy and asthma Another uncontrollable risk factor of asthma would be allergies and other respiratory disease. Figure 1.2.1 Figure 1.2.1 above used data collected from Unionville High School. In the sample, there are 4 people who suffer from asthma among 31 people which is near 13%. It matches the data from statistic Canada. Among these 4 people one of them own pet and two of them both own pets and have other allergies. Over half of the asthma patients have other allergies and the majority of them own pet. It shows owning pet might be a risk factor of asthma and the reason behind it might be the fur that can cause inflammation in the airway. Moreover there is a relationship between asthma and other type of allergies Figure 1.2.2 The result from another research also supported this argument. Most people that suffer from other allergies or atopic disease are also asthma sufferers therefore people with allergies are more likely to suffer from asthma. Genetic and asthma A very common way of having asthma is inheriting the disease from the family. This might be due to the genes they inherited from their parents have similar characteristic therefore asthma can be inherited. Figure 1.3.1 Looking at Figure 1.3.1 based on a sample from Unionville High School, 3 asthma sufferers out of 4 have family members that suffer from asthma. It is clear that the amount of asthma sufferers with siblings or parents that also have asthma is much higher than ones without. We can conclude that having a family member with asthma can raise the chance of developing asthma. Argument 2 Other than those uncontrollable factors that are related to a persons age, sex and other disease, ones everyday habit and activities is can also affect the asthma rate. Two of these unhealthy habits that can increase ones chance of having asthma will be smoking, overeating or lack of exercising that can cause obesity. Smoking and asthma Asthma is a common respiratory disease in the world. There are few ways that will turn this disease bad, Smoking is one of the major bad habit that turn asthma bad. Smoking is the inhalation of the smoke of burning tobacco encased in cigarettes, pipes, and cigars. According to the CDC, a research demonstrated that there is a higher rate to have asthma if you smoke. There are about 17% people in the US that smoke but there are about 21% people who smoke with asthma. Figure 2.1.1 The graph above demonstrated the people in different province in the United States and is split by with asthma who smokes and without asthma who smoke. The result shows that there are more people that smoke with asthma than without asthma. Overweight and asthma Although Asthma is a respiratory disease, ones body mass index (BMI) is also a factor of developing asthma and even an asthma attack.ÂÂ   BMI is calculated using ones height and weight; when a persons body mass index (BMI) is between 18.5 and 25, he will be considered normal, however when the persons BMI is between 25 to 30 he will be considered overweight and obese if the BMI is over 30. Graph 2.2.1 below shows the percentage of normal weight, overweight and obese adults suffering from asthma. Figure 2.2.1 The graph shows the relationship between ones BMI and asthma. For both men and women, the chance of suffering from asthma for an obese person is significantly higher than a normal weighted person. For the obese group, the asthma prevalence is almost 50% higher than the normal weight group. We can easily see that being overweight can greatly influence the prevalence of asthma, overweight people are more likely to suffer from asthma compared with others. This is because the extra weight on an overweight person will increase the pressure on his chest therefore it will be harder for the person to breath. On the other hand, inflammation, which obesity usually comes with, also contributes to increasing the risks of developing asthma. Inflammation around the wall of the airway will make it swollen and decrease the width of the airway, allowing lesser air to pass, and cause multiple asthma symptoms such as wheezing, coughing, and breathing difficulties. From the data, we are able to conclude the theory is true and being obese will greatly increase ones chance of developing asthma. Figure 2.2.2 https://nccd.cdc.gov/NPAO_DTM/IndicatorSummary.aspx?category=28indicator=30 From graph 2.2.3, we are able to see that according to CDC, more than 10% of the Americas population is obese, that means they will all be having a much higher risk of having asthma than the rest and they should be more careful about while doing strenuous exercise. Argument 3 While ones persona condition and habit changes his chance of developing asthma, like many other disease, the environment around the person can also influence the incidence of the disease. This is due to the environment can affect ones health condition slowly therefore a good environment can decrease ones chance of suffering from diseases and vice versa. Poverty and asthma One of the factors that can affect ones living environment is ones income. Typically, family that have more money will be able to afford living in cleaner area, more comfortable space and overall, a better environment; while the families with less income will not. Dust, small particles, molds, insects and many more types of allergens in these environment can trigger asthma and exposed to them will absolutely be a factor that causes asthma. Figure 3.1.2 Graph asthma prevalence by income in 2014 https://www.cdc.gov/asthma/nhis/2014/table2-1.htm The graph above shows the percent of people suffering from asthma versus their poverty level in America. Federal poverty threshold in the graph is a measure of income for every person. The standard income for an American is calculated each year and it is shown in the table below. PERSONS IN FAMILY/HOUSEHOLD POVERTY GUIDELINE 1 $11,670 2 15,730 3 19,790 4 23,850 5 27,910 6 31,970 7 36,030 8 40,090 For families/households with more than 8 persons, add $4,060 for each additional person. From graph 1 it is clear that there is a trend that shows less people suffer from asthma as their income increase. For instance for people with income lower than the poverty guideline, the prevalence of asthma reached up to 10%. Moreover, the area one lives in also matters Figure 3.1.3 Graph of amount of asthma patient versus poverty rate in 2014 http://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/tables/time-series/historical-poverty-people/hstpov9.xls Figure 3.1.3 above showed the poverty rate and asthma rate of the four regions in the United States. It also indicated that as the poverty rate of a certain region or area gets higher, so does the asthma rate. In general, families living in poverty lives in less developed areas, which means that they might know less about how to deal with asthma and asthma prevention. These data prove the relationship between poverty and asthma; therefore family that have less income is likely to have a higher risk of having asthma. Air pollution and asthma As mentioned, asthma is a type of long term respiratory disease and it mainly affects the airway and trachea, which is a part of the respiratory system. It is used as a tube to transfer air in and out of the lung while breathing; so, during this process, the wall of the airway frequently makes contact with the air outside that contains many pollutants. Therefore unlike skin that covers the human body, the unprotected wall can get infected and be stimulated very easily. Then the inflamed airway will cause coughing, wheezing and even asthma. Therefore if the environment isnt clean and the air quality isnt good, the chance of developing asthma increases. Figure 3.2.1 Graph of emission of sulfur oxide and asthma rate from 2010 to 2014 Figure 3.2.2 Graph of emission of nitrogen oxide and asthma rate from 2010 to 2014 http://www.ec.gc.ca/indicateurs-indicators/default.asp?lang=enn=E79F4C12-1 The two graphs above show the relationship between the emissions of several types of air pollutants as percentage of 1990 level and the percentage of people with asthma in canada from 2010 to 2014. We are able to see that there is a trend, as the emission of the two air pollutants decreases the percentage of people with asthma also decrease. For example, sulfur dioxide, a form of sulfur oxide found in lower atmosphere, is a harmful toxic chemical. The r of the trend line is about 0.703, which means there is a strong relationship between the emission the chemical and prevalence of asthma. In fact according to CDC, exposure to this type of chemical will affect ones lung health. Asthma suffers is more sensitive to even low concentration of sulfur dioxide. On the other hand, there is also correlation between emission of nitrogen oxide and asthma prevalence. The r in graph 3.2.2 is 0.9 therefore it shows that the relationship with asthma prevalence is even stronger for nitrogen oxide. A r esearch done by WHO indicates that respiratory disease is more common in area with higher nitrogen oxide concentration. Therefore, inhaling either of these chemicals in the air can do damage on ones respiratory system can is one of the factors of asthma. Figure 3.2.3 http://www.ec.gc.ca/indicateurs-indicators/default.asp?lang=enn=E79F4C12-1 Luckily, from the graph above, we can see that the emissions of these toxic chemicals are decreasing. Thus we can expect that as the average air quality get better in the future and the concentration of these chemicals decrease, the percentage of people with asthma should also slowly decrease. Climate and asthma Last but not least, the climate of each region also has an effect on the chance of developing asthma. In fact, one of the factors that can affect ones respiratory system would be humidity. Humidity is the amount of water in the air and higher humidity would mean there are more water around the atmosphere. When the humidity gets higher, it will be more difficult to breath in this kind of atmosphere, but if the atmosphere is too dry, the airway will be inflamed due to lack of water and will also be a factored that triggers asthma. Figure 3.3.1 Graph of asthma prevalence and average humidity https://www.cdc.gov/asthma/most_recent_data_states.htm https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/US/humidity-by-state-in-summer.php From this graph, we are able to see a U shaped trend. Most states in the United States have similar average humidity and asthma rate. However as the average humidity increase, more people suffer from asthma; as the average humidity decrease lower than 40% the amount of asthma patient increases again. As a matter of fact, the world health organization claimed that 50% humidity will be best to reduce the chance of developing asthma or asthma attack. State such as New Jersey and Maryland, are located at the east coast, had higher average humidity, being around 70% has more asthma patient; while states near the west coast has a lower average humidity around 60% and has less people has asthma there. On the other hand, the states in the middle region have a low average humidity near 30% to 40%; as expected the amount of asthma patients goes up. Therefore the theory a stated above is proven to be true, humidity can affect ones chance of developing asthma or an asthma attack. Conclusion Limitations Bias There is sampling bias in the result of our survey; this is because we take our sample from Unionville High School. The population in the school is mainly Asian therefore although we narrowed our report to only about North America; it cant represent the situation in North America precisely.ÂÂ   Moreover, we used snowball sampling while sending out the survey, the amount of Asians and non-Asians in the result will be more unbalanced. Not enough information When we are doing our research we found out that there are not many raw data that we can use, many of them are directly made into graphs or figures without posting the raw data and some of the data isnt able to be found on the internet. Moreover there are countries that do not make their data public. Therefore we decided to narrow our range down to only North America. And we found out that Statistic Canada and CDC have a lot of open source that we can work with Works Cited https://aspe.hhs.gov/2014-poverty-guidelines#tresholds https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2015/12/24/asthma_widea7d6c21be70cdf982718f2e7bcb6f1f5d5b3cfdc.jpg?s=1400 Appendix Table 1 Asthma, by age group and sex (Percent) 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 percent Total, 12 years and over 8.5 8.6 8.1 7.9 8.1 Males 7.1 7.4 6.8 6.9 7 Females 9.8 9.8 9.4 8.9 9.2 12 to 19 years 11.1 11.8 10.2 10.9 9 Males 11.4 11.1 10.6 11.1 8.3 Females 10.8 12.5 9.8 10.7 9.6 20 to 34 years 9.5 9.1 9.7 8 9.3 Males 8.5 7.9 8.7 7.4 8.2 Females 10.5 10.4 10.7 8.6 10.5 35 to 44 years 7.7 8 6.8 8 7.2 Males 6.3 7.2 5.7 7.3 5.5 Females 9.1 8.7 8 8.7 8.9 45 to 64 years 7.9 8.1 7.1 7.1 7.5 Males 5.5 6.6 4.7 5.6 6.4 Females 10.4 9.6 9.4 8.6 8.6 65 years and over 7 7.3 7.7 7.5 8 Males 6.2 5.6 6.4 5.8 7.1 Females 7.6 8.7 8.8 9 8.7 http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/health49b-eng.htm Table 2 https://www.dovepress.com/cr_data/article_fulltext/s91000/91654/img/COPD-91654-T01.png Table 3 https://www.cdc.gov/asthma/nhis/2014/table2-1.htm Table 4 https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db239_table.pdf#1 Table 5 2014: Percent of adults aged 18 years and older who are overweight Location Value 95% CI Sample Size National 35.2 (34.9-35.5) 425,875 https://nccd.cdc.gov/NPAO_DTM/IndicatorSummary.aspx?category=28indicator=30 Table 6 Ratio of Family Income to Poverty Threshold All Ages Total Children Adults 18+ 0-0.99 15.8 15.6 15.9 1.00-2.49 12.9 13.2 12.9 2.50-4.49 12.4 12.8 12.3 4.50 and above 11.8 12.3 11.7 https://www.cdc.gov/asthma/nhis/2014/table2-1.htm Region: All ages Total Children Age Adults Age 18+ Northeast 7,060

Friday, January 17, 2020

Public Key Cryptography

Abstract- Public-key cryptography is a key technology for e-commerce, intranets, extranets and other web-enabled applications. However, to garner the benefits of public-key cryptography, a supporting infrastructure is needed. The Microsoft ® Windows ® 2000 operating system includes a native public-key infrastructure (PKI) that is designed from the ground up to take full advantage of the Windows 2000 security architecture.This paper describes the fundamentals of public-key security systems, including what benefits they offer and what components are required to implement them. It also describes how the Windows 2000 PKI components deliver the needed services while providing interoperability, security, flexibility, and ease of use. I. Overview Public-key cryptography offers significant security benefits when it's properly implemented. Like other enabling technologies, public-key cryptography requires an infrastructure to deliver its benefits.However, the public-key infrastructure, or PKI, isn't a physical object or software process; instead, it's a set of useful services provided by a collection of interconnected components These components work together to provide public-key-based security services to applications and users. This white paper has two goals: to explain public-key technology and its uses, and to describe the features and benefits provided by the native PKI in the Microsoft ® Windows ® 2000 operating system.Understanding both of these topics will help you to decide where you can use PKI technology to improve your business processes and increase your ability to securely handle transactions with others. In this paper, you'll learn what a public key infrastructure is, what desirable benefits it can offer your operations, and how the Windows 2000 PKI delivers interoperability, security, flexibility, and ease of use. II. History During the early history of cryptography, two parties would agree upon a key using a secure, but non-cryptographic, metho d; for example, a face-to-face meeting or an exchange via a trusted courier.This key, which both parties kept absolutely secret, could then be used to exchange encrypted messages. A number of significant practical difficulties arise in this approach to distributing keys. Public-key cryptography addresses these drawbacks so that users can communicate securely over a public channel without having to agree upon a shared key beforehand. In 1874, a book by William Stanley Jevons[1] described the relationship of one-way functions to cryptography and went on to discuss specifically the factorization problem used to create the trapdoor function in theRSA system.Since the 1970s, a large number and variety of encryption, digital signature, key agreement, and other techniques have been developed in the field of public-key cryptography. The ElGamal cryptosystem (invented by Taher ElGamal) relies on the (similar, and related) difficulty of the discrete logarithm problem, as does the closely rela ted DSA developed at the US National Security Agency (NSA) and published by NIST as a proposed standard. The introduction of elliptic curve cryptography by Neal Koblitz and Victor Miller independently and simultaneously in the mid-1980s has yielded new public-key algorithms based on the discrete logarithm problem.Although mathematically more complex, elliptic curves provide smaller key sizes and faster operations for equivalent estimated security. III. What is public key cryptography? When most people hear the words encrypt or cryptography, they immediately think of secret-key cryptography, wherein two parties share a single secret key that's used both to encrypt and decrypt data. Loss or compromise of the secret key makes the data it encrypts vulnerable. By contrast, public-key systems use two keys: a public key, designed to be shared, and a private key, which must be closely held.These keys are complementary: if you encrypt something with the public key, it can only be decrypted w ith the corresponding private key, and vice versa. Public-key systems depend on the mathematical relationship between the public and private keys. It's not feasible to derive one from the other. There are two fundamental operations associated with public key cryptography: encryption and signing. The goal of encryption is to obscure data in such a way that it can only be read by the intended party. In public-key cryptography, if Bob wants to send Alice some private data, he uses her public key to encrypt it, then sends it to her.Upon receiving the encrypted data, Alice uses her private key to decrypt it. The important concept here is that Alice can freely distribute her public key in order to allow anyone in the world to encrypt data that only she can decrypt. If Bob and Chuck both have copies of her public key, and Chuck intercepts an encrypted message from Bob to Alice, he will not be able to decrypt it; only Alice's private key can do that, and she is the only person who holds it. These two operations can be used to provide three capabilities A PrivacyPrivacy is a necessity for businesses of all kinds, but it's of vital importance for ones that use the Internet. The Internet allows anyone in the world to communicate with anyone else, but it doesn't provide security. Even within your company's internal network, if someone can gain physical access to your network media, they can eavesdrop on any data that traverses it. Public-key cryptography provides privacy via data encryption, whether the data is in the form of e-mail messages, credit card numbers sent over the Internet, or network traffic.Because public keys can be posted freely, complete strangers can establish private communications simply by retrieving each other's public keys and encrypting the data. B. Authentication Any transaction involves two parties, whether they're a client and a server or a customer and a vendor. For many transactions, it's desirable for one or both sides to be able to authentic ate, or verify the identity of, the other. For instance, before a customer provides their credit card number to an e-commerce web site, they will want to know that they are not talking to an imposter.One way that a customer can do this is by making the web site prove that it holds the right private key. For example, a web browser might encrypt a piece of information using the site's public key and ask the web server to decrypt it, thereby demonstrating that the server has the right private key, and proving its identity. Authentication can also take the form of assuring your customers that you produced a particular piece of data and that it has not been tampered with. Public-key cryptography enables you to do this by means of a digital signature, a concept which is an extension of the public-key signing operation discussed above.If Bob wants to digitally sign his company's annual report, he first generates a unique fingerprint of the report using an algorithm called a hash algorithm. Hash algorithms are specially designed to guarantee that even a single changed byte in the document will generate a completely different hash. Next, he encrypts the report and the hash using his private key. Alice (or anyone else) can verify the origin and authenticity of the signed report by first decrypting it using Bob's public key, then calculating her own version of the fingerprint and comparing it to the fingerprint she received.If the two match, it proves two things: that the report has not been tampered with, and it came from Bob. C. Non-repudiation Businesses require the ability to enter into binding agreements, whether in the physical world or on the Internet. Suppliers and buyers need the assurance that if they enter into an agreement, the other party will not be able to repudiate the agreement at some later point. Digital signatures on electronic purchase orders, contracts, and other agreements are legally binding in several countries and in many U.S. states, and legal acceptance is rapidly growing. D. infrastructure Manage keys: a PKI makes it easy to issue new keys, review or revoke existing keys, and manage the trust level attached to keys from different issuers. Publish keys: a PKI offers a well-defined way for clients to locate and retrieve public keys and information about whether a specific key is valid or not. Without the ability to retrieve keys and know that they are valid, your users can't make use of public key services.Use keys: a PKI provides an easy-to-use way for users to use keys—not just by moving keys around where they're needed, but also by providing easy-to-use applications that perform public-key cryptographic operations, making it possible to provide security for e-mail, e-commerce, and networks. E. A capability,not a thing A common misperception is that a PKI is a thing. In fact, it's a capability—the capability to easily publish, manage, and use public keys. Think of a PKI like a municipal water system. A wat er system is made up of purification plants, storage towers, pumps, water mains, and so on, as well as the pipes and faucets in your house.All of the disparate service-providing objects work together to provide a capability for users to obtain water on demand. In a similar way, a PKI consists of a group of discrete components that work together to allow you to use public keys, and public-key cryptography, seamlessly and transparently. The best place to implement a PKI is in the operating system. Operating systems already provide a number of other infrastructures, like the printing infrastructure that moves documents to printers and the file service infrastructure that retrieves files from shared storage.In both cases, the operating system provides a capability to transparently and easily use a network service, just as a PKI does. F. Digital certificates:packaging for public key So far, this paper has mentioned public keys when talking about the objects that a PKI uses. While public keys are required for PKI-based security, they're usually packaged as digital certificates. (It's important to stress that only public keys are packaged into certificates. The private key is never shared, so it doesn't require packaging—it's simply stored securely). The certificate contains the public key and a set of attributes, like the key holder's name.These attributes may be related to the holder's identity, what they're allowed to do, or under what conditions the certificate is valid. The binding between attributes and the public key is present because the certificate is digitally signed by the entity that issued it; the issuer's signature on the certificate vouches for its authenticity and correctness. For a real-world analogy, look in your wallet. If you have a drivers' license, you have the equivalent of a digital certificate. Your license contains a unique key (your license number) and some attributes (an expiration date, your name, address, hair color, and so on).I t's issued by a trusted agency and laminated to prevent it from being tampered with. Anyone who trusts the agency that issued your license and verifies that the lamination is intact can rely on its authenticity. At that point, though, the analogy breaks down—in the real world, only the government can issue a driver's license, so everyone knows that a license issued by Joe's Really Good DMV isn't valid. How do you make the same determination with a digital certificate? The answer lies in the concept of a certificate hierarchy.In a hierarchy, as shown in Figure 1, each issuer, or certificate authority, signs (using its own private key) the certificates it issues. The public half of the CA's keypair is itself packaged in a certificate—one that was issued by a higher-level CA. This pattern can continue through as many levels as desired, with each CA certifying the authenticity of the certificates it has issued. Eventually, though, there must be a top-level CA, called a roo t certificate authority. Since there's nobody above the root CA in the hierarchy, there's nobody to vouch for the authenticity and origin of its certificate.Instead, the root CA signs its own certificate—it simply asserts that it is the root. Figure 1: What a certificate hierarchy looks like Clearly, it's not secure to accept a root CA's assertion of its own identity. To verify a root CA's certificate, a trusted copy of its public key is obtained via an out-of-band method-—that is, it's delivered by a third party instead of over the network—and the key is used to verify that the root certificate is bona fide. Microsoft provides the public keys for many popular root CAs in PK-enabled products like Internet Explorer, allowing users to verify those roots transparently.Root CAs can also provide copies of their public keys for downloading from public web sites. Once the root key has been delivered via an out-of-band means, the user can verify the root certificate, an d hence the entire certificate chain. Even better, because each certificate's digital signature protects it from tampering, certificate chains can be freely passed over insecure media like the Internet. G. Public key enabled application Once your PKI can issue, publish, and control certificates, the next step is to deploy applications that can use them.A well-written application that is tightly integrated with the rest of the PKI can make the use of public-key cryptography all but transparent to the user. The user should not need to know how cryptography works, where certificates are stored, or any of the other details—they should simply indicate what they want done, and leave it to the applications and the PKI to make it happen. Applications can use digital certificates to deliver the benefits of public-key cryptography, and they can combine cryptographic functions like signing and encryption to make possible e-commerce, secure network access, or other desirable services.All Microsoft applications that use public-key cryptography are natively public-key enabled. For example, the Microsoft Outlook ® messaging and collaboration client offers built-in signing and encryption support, combined with the ability to use certificate publishers and root certificates from a number of sources. Internet Explorer, Microsoft Money, and Internet Information Server provide the ability to set up encrypted web sessions. PKI-enabled applications can build on industry-standard protocols to speed development and allow easy interoperability with other organizations, too.H. Hardware support The increasing market demand for PKI implementations has spurred hardware vendors to develop cryptographic hardware, including smart cards, PC cards, and PCI cards that offer onboard cryptographic processing. These hardware devices offer a wide range of capabilities. On the low end, smartcards offer limited cryptographic processing combined with secure key storage; on the high end, multi processor crypto-accelerators allow high-volume web services to secure data without suffering from bottlenecks caused by software cryptographic modules.The best thing about PKI hardware devices is that they're optional—if your application requires additional performance or security, you can add hardware to provide it as necessary, but you can still build a completely functional PKI in software. I. Models The standalone CA model The standalone CA model (see Figure 2) is probably familiar to you if you've used SSL-protected web sites. In the standalone model, some third-party entity holds the root key and certificate for your organization, and it issues and revokes all certificates for your users.This third party might be a commercial CA like VeriSign, Thawte, Belsign, or GTE Cybertrust; it could also be a bank, a law firm, a trade association, or any other organization that you trust to issue certificates on your behalf. Figure 2: The standalone CA model This model allows trus t both within and outside your organization, so you can exchange secure e-mail and e-commerce transactions with outsiders. Standalone CAs also free you from the complexities of issuing, revoking, and tracking certificates.However, it requires you to trust some outside entity with your certificate management, and many third-party CAs levy an individual charge for each issued certificate. The enterprise CA model In this model (see Figure 3), your enterprise acts as its own CA, issuing and revoking certificates subject to your business requirements. Because no outsourcing provider is involved, your organization maintains complete control over its PKI. In addition to that control, though, you can guarantee that no one outside the enterprise can obtain a certificate unless you issue it to them.This model works well for controlling access to internal resources, or for generating certificates whose attributes would be meaningless to an outside entity. For example, you could issue certifica tes to managers that would allow them to make electronic travel reservations through the company travel office. Figure 3: The enterprise CA model Enterprise CAs with subordinates You can expand the flexibility of the enterprise CA model by adding subordinate CAs for individual departments, business units, or subdivisions of the organization. Most organizations already delegate some amount of administrative control to their subunits.For example, individual managers at most companies have some level of purchasing authority; higher-ranking managers can write bigger checks. Even though there's a centralized purchasing department that does much of the enterprise-wide buying, individual units still have the ability to perform day-to-day purchasing tasks. Choose your trust model If the choice of a CA model is the most important one you face when implementing a PKI, choosing a trust model comes in a very close second. When you trust a root, you're making an implicit statement that you trust them to be careful about who they issue certificates to.In this case, careful isn't quite the right word; what you're really saying is that you trust them to follow their prescribed policies and procedures to verify the identity of a certificate holder when they issue the certificate. When you choose to trust a root certificate, you're also choosing to trust certificates signed by that root. Depending on the CA model you use, the practical impact of this choice could be large (as when you choose to trust a large, widely used commercial root CA) or small (like deciding to trust your own accounting department).Normally these decisions are made for the enterprise as a whole; however, the Windows 2000 PKI allows individual users (or their administrators) to make their own trust decisions. In addition, administrators may override or augment user trust decisions with group policies. You also have to choose what you trust certificates to be used for. The X. 509 v3 certificate standard all ows you to specify whether certificates can be used for signing, encryption, or both. For example, you might want to give everyone signature certificates but restrict the use of encryption-capable certificates to certain departments or individuals.Microsoft has extended this feature to allow you to specify additional uses, including signing software components, logging on using a smart card, or recovering an encrypted file. When using the Windows 2000 PKI, the issuer has total control over what the certificate can be used for. IV Conclusion Public key cryptography offers critical business advantages, including the ability to conduct e-commerce and normal business operations with increased privacy, security, and assurance. To deliver these benefits, a public-key infrastructure is necessary that makes it easy to manage, publish and use public keys.Windows 2000 offers a PKI that is completely integrated with the operating system and provides flexible, secure, interoperable services tha t are easy to use, easy to deploy, and easy to manage. References N. Ferguson; B. Schneier (2003). Practical Cryptography. Wiley. ISBN 0-471-22357-3. J. Katz; Y. Lindell (2007). Introduction to Modern Cryptography. CRC Press. ISBN 1-58488-551-3. J. Menezes; P. C. van Oorschot; S. A. Vanstone (1997). Handbook of Applied Cryptography. ISBN 0-8493-8523-7. IEEE 1363: Standard Specifications for Public-Key Cryptography Single Sign-On Technology for SAP Enterprises: What does SAP have to say? [1] ^ Ed Gerck, Overview of Certification Systems: x. 509, CA, PGP and SKIP, in The Black Hat Briefings '99, http://www. securitytechnet. com/resource/rsc-center/presentation/black/vegas99/certover. pdf andhttp://mcwg. org/mcg-mirror/cert. htm ^ Stephen Wilson, Dec 2005, â€Å"The importance of PKI today†, China Communications, Retrieved on 2010-12-13 ^ Mark Gasson, Martin Meints, Kevin Warwick (2005), D3. 2: A study on PKI and biometrics, FIDIS deliverable (3)2, July 2005

Thursday, January 9, 2020

The Impact Of Latin American Culture On Latin America

Imagine being in an active war zone, living in Latin America would be much like that. The war being fought here is very different, instead of fighting another country, they are fighting drugs. Although war is generally a negative thing, this one is not. In this war there are negatives, but the positives far outweigh them. Latin American countries have witnessed the very noticeable benefits of the drug trade in many aspects of everyday life. The use and production of drugs is important to Latin American culture, brings communities together, and creates large amounts of revenue for the economy. Latin American countries have been using drugs for religious and cultural activities, and for hunger and discomfort relief dating back to 3000 BCE. The coca shrub first originated from the Andes and spread around 500 BCE to Panama. The leaves were collected and dried once the medical properties of them were discovered. During the Tiwanaku Empire, coca was used for religious and cultural activiti es. The widespread of coca chewing began during the Inca Empire where all social classes were using it. In pre-Colombian Mexico, hallucinogenic mushrooms were used greatly by the Aztecs, using them for human sacrifice ceremonies, entertainment, medicine, and even to give warriors courage to fight. â€Å"The amount of power that the Mexican drug cartels were achieving was enormous as the market for drugs was just in the border of their own country. The easily corrupted officials allowed the drugShow MoreRelatedLatin American Culture Essay examples1050 Words   |  5 PagesLatin American Culture Latin America represents 1/10 of the worlds population, and geographically can be located from the land extensions of Mexico, until the Patagonia at Argentina. 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Wednesday, January 1, 2020

Blooms Taxonomy Analysis Category

In Bloom’s Taxonomy, the analysis level is where students use their own judgment to begin analyzing the knowledge they have learned. At this point, they begin understanding the underlying structure to knowledge and also are able to distinguish between fact and opinion. Analysis is the fourth level of the Bloom’s taxonomy pyramid. Key Words for the Analysis Category analyze, compare, contrast, differentiate, distinguish, illustrate, infer, relate, diagram, troubleshoot Examples of Questions for the Analysis Category Analyze each statement to decide whether it is fact or opinion.Compare and contrast the beliefs of W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington.Apply the rule of 70 to determine how quickly your money will double at 6% interest.Illustrate the differences between the American alligator and the Nile crocodile.