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Operating Systems

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Discuss the relative advantages and disadvantages of at least three different measures used to protect operating systems. The ease of implementation and the associated security management issues should also be addressed.
- What are some measures used for operating systems security?
- What are the different operating systems, and can the security measures be used for each system?

Please also provide some references for this.

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Solution Summary

Operating system protection means the mechanism for controlling the access of programs, processes or users to the resources defined by the computer system. The protection measures or mechanisms ensure the enforcement of a certain policy. This policy is established in several ways; through- system design, system management and user defined. A computer system is a collection of processes and objects- each of which has a unique name and can be accessed through a well-defined set of operations [1] [2]. However, there are different measures which are taken to protect the operating system so that it can protect from malicious attacks and/or various unwanted situations related with user data safety and security [1]. We have discussed here some of the protection measures and their relative advantages and disadvantages.

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Operating system protection means the mechanism for controlling the access of programs, processes or users to the resources defined by the computer system. The protection measures or mechanisms ensure the enforcement of a certain policy. This policy is established in several ways; through- system design, system management and user defined. A computer system is a collection of processes and objects- each of which has a unique name and can be accessed through a well-defined set of operations [1] [2]. However, there are different measures which are taken to protect the operating system so that it can protect from malicious attacks and/or various unwanted situations related with user data safety and security [1]. We have discussed here some of the protection measures and their relative advantages and disadvantages.

Access Control Matrix: Access control matrix or access matrix is an abstract, formal security model of protection state in computer systems, which characterize the rights of each subject with respect to every object in the system. Theoretically, it is a table in which each row represents a subject, each column represents an object, and each entry is the set of access rights for that subject to that object. In general, the access control matrix is sparse: most subjects do not have access rights to most objects. Therefore, different representations have been proposed. With implementing the access matrix model within a system, the protection state of any system can be defined through the privileges possessed by specific object. Such security system provides a framework that defines the dynamics of the protection state of such system [3].

Access-control model provides specific constraints that can restrict users from what they can do within any system and also restrict the program execution on behalf of the system's users to access system resources within the limit defined by the Access-Control-Matrix model. The purpose of such model is to limit the actions or the operations that an authorized user can perform within the system. It defines the access rules of authenticated users where the assumption that is made by such model where authentication is verified successfully prior enforcing the access control rules [4].

Advantages and disadvantages:
Advantages:
*) Access-Matrix control model can be a base ground for any permissions access control system; that can be used to apply protection since the model is used as an abstract model of permissions [3].
*) Access-Matrix control model provide the flexibility required for users to specify how other users can access the system ...

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