In this, part one of a series of whitepapers on security, we will focus on "The Big Picture". Most security alerts, articles and warnings deal with a specific vulnerability or threat assessment. These are all important and deserve all the attention they can be afforded. It is, however, important not to become myopic in ones focus. Security must be viewed holistically; it is not enough to tighten up one area (or probably more realistically one part of one area) when attack vectors flourish in other parts of the enterprise.

This document is meant as a high level holistic overview of security by means of example. Later documents in the series will be more focused on specific threats and remedies.

We will use two stories - one of Bob and one of Alice. Bob and Alice will be a continuous feature in our series, paying homage to the body of work in cryptography and computer security in which they frequently appear. They will, however, play different roles in each document. The stories are written in a fictitious manner for simplicity, but they should not be confused with fantasy.  (more)