Hardware based or assisted computer security offers an alternative to software-only computer security. Devices such as dongles may be considered more secure due to the physical access required in order to be compromised.
While many software based security solutions encrypt the data to prevent data from being stolen, a malicious program or a hacker may corrupt the data in order to make it unrecoverable or unusable. Similarly, encrypted operating systems can be corrupted by a malicious program or a hacker, making the system unusable. Hardware-based security solutions can prevent read and write access to data and hence offers very strong protection against tampering and anauthorized access.[citation needed]
Working of hardware based security: A hardware device allows a user to login, logout and to set different privilege levels by doing manual actions. The device uses biometric technology to prevent malicious users from logging in, logging out, and changing privilege levels. The current state of a user of the device is read both by a computer and controllers in peripheral devices such as hard disks.
Illegal access by a malicious user or a malicious program is interrupted based on the current state of a user by harddisk and DVD controllers making illegal access to data impossible. Hardware based access control is more secure than logging in and logging out using operating systems as operating systems are vulnerable to malicious attacks. Since software cannot manipulate the user privilege levels, it is impossible for a hacker or a malicious program to gain access to secure data protected by hardware or perform unauthorized privileged operations.
The hardware protects the operating system image and file system privileges from being tampered. Therefore, a completely secure system can be created using a combination of hardware based security and secure system administration policies.
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