Chapter 2.3 2.3 Security Human rights organizations often work in countries where there are people who might be interested in seizing the valuable information that the organization gathers. Thus an information management system can make the information more vulnerable to theft or destruction by concentrating the information on a hard disk.
Electronic information is more vulnerable than the corresponding paper for two reasons.
Electronic information is easier to copy, and thus removing unauthorized versions of the data is easier. In this section I will very briefly introduce a few ideas relevant to computer security. All of these ideas are covered in more detail in a subsequent volume in this series that treats data security and authentication issues. The most central security problem for a human rights organization is how to protect information on a computer's hard disk in such a way that the organization can access the information, but that unauthorized users cannot. The technical issues involved in building a security system of this kind are complicated, and no system is foolproof.