In this section I am going to be talking about networking in ICT. A computer that is not connected to any other computer or is not networked is said to be stand-alone. A network exists when two or more computers are connected together. A firewall is a hardware and or software gate between two networks or between a system and a network that filters the data transferred based on secuirty policies. Firewalls are used on computers that connect to the internet to prevent unauthorised access to the system or network the computer is part of. 

 

Encryption does not prevent the data being stolen. It aims to prevent anyone who has the data being able to understand it without the appropriate key. Encryption is the process of taking the plain text and applying an algorithm to it to turn it into encrypted text. Only someone with a key should be able to convert the encrypted text back into plain text.

 

A computer that is not connected to any other computer (is not networked), is said to be stand-alone. A network exists when two or more computers are connected together. The next table gives more of the advantages and disadvantges of networking. The advantages of stand-alone computers are the disadvantages of a network and vice versa.