Authentication & Contingencies
Computer Science: Cambridge International GCSE, topic 2.1.13
Authentication and Contingencies
Two very important elements of defensive design are authentication and contingency planning.
Authentication
- Authentication is the process of checking that a person or system is authorised to use a system.
- The most common form of authentication is to require users to enter a username and password.
- Once a user has authenticated themselves, they should be able to see data relevant to themselves and no one else.
Contingency planning
- It is impossible to predict all possible cases of misuse, but there are ways to help reduce errors. For example:
- Providing helpful prompt messages.
- Providing error-recovery routes (e.g. an undo feature).
- Preventing access from certain parts of the system.
- Using exception handling.
Test yourself on Authentication & Contingencies
The most common form of authentication requires what data from the user?
Once a user is authenticated, what should they see?
Which of these is a common error-recovery route?