Just a piece of review, multiprogramming is the allocation of a computer system and its resources to more than one concurrent application, job, or user which is being used in a time-sharing environment where two or more computers can share computer resources to one another.
Having this type of environment is reasonably normal nowadays due to its benefits which are (1) Resource Sharing Capability, (2) More efficient file sharing, (3) Standard PC hardware can be used by any workstation in the environment gives flexibility, easy maintenance, and cost efficiency, and a lot more. But like any other computer technology, it has various problems especially on security.
Security of files is one of the main problems in a time-sharing environment. Due to more efficient file sharing capability of the said environment other users can also view, edit, or even erase a file that you saved in folder that is shared in the environment. Yes, you can say that it is a bit clumsy in part of the maker of the file to save it in a shared folder but let us think of it as the person is still a beginner with zero knowledge about the environment. It will be just tolerable if the file does not have much importance like an old assignment or pictures that already were uploaded to different social networking sites because you can easily retrieve those. But what if the files that were accessed are private pictures(no pun intended) or assignments or projects that is to be passed. It would be a big disaster.
Another security problem that might be encountered in the said environment is the increase of sophisticated hacker attacks. Hackers nowadays shifted from crashing system for fun to professional criminals taking over systems for profit which means additional motivation for them to do this dirty job. Installing security features are not enough. The user himself must be responsible on handling the workstation he is assigned on. But we all know that a trait like that is something that everybody doesn’t have. For example, in a company, where the computers will be most likely in a time-sharing environment and, possibly, are internet connected. One reckless employee curiously clicks a link without minding a possible hacker attack. The user is prompted if he would like to download “name-that-is-not-suspicious.exe”. The user clicks the “Yes” button downloading what he thought is only the “name-that-is-not-suspicious.exe” but, for the sake of this situation; he also downloaded a malware, software designed to secretly access a computer system without the owner's informed consent. The attack now leads to illegal accessing to the system of the company affecting all the workstations and server/s of the environment which then resulted to modification and loss of data. And finally the hacker smiles in contentment. Of course problems like this can be controlled by proper orientation of employees and better security features but curiosity and fast technological advancement are things that are hard to catch.
Obviously there is a great difference between the degrees of security in a time-sharing machine as we have in a dedicated machine. Time-sharing machines are more prone to unauthorized or illegal access by its co-machine in the environment or coming from outside of the environment like hackers this is due to it has a bigger parameter than a dedicated machine which makes it more hard to secure.
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