1970 to 1979: Computers and Software Begin Creating Wealth - The Technical and Social History of Software Engineering - page 155

Communications Software
Software and computers quickly moved into standard telecommunications and led
to the creation of digital switches and eventually to digital handsets and smart-
phones. Software also had a major impact on data communications and led to the
creation of email, instant messaging, and other forms of data transfer.
Specific kinds of communications software include network management,
central office switching systems, private branch exchange (PBX) switching sys-
tems, cell phone routing, and many others.
Cybercrime and Hacking Software
Computerized storage of valuable information such as bank accounts, social secur-
ity numbers, birth records, criminal records, medical records, and other vital data
has caused cybercrime to become an alarmingly large and profitable subindustry.
There are now many groups of organized hackers involved in stealing and selling
personal, business, and even government data.
Specific kinds of cybercrimes are too numerous to cite here and are discussed
in Chapter 12 . However, cybercrimes include botnets, viruses, worms, hacking,
identity theft, phishing, keystroke logging, and many others.
To counter cybercrime and hacking software, a number of defensive categories
have emerged, including firewalls, antivirus and antispam programs, and some
newer programming languages such as E that are intended to raise the resistance
of software to external attacks.
Database Software
Computers and software quickly became the tools of choice for storing and analyz-
ing large volumes of records and business data. This would not be possible without
special kinds of software applications for storing data in ways that allowed fairly
convenient random access to specific records and fields. Database technology is
one of the most important byproducts of digital computers and software.
As a result of database technology, millions of topics, vast collections of laws,
and huge volumes of data are available for analysis in unprecedented ways. This
is becoming known as big data and is a concept that will be discussed in later
chapters.
Currently, there are at least a dozen database schemas such as hierarchical, re-
lations, entity-relationship, etc. There are also dozens of commercial database en-
gines and query tools such as Access, DB2, SQL, MySQL, NoSQL, Oracle, and