An Overview of Information-Theoretic Security and Privacy: Metrics, Limits and Applications

Abstract

This tutorial reviews fundamental contributions to information security. An integrative viewpoint is taken that explains the security metrics, including secrecy, privacy, and others, the methodology of information-theoretic approaches, along with the arising system design principles, as well as techniques that enable the information-theoretic designs to be applied in real communication and computing systems. The tutorial, while summarizing these contributions, argues for the simultaneous pivotal role of fundamental limits and coding techniques for secure communication system design.