Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability (or the “CIA triad”) are three concepts in cyber security. The CIA triad is a prominent model that serves as the foundation for the creation of security systems. These concepts are used to identify weaknesses and develop strategies for problem-solving.
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Definition of Confidentiality in Cyber Security
In cyber security, confidentiality refers to the preservation of protections, access restrictions, and sensitive data releases to guarantee the privacy of personal and proprietary information from undesired entities.
In simpler terms, confidentiality is the safeguarding of data and information against unauthorized disclosure, access, or usage.
Some key points of confidentiality are listed below:
- Information saved in whatever format must be kept secure and secret. This comprises local hard disc drives (HDD), solid-state discs (SSD), and flash drives (USB thumb drives, SD cards, and cloud storage.
- Data stored in a processor unit or in volatile memory (RAM, buffers, and cache memory) on a computing device is vulnerable to theft from malware or buffer overflow attacks, thus it must be assured that this data and information remains safe.
- Data must be safe during traversing between networks. Confidentiality must be maintained when data travels across networks. Encryption techniques such as file/disk encryption and encrypted communications are effective to maintain the confidentiality of data and information.
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS ) protocol uses encryption to safeguard the confidentiality of data payloads traveling across networks.
Definition of Integrity in Cyber Security
Data integrity in computing is the preservation of the authenticity, correctness, and exclusion of unauthorized data modification. If a security mechanism ensures data/information integrity in terms of information security, we can be positive that it hasn’t changed from its initial state. Similar to confidentiality, data integrity must be safeguarded throughout processing, when it is at rest, and while it is in transit.
- Cryptographic hashing is one of the simplest techniques for verifying the integrity of digital assets. In this technique, Data is processed using a hash function to create a unique hash value during hashing. Since the data will always give the same hash value if processed using the same hash algorithm, that hash value is now comparable to a “certificate of authenticity.”
Definition of Availability in Cyber Security
In terms of cyber security, availability is ensuring that information is accessible, and the networked services that house the information.
The concept of availability states that a person or organization’s data and information must be available to them when they need it. Since denying access to data and information is a typical security risk, cybersecurity practitioners must think about availability while developing cybersecurity strategies.
Networked resources including databases, websites, and web applications must always be accessible. Performance, redundancy, backups, and data loss prevention are crucial for assuring the availability of networked services.