The CIA triad for analysts
Reza Mansouri
??Network Administrator | IT Specialist | Google Cybersecurity Professional | Google IT?? Storage/Virtualization & Microsoft Infrastructure Designer
The CIA triad is a model that helps inform how organizations consider risk when setting up systems and security policies. It comprises three elements that cybersecurity analysts and organizations work toward upholding: confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Maintaining an acceptable level of risk and ensuring systems and policies are designed with these elements in mind helps establish a successful security posture, which refers to an organization’s ability to manage its defense of critical assets and data and react to change.
Confidentiality
Confidentiality is the idea that only authorized users can access specific assets or data. In an organization, confidentiality can be enhanced by implementing design principles, such as the principle of least privilege. The principle of least privilege limits users' access to only the information they need to complete work-related tasks. Restrict access is one way of maintaining the confidentiality and security of private data.
Integrity
Integrity is the idea that the data is verifiably correct, authentic, and reliable. Having protocols in place to verify the authenticity of data is essential. One way to verify data integrity is through
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cryptography
which is used to transform data so unauthorized parties cannot read or tamper with it (NIST, 2022). Another example of how an organization might implement integrity is by enabling encryption, which converts data from readable to encoded. Encryption can be used to prevent access and ensure data, such as messages on an organization's internal chat platform, cannot be tampered with.
Availability
Availability is the idea that data is accessible to those authorized to use it. When a system adheres to availability and confidentiality principles, data can be used when needed. In the workplace, this could mean that the organization allows remote employees to access its internal network to perform their jobs. It’s worth noting that access to data on the internal network is still limited, depending on what type of access employees need to do their jobs. If, for example, an employee works in the organization’s accounting department, they might need access to corporate accounts but not data related to ongoing development projects.