By Lili Marleeen Moser | 1,128 words | Read time: 6 minutes
A couple of weeks back, we wrote about the difference between cybersecurity and information security, and how these concepts are intertwined.
Here we also highlighted that the main concern of information security is to protect and preserve the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information, which is also known as the CIA triad.
Building on that, this week we’re focusing entirely on the CIA triad, breaking down each concept to show how it forms the essential framework for protecting your data.
The CIA triad
The CIA triad is a guiding model and principle in information security, serving as a lens through which organizations evaluate their security posture. The three core principles: Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability constitute the foundation of information security.
If any one of these principles is compromised, it directly impacts the overall security of your information. Understanding each element is important for developing a robust security strategy.
Confidentiality
Confidentiality means that information can only be accessed by authorized persons.
Think of it like a private conversation or a sealed letter: only the intended recipient should be privy to its contents.
In an organizational context, this ensures that sensitive customer financial records, business strategies, or employee personal data are viewed exclusively by those with a legitimate need-to-know.
The essence of confidentiality is protecting sensitive data from unauthorized access, whether that access is accidental or malicious. Breaches of confidentiality can lead to severe consequences, including financial penalties, reputational damage, and a loss of competitive advantage.
Integrity
Integrity refers to ensuring that the information stored (either physically or digitally) is complete, accurate, and trustworthy, and that it remains protected from unauthorized modification or destruction.
There are several areas where the integrity of information is crucial. Take logs as an example: For logs, typically used for auditing file access and investigating security incidents, integrity is critical.
If logs are changed or tampered with, it can have a decisive effect on whether a security incident can be resolved.
Availability
Availability means that information can be accessed by authorized persons when they need it. It’s about ensuring the continuity of business operations and the reliability of services.
For instance, it guarantees that critical business applications are accessible to employees during working hours, or that a hospital’s patient record system is always online for immediate use.
If information or systems are unavailable, it can lead to significant operational disruptions, substantial financial losses, and even threats to life in critical sectors like healthcare. The core of availability is ensuring timely and reliable access to resources and data.
Policies and procedures
There are a variety of technologies, policies, processes and procedures that are relevant when talking about the CIA triad.
Below, we focus on Identity and Access Management and Vulnerability Management: Two areas that are worth looking at when you want to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your information.
Identity and Access Management (IAM)
Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a practice that has an effect on all three aspects of the CIA triad.
It is the security discipline that ensures the right individuals have the right access to the right resources at the right time and for the right reasons.
It’s the gatekeeper for your information, directly impacting all three aspects of the CIA triad.
This concept is closely related to Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA), a security framework that controls access to computer resources, enforces policies, and audits usage, where:
- Authentication verifies who you are, e.g., username and password.
- Authorization determines what you are allowed to do once authenticated, e.g., read, write, delete.
- Accounting tracks what actions you’ve performed, e.g., logging access and changes.
Confidentiality
IAM ensures that only authorized users, authenticated through methods like multi-factor authentication, can access sensitive data. This is heavily influenced by data classification.
Once data is classified (e.g., “Confidential” or “Internal”), IAM policies dictate who can view it based on their role and the need-to-know principle.
Strict password policies, requiring strong passwords and regular password changes, also form a critical line of defense here, preventing unauthorized access.
Integrity
IAM can reduce the risk of unauthorized or accidental data modification significantly by granting access based on the “least privilege” principle.
This means that users only get the minimum permission required for their tasks. If only specific, authorized individuals can modify for instance sales figures, the integrity of that data is much more secure.
Audit trails, enabled by the Accounting part of AAA, track who made what changes, providing accountability and supporting data integrity.
Availability
While IAM systems primarily support Confidentiality and Integrity controls, they also prevent unauthorized users from gaining control and potentially disrupting services.
Strong authentication also protects against credential stuffing attacks that could lead to service denial. Furthermore, proper user provisioning and de-provisioning ensure availability only for authorized users.
Vulnerability Management
Vulnerability management is the continuous process of identifying, assessing, reporting on, and remediating security vulnerabilities in systems and in software.
It’s a proactive approach to finding weaknesses before malicious actors can exploit them.
This includes a critical component: patch management. Vulnerability management reinforces all three aspects of the CIA triad.
Confidentiality
Unpatched software often contains vulnerabilities that attackers can exploit to gain unauthorized access to systems and sensitive data.
For example, a flaw in a web server could allow an attacker to bypass authentication and steal customer records. Regular patching and vulnerability remediation close these loopholes, safeguarding confidential information.
Integrity
Many vulnerabilities can be exploited to alter or corrupt data. SQL injection flaws, for instance, allow attackers to manipulate database entries, directly impacting data integrity.
By identifying and fixing these vulnerabilities through a patch management process, organizations can prevent unauthorized modifications and maintain the accuracy of their information.
Availability
Lastly, vulnerabilities are often exploited in DoS or DDoS attacks, which aim to make systems unavailable to legitimate users.
Ransomware, which encrypts data and renders systems unusable, often leverages known vulnerabilities to gain initial access.
Proactive vulnerability management drastically reduces the attack surface, preventing downtime and ensuring that critical business applications and data remain accessible when needed.
While patching can sometimes cause temporary downtime if not handled carefully (e.g., during updates), the controlled, planned downtime of a well-managed patching process is infinitely preferable to the unexpected, prolonged outages caused by a successful cyberattack exploiting an unpatched vulnerability.
In essence, the CIA triad isn’t just a theoretical model; it’s the fundamental blueprint for a robust information security strategy.
By focusing on key areas like Identity and Access Management and Vulnerability Management, organizations can build strong defenses that protect their most valuable asset: their information, ensuring it remains secure, accurate, and accessible when needed.
If you’d like to explore how these principles can be applied in your own environment, get in touch with us for a deeper conversation.