Cybersecurity Studies - 1 (CIA Triad)

4 min readNov 30, 2023

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Data, information, and intelligence are often used interchangeably. They are interconnected, but they have distinct meanings.

Data, Information, and Intelligence

Data is raw, unorganized facts such as IP addresses, URLs, or hashes. Information can be derived from data by combining multiple data points to answer specific questions, such as how many employees have accessed a website within the month. Intelligence is achieved by analyzing data and information to identify patterns of activity and extracting insights. Data is collected, assembled into information, and handed to an analyst to analyze and transform information into intelligence. ⁷

Information security (InfoSec)

Information systems encompass the entirety of infrastructure and services employed to gather, process, store, and transmit information between various locations, making it accessible to users. Information systems management encompasses all activities related to the effective utilization, compatibility, and development of information systems.

Information security and cybersecurity are often confused. InfoSec is a crucial part of cybersecurity, but it refers exclusively to the processes designed for data security. Cybersecurity is a more general term that includes InfoSec. InfoSec is a set of security procedures and tools that broadly protect sensitive enterprise information from misuse, unauthorized access, disruption, or destruction. ⁸ ⁹

CIA TRIAD

CIA triad stands for confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The CIA triad is a common model that forms the basis for the development of security systems. They are used for finding vulnerabilities and methods for creating solutions. ¹⁰

Confidentiality is about ensuring access to data is restricted to only the intended audience and not others. Try not to give more than necessary access to data to anyone. Data confidentiality can further be compromised by:

Phishing attacks
Unauthorized access to the data
Data leaks
Non-encrypted data
Man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks

Measures to mitigate threats to confidentiality include:

Encryption: Only authorized parties with the decryption key can access the original information.
User Access Controls: Implementing access controls ensures that only authorized users can access specific data. This includes user authentication, authorization, and auditing mechanisms.
Network Segmentation: Segment the network into isolated segments or zones based on the principle of least privilege. By segmenting a network, you can easily prevent unauthorized access to restricted parts of your system. When an attacker gets into a network, they’ll have a harder time finding the sensitive information and they’ll also have a harder time moving across the network.
Firewalls
Vulnerability management
Password
Two-factor authentication
Multi-factor authentication (MFA)
Biometric
Security tokens

Integrity is about the data being authentic, accurate, and reliable. It is about protecting the data from being modified. Data integrity can further be compromised by:

Ransomware Attacks
Hardware failure
Data corruption caused by software bugs

Measures to mitigate threats to availability include:

Encryption
Hashing: Using cryptographic hash functions to generate a fixed-size hash value (checksum) representing the original data. Changes to the data result in a different hash value, allowing integrity verification.
User Access Controls
Checksums
Version Control
Backups
Data Validation: Ensuring the accuracy and reliability of data by implementing validation checks. This helps prevent data corruption and unauthorized alterations.
Digital certificates, or digital signatures

Availability is of utmost importance when it comes to data management. It is imperative to maintain hardware and software in a properly functioning state and ensure the availability of adequate bandwidth to ensure optimal data availability. But these measures alone are not enough because there are external forces at play; data availability can further be compromised by:

Denial of Service (DoS)
Power outages
Natural disasters

Measures to mitigate threats to availability include:

Off-site backups: It is essential to ensure that we retain copies of the data to facilitate access in the future.
Disaster recovery: It is important to have a plan for disaster recovery so that a system can be easily fixed after a problem.
Redundancy: The redundancy helps to maintain availability in case some of the components of the system (like hardware failures, disasters, or cyberattacks) fail.
Failover: The failover helps to restore availability after a server issue.
RAID: The RAID (redundant array of inexpensive disks) is an array of drives that provides storage redundancy and high availability.
High-availability clusters: High-availability clusters are a group of computers that work as one system.
Distributed Systems: Utilizing distributed systems and cloud technologies enhances data availability and resilience.

INFOSEC DOMAINS

Data Security → Published
Application Security → Published
Network Security
Endpoint Security
IoT Security
Cloud Security
Mobile Security
Security Awareness And Training
Security Governance and Risk Management
Identity Access Management (IAM)

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Links

Cybersecurity Studies - 1 (CIA Triad)

Data, Information, and Intelligence

Information security (InfoSec)

CIA TRIAD

INFOSEC DOMAINS

Written by İrem Çıngı