Cyber Security For Beginners: Part 6
Hello and welcome to yet another part of the Cyber Security For Beginners series. If you haven’t already read the previous blogs, I’d highly recommend to do so before continuing moving forward. However if you have read those, then Kudos! Give yourself a pat on your back, because you’ve covered some really important topics and terminologies.
In this blog we’re going to explore the last component of the CIA triad; that is AVAILABILITY.
Availability refers to the actual availability of data. It is the reliability of access to data. Data systems and services should be made available to the user at any time.
However due to unforeseen circumstances, hardware maintenance, Denial-of-service attacks(DOS), etc. the data may not be accessible.
DID YOU KNOW?
A recent study states that for every 1 minute the amazon.com website is down, the company loses $66000. Phew! That's a huge amount right?
To overcome these circumstances, the implementation of backup storages, data concurrency, timely maintenance, etc. are done.
Backup of data can be done in two ways:-
- Offsite backup is the replication of the data to a server which is separated geographically from a site. This allows for data storage away from the premises. The advantage of this method is that backup data can be shared with a number of different remote locations. On the other hand a disadvantage to this is the security and integrity of data during transportation and storage.
- Onsite Backup refers to dedicated hard drives where your duplicate data is stored on the premises. This allows for rapid recovery of your stored data without requiring you to have a strong internet connection. The advantage of this method is that there immediate access to data and internet access is not needed. Then again the disadvantage to this method is that in the event of a catastrophic event, onsite data storage may be destroyed.
Now lets see how data is made unavailable due to different problems and how it can be tackled and made available by fore-seeing the possible threats to data and implementing effective recovery methods.
Data unavailability is possible if the server is down. In this case, there should be a backup server to automatically serve the purpose of the primary server, so that the services and data is made available to the end user always. Amazon( the e-commerce website) has over a thousand servers situated all over the globe so that even if a data center is affected the other 999 servers can cover up for it.
RAID systems (or redundant array of independent disks) is a way of storing the same data in different places on multiple hard disks or solid-state drives to protect data in the case of a drive failure. There are different RAID levels, however, it is not possible to talk about them as it is outside the scope of this blog. I will be adding references if you want to learn more about the RAID systems and the different levels.
Setting up maintenance when the traffic is low is another effective method of making data available. Usually the after work hours are best suited for maintenance.
There are also cyber threats like Ransomwares and DOS attacks that deny access to data and services to the users. The organization should have strict policies and methods to counter such attacks.
To conclude, availability of data and services plays an important role in the cybersecurity field. Okay! So now we have covered the availability component in the CIA triad and its association with Cyber Security.
Learning should never stop here. You can never truly learn cyber security from a single blog or a course or a video. You need to explore different resources. I have added some additional resources for better understanding of the topic.
Hope you learnt something new and enjoyed this blog! Remember never stop learning .
See you in the next blog!
Additional Resources:
