What Is the CIA Triad?

When talking about information security, what does come in mind?

For most people, it's confidentiality. We don't want the bad guys stealing our data.

But more must be considered when protecting data: integrity and availability are also essential pillars of information security. Alongside confidentiality, these three are collectively known as the CIA triad: Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability.

Confidentiality

For your organisation, it might be protecting your clients' personally identifiable information (PII), some intellectual property, or your secret plans to take over the world.

Integrity

For your organisation, this could be ensuring patients' medical records are kept intact so that accurate diagnoses and treatment plans can be made.

Availability

For your organisation, this could be keeping your ordering or payment systems online in the face of an accidental misconfiguration or a denial-of-service attack (DoS/DDoS).

The CIA triad is a foundational concept in information security. By understanding and implementing these concepts, organisations can protect their data from unauthorised access, modification, or destruction.

How To Ensure Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability?

Many security controls and best practices can be implemented to support confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Which ones are worth implementing will depend on the organisation.

Here are a few examples:

Confidentiality

• Access control: Limit access to information and systems to authorised users only by enforcing good passwords, multi-factor authentication, and other access control mechanisms.

• Encryption: Protect sensitive data at rest and in transit from prying eyes by encrypting it.

• Data loss prevention: Prevent sensitive data from being accidentally or maliciously leaked or lost by implementing data loss prevention (DLP) solutions.

Integrity

• Data integrity checks: Implement data integrity checks to ensure that data has not been tampered with by using hash values, digital signatures, and other techniques.

• Change management: Implement change management processes to ensure that all changes to systems and data are appropriately authorised and documented.

• Backups: Implement regular systems and data backups so they can be restored during a data breach or other disaster.

Availability

• Redundancy and failover: Implement redundant systems and failover capabilities to ensure that systems and data stay accessible even if one component fails.

• Capacity planning: Perform capacity planning to guarantee the necessary resources to meet demand.

• Performance monitoring: Monitor system performance and identify and address potential bottlenecks or issues.

In addition to these technical controls, it is also essential to implement security awareness training for employees to educate them about the importance of information security and how to protect sensitive data. This topic is covered in more detail in People, Process and Technology.

By implementing these security controls and best practices, you can help to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your organisation's information and systems.

What controls are in place in your organisation to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of your systems and data?

Key Takeaways

• Confidentiality protects sensitive data from unauthorised access or disclosure.

• Integrity ensures the accuracy, consistency, and trustworthiness of data.

• Availability ensures information and resources are accessible when needed.

• Consider structuring your approach using these pillars when designing and maintaining your information security practices.

Next Steps

• Understand your risks. Have you conducted a comprehensive risk assessment to identify potential threats and vulnerabilities?

• Ownership and responsibilities. Is it clear to you and them (your employees, not the CIA…) who is accountable and responsible for existing and new controls?

• Review your controls. Trust but verify. Have you reviewed the efficacy of your current controls independently, or at least see good evidence that they are working? Do you have an established control testing schedule to assess and adjust security controls regularly?

• Have a plan. Do you have a plan to improve or implement additional controls where needed?

• Reassess your position. When did you last review your security posture based on evolving threats and technologies?