Saturday, July 16, 2022

Triad of Security: Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability

The three pillars of security are: confidentiality, integrity and availability: 

  


Confidentiality

  • Ensures level of secrecy & prevents unauthorized access

  • Enforces secrecy of data in all stages, while at rest, in transition or at destination. 

  • Attackers target confidentiality by: 

  • Monitoring network

  • Shoulder surfing

  • Stealing password files

  • Breaking encryption

  • Social engineering

  • Can be compromised intentionally, by malice, or unintentionally, by lack of awareness, negligence etc.
Integrity

  • Integrity can be examined from three perspectives:​
  • Preventing unauthorized subjects from modifying objects
  • ​Prevent unauthorized modification by authorized subjects – e.g. mistakes​
  • Maintain internal and external consistency so that data reflect reality


Availability:​

Timely and uninterrupted access for authorized users​
  • Infrastructure should also be functional ​
  • Protected against :
  • Denial of Service (DoS) attacks​
  • Faults & failures due to hardware, software, environmental factors (e.g. heat, flood etc.)​
  • Acceptable performance