Cybersecurity breaches and attacks are common in several sectors like healthcare, business, and financial sectors. This is a threat to sensitive information uploaded online via different sites and software that can be hacked in no time. Social engineering can even make individuals get trapped into ransomware attacks that may risk life if the hacked information is related to health or huge financial data. Hacking is a hidden battlefield where the enemy is not visible. But there are several measures that can help us avoid the mishappenings. Let’s talk about that.
The CIA triad stands for Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability, which is a mechanism that safeguards important and sensitive information available online. It is designed to maintain security policies for the organization that has online data storage. Also works for LMS and CMS safety measures. The full name for this model is the CIA triad and can be called as AIC triad to avoid confusion.
What is the need for a CIA triad?
CIA holds the value of three principles that are needed to secure sites from malicious software. This trio is important to understand the true value of security and helps the host to minimize the chances of web attacks. The need for CIA triad is essential in cybersecurity as it helps in avoiding compliance issues, ensures business continuity, provides vital security features, and prevents reputational damage to the organization.
C for Confidentiality
This is rather the first step towards security, to ensure the secrecy of the shared data. Keeping all data online, including personal and professional is a common aspect. Using different tools and knowledge of cryptography can help to maintain confidentiality. Other ways are to encrypt the shared data with one-to-one encryptions, so that nefarious actors may not get the chance to decrypt the security password associated with the system/software working online. One can also use a VPN tunnel that stands for Virtual Private Network. The promise to keep your uploaded data secure or private should always be the priority point in mind.
I for Integrity
This is another essential requirement for data transmission and online data storage. Integrity refers to the actual & unaltered face of data, that has been shared from the host party to the guest party. This requires a clear line of transmission that can send the data as it has been created by the sender, and should remain the same unless delivered to the receiver. Sometimes the malware functioning can alter/modify the data available online, which can impact the whole site functioning and the services offered by it. The majority of these attacks are targeted at the banking system and eCommerce sites.
To ensure data integrity one can use Hashing Algorithms such as MD5 and SHA.
A for Availability
How are you going to feel, when you reach the bank locker room to get your gold back and there is no gold in your locker?
This is the meaning of availability, the CIA triad ensures that uploaded and stored data on any website, software, or system, an application such as WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook, for instance, should have the data available when the authorized person wants to avail it. This simply assures the presence of online data.
There are various factors that can jeopardize availability such as system malfunctioning, hardware or software disruption, power cut, or malware attack. These factors can remove the whole set of data stored through any application, software, or system storage such as LMS & CMS.
This can be prevented by using recurring backups, security updates, timely storage analysis, and redundancy techniques.
What more?
Authentication
This means verifying the access through various processes such as providing unique IDs to the people using the application on a daily basis, with a different set of user credentials and a whole different set of credentials for the guest users. This will make the authentication process precise and easy. There can be other measures also to avail of the authentication processes.
Authorization
The other end of authentication is wired up with authorization that means providing accessible authority to the users to attain online data. This can be achieved with encryption methods and provided accessibility tools, these can be biometric authentication, complicated passwords, retina scan, etc.
Where can the CIA be applied?
This triad can be applied in almost all the web-based models, applications, and banking software system. Just like the way we get monthly bank account details, through the mail, and are encrypted and secured through unique password sequences and other authentication and authorization processes that are ensured by the banking management system.
The importance of inculcating the CIA model hence gives a clear picture, where various software and application-based data are attacked through several chain cybercriminals, hackers, and social engineers on a daily basis. These attacks can be prevented through precautions and proper security handles. The financial and health-related information should be kept private, even the social media application cares for an individual’s privacy, hence recruits updates and backup on a periodical basis.
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Author’s Bio: This article has been written by Rishika Desai, B.Tech Computer Engineering Student at Vishwakarma Institute of Information Technology (VIIT), Pune. She is a good dancer, poet and a writer. Animal love engulfs her heart and content writing comprises her present. You can follow Rishika on Twitter @ich_rish99.