What Is the CIA Triad?

The CIA triad provides a simple and comprehensive checklist for evaluating an organisation’s security. An effective IT security system consists of three parts: confidentiality, integrity, and availability, hence the name. This framework ensures that sensitive information remains protected from unauthorised access, maintains the accuracy and trustworthiness of data, and ensures that information and systems are accessible when needed.

More than an information security framework, the CIA triad helps organisations enhance and maintain maximum security while enabling staff to perform everyday tasks like data collection, customer service, and general management. Understanding and implementing the CIA triad can significantly reduce the risk of data breaches, enhance operational efficiency, and improve overall organisational resilience.

What is the CIA triad?

The CIA triad provides a high-level framework for cybersecurity professionals to consider when auditing, implementing, and improving systems, tools, and programs for organisations. It is a powerful way to identify weak points and form solutions to strengthen policies and programs.

Take a closer look at the three elements of the triad.

1. Confidentiality

Confidentiality involves protecting sensitive data, keeping it private and safe from unauthorised access. This includes protecting information from bad actors with malicious intent and limiting access to only authorised individuals within an organisation. 

You could think of confidentiality as privacy. When you send an email, for example, you're directing the contents of that email to a specific person or group of people. The protections in place that keep your email private are confidentiality-related measures. Passwords, locks, and tokens are among these measures.

2. Integrity

Maintaining data integrity is important to ensure data and business analysts access accurate information. Data shown to the public must also maintain integrity so that customers can trust the organisation. A system with integrity keeps data safe from unnecessary changes, whether malicious or accidental. Cybersecurity professionals implement access levels, enable tracking when making changes, and protect data when transferring or storing it.

Returning to our email example, when you send an email, you assume that the information you relay is the information that arrives at the recipient. If someone alters that information along the way—say, for example, a third party intercepts the email and changes some key points—that data has lost integrity.

3. Availability

Availability refers to the idea that the people who need access to data can get it—without affecting its confidentiality or integrity. 

You want the recipients of that email you sent to be able to access it, display it, and even save it for future use.

Ensuring availability in data systems can be tricky because it may compete with the other factors in the triad. One of the best ways to protect data is to limit its access. If you have an information security role, you may have experienced pushback from customers or coworkers about information availability.

The importance of the CIA triad in cybersecurity

Because information security covers so many areas, it’s crucial to have one methodology to analyse situations, plan changes, and improve implementations. The CIA triad allows leaders to think about security challenges without being security experts. It helps data professionals assess what went wrong during a malfunction or cybersecurity attack and how to fix it.

CIA triad examples

Information security professionals must often consider confidentiality, integrity, and availability in their organisations. These examples help you think through the three components of the CIA triad to make your system more robust.

Examples of confidentiality

An organisation’s data should only be available to those who need it. Someone should limit access to data such as human resources files, medical records, and school transcripts.

To prevent security breaches, users must follow confidentiality policies so only those authorised to access it can. You may classify, label, or encrypt data to allow restrictions. The IT team can implement multi-factor authentication systems. Employees can receive onboarding training to recognise potential security mistakes and how to avoid them.

Effective information security considers who receives authorisation and the appropriate level of confidentiality. For example, an organisation's finance team should be able to access bank accounts, but most other employees and executives should not have access to this information. Some security measures include locked cabinets to limit access to physical files and encrypted digital files to protect information from hackers.

Someone can unintentionally compromise confidentiality. For example, IT support might accidentally send a password to multiple employees instead of the one who needs it. Users might share their credentials with another employee or forget to encrypt sensitive emails properly. A thief might steal an employee's hardware, such as a computer or mobile phone. Insufficient security controls or human error are also examples of breached confidentiality.

Examples of integrity

An information system with integrity tracks and limits who can make changes to minimise the possible damage that hackers, malicious employees, or human errors can do. 

Organisations need to determine who can change the data and how someone can change it. For example, schools typically protect grade databases, so students can’t change them, but teachers can. In this case, a student hacker might bypass the intrusion detection system or alter system logs to mask the attack after it occurs.

Information on an organisation's website should be trustworthy. In another example, a company website that provides bios of senior executives must have integrity. Visitors may be reluctant to trust the company or buy its products if it is inaccurate or seems botched. If the company has a high profile, a competitor might damage its reputation by hacking the website and altering descriptions.

You may use encryption, digital signatures, and hashing to protect data integrity. Websites can use certificate authorities to verify authenticity so customers feel comfortable browsing and purchasing products.

Examples of availability

All organisations have designated employees with access to specific data and permission to make changes. Therefore, the security framework must include availability.

Information security professionals must balance availability with confidentiality and integrity. For example, all employees of an organisation might have access to the company email system, but only top-level leadership has access to detailed financial records. Those leaders should be able to access that data when needed, and it should take little time or effort.

Backup systems should be in place to allow for availability. For example, you should implement disaster recovery systems so employees can regain access to data systems if the power goes out. Or, if severe weather prevents employees from physically getting to the office, their data can be available through cloud system storage.

It is possible to compromise availability through sabotage. For example, sabotage can occur through denial-of-service attacks or ransomware. To maintain data availability, organisations can use "redundant" networks and servers programmed to become available when the default system breaks or gets tampered with. Updating and upgrading systems regularly prevents infiltrations and malfunctions, which enhance data availability.

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The CIA triad provides a simple and comprehensive checklist for evaluating an organisation’s security, focusing on confidentiality, integrity, and availability. This framework ensures sensitive information remains protected, data accuracy is maintained, and systems are accessible when needed, significantly enhancing operational efficiency and security.

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