What is the CIA Triad?

The Components of the CIA Triad

The CIA triad’s three main components – confidentiality, integrity, and security – are fundamental to a successful IT security program.

Confidentiality

Confidentiality refers to the ability to keep sensitive data secret. This is a cornerstone of a data security policy and involves controlling access to sensitive data to ensure that unauthorized parties do not have access to it.

One of the most widely-used and powerful tools for protecting confidentiality is encryption. Modern encryption algorithms can ensure that only someone with access to the decryption key for data has the ability to read it. If an attacker or other unauthorized user gains access to the encrypted data, then it is unusable and does not pose a risk to data security.

However, with data encryption, data security and confidentiality boils down to managing control over the private keys used for data encryption and decryption. An organization can help to ensure data confidentiality by using strong encryption and defining access controls that control access to these encryption keys.

Integrity

Data integrity refers to ensuring that data is authentic and has not been tampered with. This involves both ensuring that data was generated by the alleged creator and that it has not been modified since creation by an unauthorized party.

An organization has a variety of different tools that can help to ensure the integrity of its data. Some examples include the following:

• Access Controls: Access controls can help to ensure data integrity by managing access to the data in question. If an unauthorized user cannot access the data, they cannot modify it either.
• Hashes and Checksums: Hashes and checksums are two types of mathematical operations that can detect modifications to data or a file. If the hash value or checksum does not match, then the data has been modified.
• Digital Signatures: Digital signature algorithms are cryptographic algorithms that prove authenticity, integrity, and non-repudiation. A valid digital signature can only be generated using a particular private key, so managing access to private keys helps to ensure data integrity.

Availability

Availability is the final part of the CIA triad because data is only useful to the organization if it is accessible for legitimate use. If security measures or cyberattacks render data or systems inaccessible, then the business suffers. Organizations face a variety of natural and human-driven threats to data and system availability. Power and internet outages or natural disasters could knock systems offline.  Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), ransomware, and other attacks could render systems and data inaccessible.

Companies can use a variety of countermeasures to help to protect the availability of data and systems. Resiliency and redundancy can reduce the potential risks of single points of failure. Strong patch management, anti-DDoS mitigations, and other security protections can help to block cyberattacks that could knock systems offline. Endpoint security solutions and backups can protect against ransomware and other malware that poses a threat to data availability.

Why and When Should You Use the CIA Triad?

The CIA triad is a general-purpose tool for secure design. Every system should have data confidentiality and integrity, and software and data should always be available for legitimate use. This means that the CIA triad should be used whenever making or evaluating cybersecurity decisions. It can also be useful for performing post-mortems after security incidents and training employees on IT security policies, security best practices, and common security threats.