Danni-Tech

Welcome to my complete CompTIA Security Plus course. This is Danny Tech! This course aims to be a complete course for Security Plus 100% free stay tuned until the end as there will be a quiz to test your knowledge of the material in this video now let’s get started.

Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability (CIA Triad)

The CIA Triad is a foundational concept in IT security. It represents three critical goals that every security system aims to achieve: Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability. These three pillars ensure data is protected, trustworthy, and accessible.

Confidentiality is all about ensuring that sensitive information is accessible only to authorized individuals. This prevents unauthorized users from viewing, modifying, or using private data.

How do we achieve confidentiality?

• Encryption: Data is scrambled into unreadable text that only authorized users can decrypt and access.
• Access Controls: Permissions ensure that users only see what they’re allowed to. For example, a finance manager might access payroll information, but someone in marketing would not.
• Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): Adds extra layers of protection to confirm the identity of users before granting access.

Integrity ensures that data remains unchanged and accurate throughout its lifecycle. This means the information received is exactly what was sent, with no alterations during transmission or storage.

How do we maintain integrity?

• Hashing: A mathematical process that creates a unique value (or fingerprint) for data. If the data changes, even slightly, the hash will not match, revealing the tampering.
• Digital Signatures: By encrypting the hash of data with a private key, we can confirm both data integrity and the identity of the sender.
• Certificates: These ensure trust between devices and users, confirming that data has not been compromised.

Integrity is especially important for verifying sensitive transactions, ensuring that what you receive is exactly what the sender intended.

Availability ensures that information and systems are accessible when they’re needed. Even the best security measures are useless if the data is inaccessible to those who need it.

How do we ensure availability?

• Fault Tolerance: Systems are built with redundancy so that if one component fails, another takes over.
• Regular Updates and Patching: Keeping systems up-to-date prevents vulnerabilities that attackers could exploit to disrupt availability.
• Backups: Having regular backups ensures data can be restored quickly if it is lost due to an attack or failure.

The key is to strike a balance: keep systems secure while ensuring they remain accessible to authorized users.

Now, the challenge in security is finding a balance between these three principles. For example, ensuring confidentiality with strict access controls might limit availability. It’s important to design systems where confidentiality, integrity, and availability work together effectively to meet business goals without unnecessary trade-offs.

By focusing on these three pillars, organizations can build robust security systems that protect data, maintain trust, and ensure reliability.