CIA Triad

What is the CIA triad ?#

The CIA Triad is a foundational model in information security that stands for Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability.

Ensuring that sensitive information is accessible only to authorized users and protected against unauthorized disclosure.

Core Goal: Protect privacy, proprietary data, and credentials from unauthorized exposure.
Security Measures: Encryption, access control mechanisms, multi-factor authentication (MFA).
Breaches:
- Unencrypted network traffic intercepted on public/shared networks.
- Exposed private keys, API secrets, or configuration files.
- Unauthorized access to restricted databases or internal documents.

Guaranteeing that data remains accurate, complete, and authentic, preventing unauthorized modification or tampering.

Core Goal: Maintain data accuracy, authenticity, and consistency across its lifecycle.
Security Measures: Cryptographic hashing, digital signatures, strict input validation, authorization checks.
Breaches:
- Client-side parameter or session token tampering.
- Unauthorized modification of system files, audit logs, or database entries.
- Malicious code injection altering application behavior or data output.

Ensuring that systems, networks, and data remain operational and accessible to authorized users when needed.

Core Goal: Prevent operational downtime, service disruption, and system lockouts.
Security Measures: Infrastructure redundancy, load balancing, backups, rate limiting, traffic management.
Breaches:
- Denial of Service (DoS/DDoS) attacks crashing web applications or network infrastructure.
- System downtime caused by hardware failure, power outages, or unhandled software crashes.
- Storage or filesystem lockout caused by ransomware execution