Data Protection and Security

I

Introduction to Information Security

I.II

Common Information Security Targets

The classic top-3 aspects of information security are the preservation of:

1. Confidentiality: Prevention of unauthorized disclosure of information.
2. Integrity: Prevention of unauthorized modification of information.
3. Availability: Prevention of unauthorized witholding of information or resources.

Secrecy (or confidentiality) has a profound importance in the military domain and is historically what most people first think when they hear the word security however in modern business integrity and availability are far more important than confidentiality in general.

Among these three aspects, potentially the least understood one is ‘availability’. As a matter of fact, there is a lack of adequate security mechanisms to address this problem. For availability, we want to prevent denial of service, the prevention or delaying of authorized access to resources. Let us give a real-life example for a better explanation.