Lesson Summary

The CIA Triad in cybersecurity is a foundational philosophy that focuses on three core principles: confidentiality, integrity, and availability. These principles guide all security policies, controls, and tools in the field and are essential for protecting systems and data.

• Confidentiality: Involves keeping information private and limiting access to sensitive data using measures like passwords, access controls, and encryption.
• Integrity: Ensures data is accurate, consistent, and unaltered, with tools like hashing algorithms and digital signatures detecting any unauthorized changes.
• Availability: Focuses on ensuring systems and data are accessible when needed by authorized users, with measures like redundancy and backup systems minimizing downtime.

Security controls fall into three categories: preventive, detective, and corrective, which aim to prevent, detect, and respond to security incidents respectively. A balanced security model combines these controls to protect against threats and vulnerabilities.

In practice, security should operate across different layers like physical, network, application, and user-level, following a Defense in Depth strategy to create overlapping defenses. Understanding the unique risks and priorities of each scenario helps in designing appropriate security controls to support organizational goals.

• Mastering the CIA Triad involves understanding, balancing, and adapting the principles of confidentiality, integrity, and availability to different environments, ensuring effective security measures are in place across all layers.
• Challenges in implementing security include maintaining a balance between security and usability, avoiding over-engineered controls, and addressing human factors like poor passwords and phishing attacks.