We will learn the principles of information security and its importance. We will discuss it in detail to understand it more.
What Are The Information Security Principles?
Information security principles are the ground rules to attain information security. So it is a set of rules made to secure the information.
It involves the use of different methods to prevent the loss of data. They are divided into three categories.
Here are the following:
- Confidentiality
- Integrity
- Availability
Confidentiality
The first principle is confidentiality. Confidentiality is the protection of the information from unauthorized access.
The information that you do not want to access by anyone other than you must be kept confidential.
So the confidentiality can be attained by using different methods. Some of them are the following:
- Encryption
- Authentication
- Secure distribution
Encryption is one of the best methods to keep data confidential. So encryption is the process of changing readable information into unreadable information.
It means, if anyone gets this unreadable information, he will not be able to understand it. So that’s why it is called encryption which means secret writing. The encrypted data should be decrypted before using it.
We can encrypt our data in three ways.
Here are the following: DES, AES, and 3DES Encryption algorithm DES.
Data Encryption Standard
It is a 64-bit encryption algorithm that uses 56-bit keys for encryption. It uses substitution and permutation methods for encryption.
The main disadvantage of this method is that it is considered insecure for use now. Because it can be easily broken now even with a small computer system.
AES Advanced Encryption Standard
This is a 128-bit encryption algorithm, which uses 128-bit keys for encryption. So it cannot be easily broken even with high technology computers available today.
AES-256: This version of AES uses 256 bits key for encryption, which cannot be easily broken today. So even with high technology computers available today.
Integrity
The next principle is integrity. It is the protection of the information from unauthorized modification. So the information that you want to be modified only by yourself must be kept in an unmodified form.
The integrity can be attained by using different methods. Some of them are the following:
- Digital signature
- Least privilege
- Auditing and Logging
Digital signature
A digital signature is used to check whether the information has been modified or not.
Least privilege
It means that a user should have access to only those things which are required for him for his work.
Auditing & Logging
An audit trail is a record that contains details about who accessed what data and when did they access it.
Availability
The third principle is availability. It is the protection of the information from unauthorized denial of service.
So the information that you do not want to be denied by anyone else must be kept available. Availability can be attained by using different methods. Some of them are the following:
- Authentication
- Authorization
- Least privilege
- Network segmentation and isolation
These methods are used to ensure that the services which are provided by the organization are available to authorized users only.
Authentication: Authentication is the process of identifying the user before providing the service to him.
Authorization: Authorization is the process of checking whether the user is authorized or not. After authentication, it is done before providing service to him.
Least privilege: A user should have access to only those things which are required for him for his work. This way if there is any malfunction in the system, it will not affect all the services of the organization.
Network segmentation and isolation: Network segmentation means breaking down the network into smaller networks for security reasons.
