The Information Security Triad:
Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability (CIA)
Confidentiality
When protecting information, we want to be able to restrict
access to those who are allowed to see it; everyone else
should be disallowed from learning anything about its
contents. This is the essence of confidentiality. For
example, federal law requires that universities restrict
access to private student information. The university must
be sure that only those who are authorized have access to
view the grade records.
Integrity
Integrity is the assurance that the information being accessed has not been altered and truly represents
what is intended. Just as a person with integrity means what he or she says and can be trusted to
consistently represent the truth, information integrity means information truly represents its intended meaning. Information can lose its integrity through malicious intent, such as when someone who is not
authorized makes a change to intentionally misrepresent something. An example of this would be when a
hacker is hired to go into the university’s system and change a grade.
Integrity can also be lost unintentionally, such as when a computer power surge corrupts a file or
someone authorized to make a change accidentally deletes a file or enters incorrect information.