Introduction to Information Security

Information Security is not only about securing information from unauthorized access. Information Security is basically the practice of preventing unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, inspection, recording or destruction of information.

Information can be physical or electronic one. Information can be anything like Your details or we can say your profile on social media, your data in mobile phone, your bio-metrics etc. Thus Information Security spans so many research areas like Cryptography, Mobile Computing, Cyber Forensics, Online Social Media etc.

Information Security programs are build around 3 objectives, commonly known as CIA – Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability.

Cryptography is a method of protecting information and communications through the use of codes, so that only those for whom the information is intended can read and process it. The prefix “crypt-” means “hidden” or “vault” — and the suffix “-graphy” stands for “writing.” This short course will run you through few of most important cryptographic protocols.

1. Confidentiality – means information is not disclosed to unauthorized individuals, entities and process. For example if we say I have a password for my Gmail account but someone saw while I was doing a login into Gmail account. In that case my password has been compromised and Confidentiality has been breached.
2. Integrity – means maintaining accuracy and completeness of data. This means data cannot be edited in an unauthorized way. For example if an employee leaves an organisation then in that case data for that employee in all departments like accounts, should be updated to reflect status to JOB LEFT so that data is complete and accurate and in addition to this only authorized person should be allowed to edit employee data.
3. Availability – means information must be available when needed. For example if one needs to access information of a particular employee to check whether employee has outstanded the number of leaves, in that case it requires collaboration from different organizational teams like network operations, development operations, incident response and policy/change management.
   Denial of service attack is one of the factor that can hamper the availability of information.