CIA triad

The CIA triad is a simple model security professionals use to describe what they are protecting. It has nothing to do with the intelligence agency. The three letters stand for:

• Confidentiality: only the right people can see the information, such as your medical records or private messages
• Integrity: the information is accurate and has not been secretly changed, such as the bank details on an invoice
• Availability: you can access and use information and systems when you need them, such as a hospital's patient records

Most attacks harm one or more of these. A data breach hurts confidentiality, a tampered invoice hurts integrity, and ransomware hurts availability.