The CIA Triad stands for Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability. It’s main purpose it to ensure the security and protection of a users sensitive data and information.

Confidentiality refers to the act of protecting data and personal information from someone or something with unauthorized access. This can also apply in fields like medical, psychological, and even personal; but in terms of cybersecurity that’s the definition. Some security strategies use to maintain confidentiality are 2F2 which is two step authentication, and other forms of verification like key fobs and/or soft tokens. A form of 2F2 that is commonly used is “Duo Mobile” , which can be used for both school and work account logins.

Integrity refers to the data being trustworthy and unaltered by someone who isn’t authorized. Integrity is very important because people want to feel safe and secure on the sites in which they are inputting their personal and sensitive information. Integrity can usually be insured by backing up data with cloud programs like WUSTL box, as well as file permissions and user access controls. Programs and features like the previously mentioned, help to protect the data in the events of both human errors, and EMP server crashes.

Availability refers to the way that resources like hardware, networks, and data are accessible to the user when they need them. Availability really hones in on the importance of making sure programs, and things of that sort are kept up to date and upgraded at all times.