Course Description
Students will explore how technology is related to cybersecurity from an interdisciplinary orientation. Attention is given to the way that technologically-driven cybersecurity issues are connected to cultural, political, legal, ethical, and business domains.
After completing this course, students will be able to…
- Describe how cyber technology creates opportunities for criminal behavior.
- Identify how cultural beliefs interact with technology to impact cybersecurity strategies.
- Understand and describe how cyber systems’ components, mechanisms, and functions produce security concerns.
- Discuss cyber technology’s impact on individuals’ experiences with crime and victimization.
- Understand and describe both intended and unintended ethical dilemmas that cybersecurity efforts produce for individuals, nations, societies, and the environment.
- Describe the costs and benefits of producing secure cyber technologies.
- Understand and describe the global nature of cybersecurity and the way that cybersecurity efforts have produced and inhibited global changes.
- Describe the role of cybersecurity in defining appropriate and inappropriate behavior.
- Describe how cybersecurity produces ideas of progress and modernism.
CIA Triad – Security Model
Since I was interested in cybersecurity until this day, I always had an assignment on CIA triads. According to the Coursera article, the CIA is a framework or model cybersecurity experts use when auditing, implementing, and improving systems, tools, and programs for organizations. CIA stands for confidentiality, integrity, and availability of those elements that form the CIA. Confidentiality means protecting sensitive information or data from unauthorized access. For instance, think of the HR department in your organization. Furthermore, HR tends to record employee information such as phone number, address, social security number, performance review, background checks, health related information, pay levels, etc. HR applies confidentiality by keeping employees’ records safe and not allowing unauthorized access to employee’s records. The second element of the CIA is integrity, which keeps confidentiality going. Integrity means maintaining data and keeping the data accurate, trustworthy, and updated. For instance, HR must keep employees’ data secure, updated, and trustworthy. Finally, availability is the third element of the CIA. Availability means the information is accessible to the authorized people and is readable to the authorized whenever the information is requested. For instance, if the CEO of your company requests HR for an employee’s review, HR must be able to provide the CEO with an employee’s review at any time. However, per Ryanmoss article, CIA triad interconnect with authentication and Authorization. Authentication is a way that the system uses to verify the user’s identity. For example, students at ODU have access to DUO authentication, which every student has to have access to; authentication verifies that I, as a student, am eligible to use the ODU website. On the other hand, Authorization is when the user has privileges to access the authenticated website. For instance, I can only access the ODU portal with a DUO application. The DUO application is connected to ODU authentication. Authorization grantees that I can only access specific applications such as Canvas, Leo Learnings, etc. Authorization is the second phase of authentication. In conclusion, when trying to get into the ODU portal, first, you have to have authentication, which in this case, represents the Duo application in the ODU system. Then, students will be authorized only to specific platforms such as Canvas.
Work cited:
Ledesma, Josue “What is the CIA Triad?.” June 16, 2023
https://www.varonis.com/blog/cia-triad
https://sites.wp.odu.edu/ryanmoss/2022/04/19/the-cia-triad-authentication-andauthorization/