The CIA Triad—Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability—provides a framework for protecting information in the digital world. Together with the processes of Authentication (confirming identity) and Authorization (controlling access), these concepts ensure the security and reliability of data and systems. 

Imagine you’re protecting a treasure chest filled with valuable items. You want to make sure only the right people can open it, nothing inside gets changed, and the chest is always available when needed. In the world of technology, this idea is known as the CIA Triad, and it works like this: 

Confidentiality: 

Confidentiality is like having a special key for the treasure chest that only certain people can use. You wouldn’t want just anyone opening the chest and taking a peek inside. To keep secrets safe, technology uses things like passwords and codes, also called encryption, to make sure only the right people can see important information. An example to think about is checking your bank account online. Only you should be able to log in and see your balance, and the bank protects that information by requiring a password and using encryption to keep it safe from others. 

Integrity: 

Now, imagine someone sneaking in and trying to change what’s inside the chest—maybe swapping gold for rocks. You wouldn’t want that to happen, right? Integrity ensures that no one can secretly change the valuable items, or if they try, you’ll know about it right away. For example, in your bank account, integrity makes sure that no one can change the amount of money you have. If someone tries to tamper with your account, the system will spot the change and stop it from happening. 

Availability: 

Finally, you want to make sure you can open the chest whenever you need to. If the lock breaks or something blocks your access, it’s a problem. Availability makes sure the chest—or in our case, the information and systems—are always ready and working when you need them. An example of this would be to think of a streaming service like Netflix. Even if one of their servers’ crashes, they have backups to keep everything running so people can watch movies without interruption. 

Authentication and Authorization are something we come across almost daily. These two things help decide who gets to open the treasure chest and what they’re allowed to do with it. 

Authentication: 

Authentication is like proving you have the right key to the chest. It’s the way to check who you are. In the digital world, you might prove who you are by entering a password or using your fingerprint. A good example of this is when you log into your email, you type your username and password to prove it’s really you. That’s authentication. 

Authorization: 

Authorization is what happens after the system knows who you are. Once you’ve unlocked the chest, authorization decides what you can do. Maybe you’re allowed to take a few coins, but you can’t touch the treasure map. Following the same example in the previous paragraph, after you log into your email, you can read and send your own messages. But you can’t change the whole email system or read other people’s emails because you’re not authorized to do that. 

Conclusion 

In short, authentication is about confirming your identity, and authorization is about deciding what you’re allowed to do once you’re in. Authentication asks, “Who are you?” and authorization asks, “What can you do?” These two steps, along with Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability, are key to keeping systems and information safe and secure, just like making sure the treasure stays safe and only the right people can access it.