Understanding the CIA Triad and the Difference Between Authentication and Authorization

The CIA Triad, comprising Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability, is fundamental to cybersecurity. While often grouped together with authentication and authorization, these concepts serve distinct functions in securing systems.

Introduction
Cybersecurity frameworks are built with key concepts aimed at providing data security against a plethora of threats. The CIA Triad deals with the basics of information security—it consists of a triad of principles: Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability. Alongside these concepts, authentication and authorization help ensure that access to and modification of information is restricted to specified persons alone. The research will explain what CIA Triad is; afterward, it will discuss in brief the main differences between Authentication and Authorization.

The CIA Triad
The CIA Triad is one of those frameworks that guides the implementation of cybersecurity measures for sensitive information protection. Each of those elements in the Triad points to different aspects of information security.

Confidentiality ensures that nobody except the intended will come to know about the sensitized data. Common techniques used are encryption, user authentication, and strict access control. One such everyday example is multistage verification, better known as 2FA for online banking services, where the user needs to confirm his identity not only through a password but also through a one-time code.

Integrity: Data protection from unauthorized changes and hence error. This questions the fact that there is a warranty for the integrity of the information contained; unauthorized modification of the information could mean hard consequences. Many organizations collect integrity using checksums, backups, and version control systems since they help in unauthorized change detection and correction of the same for data restoration to its original state.

Availability: The principle of availability implies that both data and system resources are available. To achieve the above, it is important to always carry out system maintenance, implement redundancy, and come up with disaster recovery plans in the system’s development. In maintaining information availability in the event of hardware failure or even during cyberattacks, different strategies include failover systems, RAID set-ups, and high-availability clusters.

Authentication and Authorization

Although sometimes used interchangeably, the terms ‘authentication’ and ‘authorization’ go a long way in protecting a system. Both are fundamentally important to information protection but at varying levels of identity and access management. As mentioned by fortinet, “Authentication is verifying the true identity of a user or entity, while authorization determines what a user can access and ensures that a user or entity receives the right access or permissions in a system. Authentication is a prerequisite to authorization.” (

Authentication is the process used to establish the verifiable identity of a person. Referencing back to the fortinet article, It is carried out through a password, biometric, security token, keycards, etc. For example, it can be achieved using website access where the user sends his credentials using a username and password mechanism that the system uses for his authentication.

In contrast, authorization is the determination of what kind of actions an authenticated user can do. After a user is authenticated, authorization imposes additional constraints on what actions can actually be performed and what resources can be reached. For instance, in an enterprise system one has logged into, a user may be authorized to only read files while another is authorized to edit or delete such files. Ex: Entering into a Secured System Just consider, for a scenario where employees are going to reach an enterprise network that is secure. In this reference, when an employee is trying to log in, the system authenticates his identity by proving he is a valid employee through a password or a biometric scan. The system, after the authentication, knows what the employee can do through their authorization level.

Of course, though all of the staff will be able to access the network, not everyone will have any sort of clearance to amend, delete, or create any new files.

Conclusion
The CIA Triad is, therefore, concerned with sensitive information protection provided by confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Besides the triad, differentiation between authentication versus authorization plays another important role in ensuring data security. While authentication ensures the identity of the user, authorization maintains security in an environment that is digitized and safe from intrusion through the control of users’ permission to perform particular acts.

References
Chai, W. (2022, June 28). What is the CIA triad_ definition, explanation, examples – techtarget.pdf. TechTarget.
TechTarget. (2022). What is the CIA Triad? Definition, Explanation, Examples.

Authentication vs. authorization: Key differences. Fortinet. (n.d.).
Authentication vs. Authorization: Key Differences