The 4 Basic Components of IT Security

What are the essentials of network security? This question was recently answered at a security event by VP of Gartner Neil MacDonald, "Information security was never about device lockdown, or dictating applications, or building firewalls. It was always about protecting the confidentiality, the integrity, the authenticity, the availability of information." Let's break down these four basic components of IT security.

Data Confidentiality
The protection of sensitive information is the driving force behind network security. While all of your files are valuable, you will want to take extra security precautions with your confidential data. Protecting confidential data is necessary when you have multiple users accessing your network. You need to have protections in place so that only the people with clearance to view confidential files will be able to see them. For example, only the human resources department should be able to see information pertaining to an employee's health issues. If confidential information like this is leaked because you don't have adequate network protections in place, then your company may be liable for a breach of trust.

What kind of information qualifies as confidential? Here's a list of six examples provided by Cornell University.

• Information that uniquely identifies people.
• Information used for payments and reimbursements.
• Information providing employment benefits.
• Information supporting business-related travel expenses.
• Information used to understand the financial or health status of a person.
• Information used to fulfill government obligations.

Data Integrity
Data integrity is all about assuring and maintaining both the consistency and the accuracy of data over the course of the data's life-cycle. With a well-maintained IT infrastructure, you should be able to access and edit a file created in the 90's. When a network is poorly maintained, information can be altered and files tampered with, making them useless. This compromise in data can happen at the expense of a hasty upgrade, hardware failure, system sabotage, or the classic human error.

Data Authenticity
Software manufacturers have worked hard to make their offering perfect. Whenever software is hacked or modified, the data is no longer authentic and the application has lost its guarantee to work. Strong network security will protect data authenticity, ensuring that the code your PC reads is the original code. Protecting data authenticity means safeguarding your applications from malware that rewrites code. It's important to make data authenticity a priority, because without this protection, a hacker can alter a program's code which violates the manufacturer's service agreement. Theoretically, an alteration in code could land your business in legal trouble.

Data Availability
Data that can't be accessed is worthless. Failed security and a lack of data backup are the biggest reasons for data loss. Data availability can be negatively affected by something as minor as a disorganized file path, or something as drastic as a disaster that causes data loss. The best way to protect the availability of your data is to have a Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) solution, available from Computerware. A BDR can virtualize all of your data over the cloud so that it will be available to your business after a disaster.

Digital security is a complicated industry, but when you break it down, it's all about data confidentiality, integrity, authenticity, and availability. One of the best solutions you can get for your company's network that protects all four of these data categories is a Unified Threat Management (UTM) tool from Computerware. Call Computerware at (703) 821-8200 to learn more about UTM, BDR, and more security solutions that will protect your data from Internet threats, internal mistakes, and other activities that can compromise your data.