The Three Major Goals of Cybersecurity for Business Organizations

What is Cybersecurity? 

The process of protecting sensitive data from attack, damage, or unauthorized access on the internet and on devices is known as cybersecurity. To safeguard data, networks, and devices against cyberattacks, a risk-free and secure environment is what cybersecurity aims to deliver. From a minor coding error to a complex risk of cloud hijacking, threats can come in many shapes and sizes. The company is helped to stay ready and foresee potential losses via threat evaluation and restoration cost projection. Therefore, it's crucial to protect sensitive data while understanding the three main cybersecurity goals for all businesses at the same time. 

In this blog post, we’ll discuss and understand what are these three major goals of cybersecurity which every business should have to comply with in their best practices. 

 Let’s Begin! 

 

What are the three major goals of cybersecurity for businesses? 

Preventing the theft or compromise of data is the fundamental objective of cybersecurity. Following are the three major goals of cybersecurity which forms a CIA Triad: - 

 

Confidentiality – keeping the data privacy confidential which means the protection of data that maintains confidentiality guarantees that only authorized people can access the information. To keep data private or secret, an organization must take certain steps. It simply refers to preserving access to data to prevent unauthorized transmission.

To do this, information access must be monitored and managed to prevent unauthorized access to data, whether done on purpose or by accident. Making ensuring that individuals without the right authority are prevented from accessing assets that are crucial to the business is a crucial part of maintaining confidentiality.

Integrity – Managing the data integrity which assures that the data is reliable and unaltered. This keeps the data in the correct shape and protects it from any incorrect mutations, preserving its reliability.        It establishes the framework for any company's valuable assets and mandates businesses provide consistent, accurate, reliable, and secure data.  

Data integrity countermeasures include encryption, hashing, digital signatures, and digital certificates issued by reputable certificate authorities (CAs) to organizations to prove their authenticity to website visitors, much like how a passport or driver's license can be used to prove someone's identity. 

Availability - Limiting access to data to just authorized users. Several factors, such as hardware failure or software problems, power outages, uncontrollable natural occurrences, and human mistakes, could compromise availability. The distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, in which a server, system, online app, or web-based service's performance is purposefully and maliciously degraded, or the system becomes completely unreachable, is probably the most well-known attack that compromises availability. 

 

All security initiatives are built on the CIA triad of availability, confidentiality, and integrity. The CIA triangle is a security paradigm that directs information security policies inside the walls of an organization or business. The three elements of this triangle are thought to be the most important security factors. When setting up a new application, building a database, or securing access to sensitive information, most organizations and corporations use the CIA criterion. To the fullest extent possible, all these security objectives must be achieved. All these elements work together, so a minor oversight could lead to a mistake. 

 

What are the best practices of implementing CIA Triad for businesses? 

 

1. Implementing Confidentiality  

• The organization's desired level of privacy should guide how data is handled. 
• MFA or 2FA (Two-Factor Authentication) should be used to encrypt data.  
• Maintain current file permissions and access control checklists. 

 

2. Implementing Integrity 

• Make sure staff members are aware of compliance and regulatory requirements to reduce human error.  
• Utilize techniques and technologies for backup and recovery.   
• Use checksums, logs, version control, access control, and security control to ensure integrity. 

 

3. Implementing Availability 

 

• Use precautionary measures like RAID, failover, and redundancy. Ensure that apps and systems are up to date.  
• Use techniques for network or server monitoring.  
• Make sure there is a BCDR plan in place in the event of a data loss event. 

 

What are the benefits of CIA Triad Model for Cybersecurity? 

Following are the three major benefits for businesses if they implement the CIA Triad Model to boost their cybersecurity: -  

• Clarity: The CIA approach emphasizes the virtue of being straightforward, accurate, and easy to grasp to reduce the likelihood of human error. 

 

• Well-Balanced: By making security experts and executives available, this model enables meeting corporate decisions and safety needs. 

 

• Open-Ended: With this paradigm, there is no long-term objective or status that any organization is pursuing, which is helpful as the organization grows, introduces new devices, or modernizes data infrastructures. 

 

 

What are the drawbacks of CIA Triad Model for Cybersecurity

Apart from the benefits as discussed above, there are some drawbacks as well associated with CIA Triad Model for businesses: - 

• Restricted: The CIA triad model is best applied when evaluating data, hence it may not be the greatest method to prevent social engineering or phishing attacks directed at employees. 

 

• Absence of Specificity: The model's simplicity may also provide a challenge for organizations that lack or lack sufficient security expertise. The idea doesn't offer enough guidance on its own to help an organization create a thorough security model. 

 

• Non-Holistic: The CIA trinity is not the only security strategy we advise using. Instead, it needs to be utilized in conjunction with other models and frameworks to help you create sound policies and reach wise decisions. 

 

Conclusion 

Hence, from the above discussion, we can conclude this blog post by saying that the most likely threat comes from people either inside or outside the business. Whether cybercriminals are attacking you maliciously with phishing emails, malware, ransomware, or social engineering attacks, it is crucial to have adequate safety measures in place and to keep your employees alert with a cyber security course and awareness training programs.  

A layer of protection is something you can employ to counter threats and lower the likelihood of harm. They can be hardware or software, but most importantly, they are management procedures that must be followed by all members of the company, including customers. 

 

Being a STQC and CERT-IN accredited business, we at Precise Testing Solution Pvt Ltd assist our client organizations in becoming cybersafe from the dangers of all kinds of major cyberthreats through our primary cybersecurity services like security testing, penetration testing and vulnerability assessment to boost their overall cybersecurity.