Its no secret information is the major asset for every business. Every business carries confidential information such as customer’s contact details or legal statements. The common problem faced by every organization is ‘treats’ and ‘hackers’. If you’re running a business then you might have faced the challenges from hackers. If you’ve not yet encountered any security attack, then you’re blessed. But you can’t just sit ideal, not every day is your day. Hackers may access your authentic data on some other day.
Information security is a collection of strategies which is specially developed and executed to protect confidential information from unauthorized access or misuse.
In other words,
Information security is defined as the practice of allowing access to individual or business information to people in an organization. Make a note, though you’re a part of the company, you can’t access every document. Because employee contact details can be accessed by an administrative team. Daily reports can be accessed by a team leader or managers.
Thanks to today’s digital technology, there are security tools help to protect your data. That is Information Security.
The small and large business employs a special team for security. This dedicated security is responsible to design and implement the enterprise’s information security program.
If you’re a network engineer, then you might hear about information security several times right. Yes, it is often indicated as ‘InfoSec’. In simple words, information security refers to the processes and software tools that are specially designed and implemented to protect business data from unauthorised access, disruption and inspection.
Difference between cybersecurity and information security
Many people often get confused between cybersecurity and information security. These are treated as buzzwords in security. These are used as synonyms, goes hand-in-hand in ‘Security Terminology’.
Cybersecurity is the process of protecting confidential data from third-party sources on the internet. A cybersecurity expert is responsible to provide security for – internet, intranet and servers. Also, assures that the information can be accessed by authorized people.
Information security is considered as protecting data systems from unauthorized person. It prevents the hacker from accessing, modification or stolen the information.
Businesses and individual that use laptop and desktop can describe their requirement for using information security in systems – 3 common requirements.
- Confidentiality
- Integrity
- Availability
Confidentiality
Confidentiality plays a major role in information security.
Have you just shared a legal document to an unauthorized person? Then you’re on risk. Protecting important document from a hacker is the major concern for entrepreneurs.
Confidentiality indicates to protecting important data from being accessed by a third person or unauthorized parties. Let’s keep it simple – the people who have gained authorization access to confidential information.
For example – Bank records
You’re responsible to access your bank information. Of course, the bank employee also has access to your bank details. Those employees assist you while transaction and transferring money. But nobody else can access your bank details.
Never ever share the confidential information to the third party. Because when you fail to maintain confidentiality then everything gets ruins. These type of failure is considered as a breach (remedied). When you share top-secret to untrusted person, they will reveal it to everyone. If your bank details are been posted on public sites, then everyone gets a chance to know your bank information.
Integrity
Integrity indicated – assuring the authenticity of data. It simply means that information is not accessed by an unauthorized person or third parties. As a result, the data is not altered and deleted. As a result, the information is safe and secure.
You’re running an e-commerce website and you offer fashion and electronic products. Just imagine a hacker visited your website and altered the cost of your product. That means they can buy anything from your website at their price choice. In this case, the cost of your product has been modified by an unauthorized person. Ultimately when you confirm the order from the hacker, you end-up with loss.
Availability
Availability indicates that data or information is available for an authorized person at any time. If the hacker isn’t able to negotiate the first two elements (confidentiality and integrity) of information security. Then the hacker can implement other security attacks such as a “denial of service”. By implementing this attack, the server may perform low. Making the website or blog unavailable to authorised users due to lack of ‘availability’.
What is meant by security?
An attack is defined as an information security threat that involves an attempt to obtain, delete, update, modify, reveal confidential information without permission. This can happen for a small, medium and large business.
There are two types of attack in Information Security
- Active attack
- Passive attack
An active attack is a process of attempting to modify system resources. Also, effect their ongoing operations. It involves a few alterations of the information stream. Sometimes, an active attack can create a false statement. There are various types of active attack such as masquerade, modification of message, repudiation, reply and denial of service.
A passive attack attempt to acquire or make usage of data from the system. But the passive attack doesn’t affect system resources. These type of attacks are eavesdropping. They monitor the ongoing transmission.
The goal of passive attack is to access and alter the information that is being transmitted. Types of passive attacks are traffic analysis and release of message content.
Types of Information Security
As technology is growing every day. The types of information security are extending its wings. The most common types of Information Security are
- Application security
- Cloud security
- Cryptography
- Infrastructure security
- Incident response
- Vulnerability management
Advantages of information security
Information security is the process of protecting authorised data saved to a desktop or server.
- Adapting information security strategies are simple and flexible to utilize.
- If the information in the document is less sensitive then protect the data with passwords.
- For sensitive information, you can install firewalls or biometric devices and detection scanners.
- Information security keeps important data from unauthorized persons.
- Considering the government, information security keeps legal information out of hackers and terrorist.
- It protects authorized users valuable data while accessing and when it’s stored.
How to secure your network?
Have you heard about security tools like firewalls or detection devices? Many times right. Many organization prefer these kinds of tools to ensure information security. With the advancement in technology, there are more security tools are been introduced. Among all, DDoS – Distributed denial of service attacks, these type of attacks can be effected at a deeper level.
Following are key security tricks to protect your information:
- Educate your employees about cybersecurity hackers and threats.
- Keep software updated
- Safeguard your WiFi
- Use a virtual private network
- Use two-factor authentication