What is information security?

Information security safeguards sensitive data against unauthorized activities such as inspection, modification, recording, disturbance, or damage. The purpose is to protect and maintain the privacy of critical data such as customer account information, financial information, or intellectual property.

Difference Between Cybersecurity & Information Security

Information security (InfoSec) helps businesses to safeguard both digital and analog data. Information security (InfoSec) covers social media, mobile computing, cryptography, and networks that house personal, financial, and business data. And from the other side, cybersecurity protects both organized and valuable data, but only against dangers that originate from the internet.

Cyber security professionals are concerned with the prevention of active threats or Advanced Persistent Threats (APT). Information security professionals are responsible for policies, processes, and organizational roles and responsibilities that ensure confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

What are the Principles of Information Security?

Information Security's three primary principles are:

Confidentiality

Confidentiality measures are used to keep information from being disclosed without permission. The confidentiality principle is designed to keep personal information private and to ensure that only those individuals who need it to do their job can access it.

Integrity

Integrity refers to ensuring that data is reliable, consistent, and accurate throughout its entire existence. It must be ensured that data cannot be manipulated by unauthorized individuals and that it cannot be changed while in transit.

Availability

Availability means that authorized parties should have constant and easy access to information. This covers effectively maintaining hardware, technical infrastructure, and systems that store and show data.

Types of Information Security

Application security - Application security strategies protect applications from vulnerabilities and help to detect and correct bugs. If not secured, these vulnerabilities can provide a way into your broader systems and put your data at risk.

Infrastructure security - Infrastructure components are protected from unauthorized access and interference by security measures. If security measures are not applied, it is more possible that private information will be compromised due to these components' growing interconnection.

Cloud security - Although it focuses on cloud-based or cloud-connected components and information, cloud security offers comparable protections to application and infrastructure security. In order to focus on the vulnerabilities that result from Internet-facing services and shared settings, such as public clouds, cloud security provides additional measures and technologies.

Cryptography - Encryption is a method used in cryptography to secure data by masking its contents. When data is encrypted, only users with the right encryption key can access it. Users cannot understand the data if they do not have this key.

Incident Response - Incident response is a set of methods and instruments for identifying, investigating, and responding to threats or harmful events. It prevents or lessens harm that attacks, natural disasters, malfunctioning systems, or human mistakes can do to systems.

Vulnerability management - Vulnerability management is the technique that aims to minimize the risks inherent in an application or system. The purpose of this procedure is to identify vulnerabilities and fix them before problems are made public or exploited.

Disaster recovery - Disaster recovery plans protect your company from loss or harm caused by unplanned circumstances. For instance, single points of failure, natural calamities, or ransomware. Disaster recovery often includes strategies for recovering data, restoring systems, and restarting operations again.

Types of Information Security Threats

• Insider threats
• Viruses and worms
• Botnets
• Drive-by download attacks
• Phishing attacks
• Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks
• Ransomware
• Exploit kits
• Advanced persistent threat attacks
• Malvertising

What is an ISMS (Information Security Management System)?

An information security management system (ISMS) is a systemized approach to protecting information assets from threats and vulnerabilities. It includes a set of security controls to protect the confidentiality, availability, and integrity of data. ISMS protects organizations' confidential, personal, and sensitive data from being compromised. By designing, implementing, managing, and maintaining an ISMS, organizations can ensure that their data is safe from unauthorized access. The requirements of an ISMS are specified in ISO 27001, an international security standard.

Author

Sonali Thakur

Associate - Sales and Marketing

RiskPro India

(July 2022)