Describing Network Security with CIA Triad

Introduction to Network Security

Network Security is a process of ensuring usability and integrity of data and network. There can be used both hardware and software technologies for this. Network Security is there to stop entering different threats to your system and stop spreading them on your network

Managing security means that you have to have an idea about what are the risks and how much risk that you are willing to accept for your organization. There can be different levels of security for different organizations. E.g.: - Banks have high level of security as they deal with lots of money and they have a liability to protect those money, but in a simple textile shop there will not be that much of security.

You need to remember that any network cannot be 100% secure. So, there is no point for targeting that much of security for your organization. You need to find out how much risk is there for your organization, how much resources can be allocated for security of your organization, what are the main vulnerabilities existing with organization, then you can decide the appropriate level of security for your organization. Network security is there to secure your network, protect It from threats and monitor network related operations. The most common and simple way of protecting a network resource is by giving it a unique name and a good password.

Advantages of Network Security

Protect data

Network Security keep its eye for unauthorized access and stops it. In a network there can be lots of confidential data related to employees and organizational secrets. If anybody able to hack into the network and get those data it will be a disaster. So there should be Network security to protect those data from intruders. 

Prevents cyber attack

If there is an internet connection, there is a risk for the network. There are hackers and other intruders who can snoop into a network and also there are viruses, ransomwares etc. Network Security can prevent these types of attacks and protect your network

Levels of access

Network Security can be used to give different level of access authority for different users. E.g.: - Management level access, Operational Level access etc. The authentication of the user is followed by the authorization technique where it is checked whether the user is authorized to access that resource. There can be password protected folders to control access. The Network Security software knows who can access a certain resource.

Centrally controlled

Network administrator is responsible for controlling Network Security software. So other people cannot mess with security software. Most of the times this software is installed on a server where there is no internet connection. So, the virus attacks and intruders cannot simply invade network.

Centralized updates

A user should perform Operating system updates, utility updates and antivirus software updates regularly, but practically it not happening. So Network admin can use centralized security software to give those updates to computers and devices without even telling users.

CIA Triad

Confidentiality, integrity and availability, also known as the CIA triad, is a model designed to guide policies for information security within an organization. The model is also sometimes referred to as the AIC triad to avoid misunderstanding with the Central Intelligence Agency. The components CIA triad are the key components of security.

Confidentiality

This describe about the measures that can be taken to secure sensitive data from falling to wrong people, and also it says that right persons can get those data without any issues. Data can be categorized according to their importance and security measures can be implemented according to those categories.

Integrity

This describes that data should always keep its consistency, accuracy and reliability. Unauthorized people should not be able to change the data. Data cannot be changed during a transit. You can use file permissions and user access controls to do this. Version controls also can be used to secure data from larger changes and deletion. Electromagnetic pulse or server crashes may cause on data loss and corruption, So you need to keep a way of tracking data to identify those issues. Redundancies and backups must be kept. There can be used checksums and cryptographic checksums to verify the integrity of data.

Availability

Hardware and software of the entire network must keep up to date. That means you should do regular updates and perform necessary upgrades. You must maintain all hardware properly and do required repairs immediately and maintain a software conflicts free operating system environment.