We live in the era where everyone is surrounded by information, which is in the form of videos, blogs, social media posts and many more. One of the drawbacks of the Internet is that your information is almost public. Be it business, personal or social, everything is available at the fingertip. You should only know the right channels to access them.
However, there are two ways through which this information is accessible. One is the legitimate way, where the consent from the user is taken to use their information. Another is unauthorized or illegitimate, where the information is stolen through different means.
In this article, we will broadly talk about how this illegitimate method of sealing data can cause harm to organizations and how it can be prevented. We will discuss information security and everything you need to know about it, especially as business entities.
What is Information Security?
Information security is the framework of processes and deployment that secures all the data and information of an organization from unauthorized access. Information security consists of cybersecurity practices and tools that prevent modification, disruption, inspection, destruction, etc., of data. Information security employs research areas like mobile computing, cryptography, online social media, and cyber forensics.
Cisco defines Information security as:
Information security (InfoSec) refers to the processes and tools designed and deployed to protect sensitive business information from modification, disruption, destruction, and inspection.
How does information security achieve that? Information security achieves the objective with three fundamental principles — Confidentiality, Integrity, & Availability.
Let us understand the three principles of information security in detail.
Objectives of Information Security
Information security ensures that the information and data in the organization is safe. To ensure complete safety from phishing attacks, DNS attacks and various cyber threats, the information security must fulfill the following three objectives.
Confidentiality
The prime objective of information security is confidentiality. It ensures that business data and accessibility to organizations is prevented from unauthorized access.It helps in securing this data from someone who is not allowed to traverse the data or system. It further extends to non-disclosure of several sensitive data and holds the authorized entity responsible if such a thing happens. Confidentiality of data gets vulnerable if someone can illegally access them.
Integrity
Integrity means that the trustworthiness, accuracy, reliability and consistency of the data is maintained. An unauthorized individual is not allowed to make any changes to the original data. If there is a requirement for any change, then itbe done after getting proper authentication or through responsible individuals.
Integrity ensures that whenever modification of information is required to maintain the accuracy, there should be a written trail of documentation that allows authorized entities to perform any operation on the same.
Availability
Availability means that the information should be easily accessible by every authorized individual.. This can minimize downtime and interruptions during the completion of any other tasks.
However, there are other principles that help make information security more effective. Here are few listed below:
5 Reasons For Why You Need Information Security
Information is the source of all the advancement and disruption in the organization. From nuclear wars to information theft to phishing attacks, everything is connected to information. We are not saying that you must block every other source of information only because they appear suspicious. We are saying that put down strong Infosec rules and tools to ensure that any source should not penetrate your system and steal information illegally or cause disruptions.
Here are the 5 reasons why Information Security is important for every organization.
Information is everywhere
Businesses operate by employing huge amounts of data. This corroborates the importance of information security, which increases if they are appropriately secured and cannot be accessed by unauthorized individuals. Imagine, if businesses having all your data like medical history, Aadhar information, phone numbers, addresses, and everything under the hood that you treat as private information in your personal space get hacked.
Many people have lots of information in public space nowAttackers can leverage this information and take undue advantage. This will also give birth to a lot of threats coming your way. And, a single individual could become a loophole in the security causing a security breach.
Threats come out of nowhere
Securing information is not only for digital information but also for physical information. You have lockers at your place to keep valuable belongings like Gold and cash. Similarly, if it is something more than that, you opt for bank lockers. In the same way, information security plays the role of a locker to safeguard sensitive data.
Threats can come out of nowhere. There are known attacks like viruses, worms, and so on that have the potential to clean your data. However, there are other serious attacks like phishing, ransomware and so on. If someone sees you typing your password and memorizing it, there is a fair chance of your gmail getting hacked, just like that.
Enhanced technology, impressive hacking
Spear phishing, phishing, ransomware attacks are getting more sophisticated by each passing day. The criticality of information security is no longer a choice, but a dire necessity . Nowadays, hackers send luring emails with amazing language skills and put down CTAs, redirecting you to websites that look authentic. In all this, missing out on even the slightest of the details is going to be hazardous.
Technology is enabling everyone: the good and the bad to explore the possibilities of their ambitions. Nowadays, cyber attackers are working in a team.. They collaborate and use each other’s skill sets to thug the businesses generating ransom by exploiting information. Be careful, set up Information security practices and follow them.
Check out our case studies prepared by Kratikal that explains how these information security threats can affect your business.
Security breaches are expensive
Security breaches can cause a huge sum of money to organizations in various forms. Imagine this, your company sells insurance or sells something online. Your major business revenue comes from these customers who love shopping online. One day, your system is compromised and the website goes down. You lose customers for that one day, which might cost you a revenue of lets say 3–6 months.
How can you prevent information security threats?
Information security threats are all around us. From worms and viruses to phishing and Man-in-the-middle attacks, there are huge opportunities for hackers to enter your network and cause problems. Here are a few technologies and suggestions that can help you prevent information security attacks.
Firewalls
The very basic, but the most underrated one, firewalls can help in filtering suspicious traffic. Setting up firewalls and allowing and disallowing websites can help you to protect yourself from most of the malware. This will also help you monitor and give you traffic reports for analysis and making decisions.
Conduct awareness programs
Sometimes information security can be compromised with someone clicking on a link that arrived on the mail, even by mistake. There is nothing more correct than creating awareness in your organization through every means. These awareness programs can slowly build the understanding among your employees and they will not click on even the most legit links without checking and reassuring it twice.
Strong passwords and MFA
Strong passwords and multi-factor authentication are your go-to means to secure information inside your organization’s network. Maintaining strict standards for these two can help you secure a huge deal of information from the threat actors. Not only that, you can also achieve a certain level of confidentiality with data.
Read more about Cybersecurity Practices
Most email service providers like Gmail have adopted a MFA that allows them to maintain security for every user since the codes and authentications need to be done from smartphones. A password with name, birth date, name of your partner, birth place and anything more obvious should be avoided. You can use password generators or password managers to keep the password safe.
Access control
Allow information access to authorized persons only. This will allow you to be always on the top of any modification done to the data and also helps in ensuring that there is an owner who can be held responsible Above all that, it helps maintain the CIA triad that ensures information security at the highest level.
Information security is not a choice in today’s world of technology. You cannot leave information security to chance since it is a dangerous thing to do, especially for businesses. All we have to say here is, if you are a startup owner, entrepreneur or even a freelancer, you should take care of all things good and bad about the internet.
Secured Organizations Are Built by Information Security
How often you have come across a situation where you felt more exposed in digital world? Your data and information might be at risk and that’s why you need to incorporate resilient information security framework to safeguard yourself and your organization against possible cyber attacks.
