Security Principles, Risk and Professional Conduct · Lesson 1

What happened to confidentiality, integrity and availability?

5 min read

Lesson objectives

  • Classify a security event by information property; separate an actor's identity, permissions and action record; and identify missing evidence before concluding that privacy was breached.

Begin with the asset, the authorized user, the observed action and the security property affected. Confidentiality keeps disclosure within authorized parties; integrity keeps data correct and free of improper change; availability means reliable access when needed. These properties are not attack names. Sending a grade roster to the wrong address threatens confidentiality even if the file remains accurate and available. An unauthorized grade change threatens integrity without any external disclosure. An inquiry service outage threatens availability even if the stored copy remains accurate and private. One event can affect several properties, but each label needs an observed effect or a specific indication rather than an imagined consequence.

Separate who tried to act, what that identity may do and what the system recorded. In AAA, authentication establishes the identity presented to a service, authorization decides permitted actions on a resource, and accounting records actions for later review. A correct password does not prove that its user may download every learner record. A blocked download does not mean no attempt occurred. Seek an account identifier, the policy decision on the resource, and a request record with its result. Never place a real password or access token in an exercise. Application logs can be incomplete or short lived, so a missing line does not conclusively show that no action happened.

Non-repudiation concerns reliable evidence linking an action or message to its source; a username in a screenshot is not enough. Signatures, protected records and evidence handling can help, provided the key holder and log integrity are verified. Keep this distinct from content integrity: a signature may show that a file has not changed since signing, while authority and intent remain separate questions. Privacy asks how a person's data is collected, used, disclosed and retained for appropriate purposes under the applicable context. Hiding a file alone does not answer those questions. This hypothetical lesson makes no claim about the law of an unnamed jurisdiction.

A useful decision table has four columns: property, evidence, confidence and next action. For confidentiality, record link delivery and openings, high confidence in access through the link, and uncertainty about who actually read content. For integrity, write 'no observed edit' and state the limit of that observation. For availability, record the service continuing to operate. This is more useful than a broad declaration that the system was hacked because it separates exposure from unproved effects. In a practice question, extract the facts before choosing a sweeping technical remedy; in real work, follow the organization's response plan and your authority.

Lesson summary

Classify a security event by information property; separate an actor's identity, permissions and action record; and identify missing evidence before concluding that privacy was breached.