What is Information Security (InfoSec)?

Aug 16, 2022 / Kron

Information security, often referred to as InfoSec, refers to a set of applications allowing you to protect sensitive data stacks against unauthorized access and modifications and thus enabling you to make your IT infrastructure more secure. Information security, one of the critical agenda items of the post-industrial society that experiences the informatization process deeply in both daily life practices and the business world, aims to keep digital data secure not only during storing but also when transmitting between different sources.

When the efficient role that the digital transformation plays in ensuring the sustainability of business models and flows is considered, it is also seen how important information security, a part of digital transformation, is for ensuring the said sustainability as well. For this reason, in order to prevent data breach incidents and to keep sensitive information access under control, it is vital to have a comprehensive data security policy and accordingly advanced security systems.

In this article, we will put forward a general framework of information security and go through the basic features of an advanced information security ecosystem.

What is Information Security (InfoSec)?

Information security that the companies turn to in order to prevent data leak incidents is essentially cybersecurity policies developed in order to protect the IT systems where sensitive data is retained from unauthorized access, use, changes and destruction that may cause an interruption in the workflow. These policies support the availability of information significantly.

Such policies and security products to be used pursuant to such policies are of vital importance in terms of access security and the availability of information. Information security applications that allow you to monitor any activities of your IT infrastructure in real-time by ensuring data integrity and information privacy are one of the main solutions to the data disclosure problems. Not only do they prevent unauthorized access to the data on your IT network, but such systems also prevent data corruption, alteration, disclosure, and destruction. In addition, InfoSec solutions optimize the control of the IT network and make your IT infrastructure strong in terms of data security by ensuring that you are on your guard for the possibility of a cyberattack.

What are the Three Fundamental Principles of Information Security?

Information security policies employed in order to preclude attack vectors created by cyber threat sources circle around three fundamental principles called the CIA triad (Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability). If information security policies that should consist of confidentiality, integrity, and availability principles lack any of such three principles, significant problems may arise during operations.

Let's drill down the three fundamental principles of information security with vital importance to data privacy and cast light on the basic features an InfoSec policy must include.

Confidentiality

Confidentiality, which is the first principle that comes to mind when speaking of information security, relates to who has access to what data and to what extent. To put it in a different way, if only the users with privileged access authorization can access sensitive data on your IT network, then the confidentiality principle is achieved. In order for the confidentiality principle to function properly, you should be able to detect who attempts to access sensitive data stacks and personal data indexes. After identifying the users attempting access, you should deny the access requests of those without a privileged access authorization and review your entire access network. Following the unauthorized access attempts, you should check the list of users holding a privileged access authorization and, if required, reconfigure the list. The principle of confidentiality forms the basis of information security policies, in particular, on the matters such as preventing authentication attacks, protecting passwords of privileged accounts, and non-disclosure of the data that needs to be confidential.

Integrity

The principle of integrity, helping us to prevent data from being modified by mistake or maliciously, enables the data stacks to be kept in correct locations. A number of different factors providing confidentiality in information security policies pave the way for the implementation of the principle of integrity. Considering the fact that a hacker can't modify data he is unable to access, it is possible to define information confidentiality as the basis of information integrity. On the other hand, it is useful to make use of different tools in order to build a comprehensive integrity principle. You can authenticate your data by checksums and perform frequent backup and restoring operations if you need, through integrity and version control software. This principle, which embodies the concepts of non-repudiation and protection of data integrity, enables you to prove that you are retaining the data in accordance with the rules and properly under the legal obligations on the protection of personal data.

Availability

The availability defined as the mirror image of confidentiality is fundamental to the two-factor authentication approach. To put it in a different way, while you supervise and manage who can't access the data on your IT network thanks to the principle of confidentiality, with the principle of availability, you determine for which users you will assign the privileged access authorization. When you have an advanced data availability infrastructure, you can easily match network and data processing resources with the proper business volume and create business operations accordingly and also avoid the problem of disclosure of data that should remain confidential in such a way as to correctly identify the users to whom you will grant privileged access.

What are the Types of Information Security?

When getting help during the establishment of an information security policy, there are 6 different types among which you can choose based on your company's needs and IT infrastructure. Going into the InfoSec types in detail and thus enabling you to act as per your needs may be a good start for the selection phase.

Application security: This type comprising web and mobile application security helps you to identify security vulnerabilities in APIs and take precaution accordingly. Security vulnerabilities in APIs may be the first step that a cyber attacker would use to attack your IT network. For this reason, application security is quite important in terms of InfoSec environmental defense.
Cloud security: Considering the fact that today's workflows are mainly conducted on cloud systems, you should make sure that your organization's operational processes are isolated in a cloud environment and furnished with privileged access authorizations. Cloud security, which is a type of InfoSec, ensures the security of your company's data by creating an isolated and secure cloud medium.
Cryptography: Cryptography, known as the encryption method of the data transferred to the network or pending data, is vital in terms of data privacy and integrity. Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is one of the important international standards in cryptography and digital signatures are one of the components commonly used in this standard.
Infrastructure security: It is necessary to secure data centers when creating an InfoSec policy. Infrastructure security protects the servers, computers and mobile devices connected to your IT network, and particularly the data centers. In addition, it is possible to secure internal and other external networks through infrastructure security.
Incident response: Incident response enables you to control potential misbehaviour in real-time, as well as identify them in advance and take measures accordingly. The said type, which is important in terms of preventing data breaches, makes it easy for IT staff to create an emergency response plan.
Security vulnerability management: Enabling you to control your IT network 7/24, this type helps you to identify security vulnerabilities and improve such vulnerabilities against risks. In case you opt for it together with incident response, you will be able to easily identify both any misbehavior and security vulnerabilities on the network.

The Way to Ensure Information Security is Through PAM Solutions

An inevitable step of information security operations aiming to ensure the security and confidentiality of sensitive data such as personal data, customer account details, financial data and information bearing intellectual property rights is ensuring access security. As a matter of fact, protecting the information of the users who access networks bearing sensitive data and controlling and recording any transactions that such persons perform on the database they accessed are vital for information security.

Our Privileged Access Management product, Single Connect, which is a cybersecurity solution that can easily integrate with other software products deployed to the IT infrastructures of companies thanks to its modular structure, plays a key role in information security. Single Connect, as a Privileged Access Management (PAM) product, embodies such solutions that are indispensable for information security systems.