July 5, 2024

Jeff Shirk

Transparent Books

Cybersecurity Foundation: Defining Network Security

Introduction

In this post, we’ll discuss the three main areas of network security: confidentiality, integrity and availability. We’ll look at how each one works and why it’s important for cybersecurity.

Network security is a broad term that refers to the protection of assets and data on computer networks and Internet-connected devices.

Network security is a broad term that refers to the protection of assets and data on computer networks and Internet-connected devices. Network security is a subset of information security, which includes protecting non-networked computers from malicious actors as well as securing data stored in those systems. Network security also encompasses cyber warfare tactics used by nation states against each other or terrorist groups targeting civilians with cyber attacks such as ransomware.

Network security refers to technologies used to protect networks (and the data they contain) from unauthorized access or attack by hackers, viruses and malware through firewalls and intrusion detection systems (IDS). Firewalls are software products that prevent unauthorized users from accessing your network while IDS monitors traffic passing through it for suspicious activity such as hacking attempts which could lead an attack on your system if left unchecked.”

The three main areas of network security are confidentiality, integrity and availability.

Network security is about protecting the confidentiality, integrity and availability of data.

Confidentiality refers to the protection of information from unauthorized access. It’s important for companies because it allows them to keep proprietary information safe from competitors who could use it against them in their business practices or sell it off to third parties.

Integrity refers to preventing unauthorized changes in data that might lead someone else into thinking they have more rights than they actually do (e.g., changing an employee record so that a person appears eligible for a promotion). This kind of attack can be especially damaging if done on an individual basis; imagine how much worse it would be if hackers were able to change all your credit card numbers at once!

Confidentiality ensures that no unauthorized parties can access data or systems.

Confidentiality ensures that no unauthorized parties can access data or systems. Confidentiality can be achieved by encrypting data, which is the process of transforming information using an algorithm to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing a decryption key. Data encryption is used in many applications, including digital banking and e-commerce transactions and military communications systems.

Integrity ensures that only authorized parties can change data or systems.

Integrity ensures that only authorized parties can change data or systems. It’s about making sure that information is protected from unauthorized changes, tampering, corruption and misuse by malicious users.

Integrity is what keeps your bank account safe from hackers who might try to transfer money out of it without your knowledge or permission. It also protects you from identity theft; if someone steals an employee ID badge at work and uses it to gain access to sensitive information inside the company network, integrity would prevent them from making any changes (like deleting files) because they don’t have permission to do so.

Availability ensures that users can access systems when they want and use them as intended.

The availability of a network is the ability for users to access systems when they want and use them as intended. It also ensures that the network runs efficiently and is available at all times.

Availability can be achieved through several methods:

  • Fault tolerance – this involves having multiple copies of data so any single failure won’t cause a service outage. For example, if one web server goes down, there are others ready to take its place; or if a router fails, another immediately takes over its duties until repairs can be made (fault-tolerant designs).
  • Load balancing – distributing workloads across different servers so no single server becomes overloaded with requests (load-balanced designs). This can be achieved through hardware solutions such as routers with built-in load balancing features; software solutions such as Apache’s mod_lb module; or cloud computing platforms like Amazon Web Services Elastic Load Balancing feature that automatically distributes incoming traffic across multiple EC2 instances based on their current capacity levels

Protecting against threats requires an understanding of how they work and what you need to do to defend your organization against them.

As you may have guessed, protecting against threats requires an understanding of how they work and what you need to do to defend your organization against them. In order to understand how threats work, we first need to look at the different types of attacks that can be used by hackers. An attack is any action taken by a hacker or group of hackers in order to compromise your network security. The most common type of attack is referred to as an exploit: this refers specifically

to situations where vulnerabilities are exploited by malicious actors with malicious intent (i.e., criminals).

There are three main categories of exploit: software exploits; hardware exploits; and misconfigurations/misuse issues related specifically

to software applications themselves (including web browsers). We’ll cover each one below!

Conclusion

Network security is a complex, multi-faceted problem. The goal of this article is to help you understand some of the basics of network security and how they relate to threats like ransomware. There are many other aspects–including business continuity planning and data backup strategies–that need to be considered when planning your cybersecurity strategy.