Any company, enterprise, institution or organization in the world that handles important data must emphasize the security of that data, in other words, it must have a good approach to information security.
This so called information security implies the protection of any kind of data or records that are important to keep private, as it could be for example in the case of a company the data of its customers, sales figures, credit card numbers etc.
Thanks to the latest advances in technology, information is increasingly secure, since through modern systems it is possible to avoid deception and unwanted access, making it possible for only the desired personnel to have access to a certain set of data.
What is Information Security (Infosec)?
Information security can be defined as the rules and techniques applied to keep certain information safe and within the limits set by the company or organization that is in charge of handling such data.
It is worth mentioning that information security (infosec) has been evolving throughout history. Although it is a concept closely related to computer science today, this was logically not always the case.
For many hundreds of years, various methods have been used to protect valuable information and data, perhaps the most widely used being encryption, which in the past consisted of storing information in an encrypted form, i.e. not written in ordinary language, but in such a way that a key was needed to be able to understand what had been written.
Objectives
As we have already said, the objective of information security is to protect the information or data that is designated and to prevent it from falling into the hands of people who are not authorized to use it.
In order to achieve this task, companies that have this kind of system adopt different types of measures and techniques, so that the information remains protected and cannot be stolen, manipulated, erased, etc.
Nowadays the right information can be very dangerous in the wrong hands, therefore it is necessary to define three aspects so that the information can be classified:
- The first of these aspects is how critical the information is, that is, how indispensable it can be to a company, organization or individual.
- The second aspect is the value that the information has, since in some cases it can be used in a way that harms or benefits others.
- The third aspect is sensitivity, the information must be accessible only to those who have sufficient authorization to do so.
Types of Information Security
- Application security
Currently most attacks on a computer system or a website are carried out by the application itself, i.e. it is not targeted against the system or its network. The applications that a company may develop must be extremely secure, since it is there that an attack will try to carry out its objectives first, since it is the first layer of interaction and the most accessible, often being public.
- Cloud Security
Cloud security refers to the practices that are carried out to protect information and systems that are based on cloud computing. This type of security is similar to traditional computing, although it has the advantages of the cloud, such as lower operating costs, better resource utilization, lower cost per resource and much faster scalability.
- Cryptography
Cryptography, encoding or encryption is the name we can give to a set of techniques that are used so that certain data can be read only by those who have the necessary key. Those who do not possess the necessary key to read the data that is encrypted will not be able to understand what they are seeing, while those who do possess such knowledge will be able to read it easily.
- Infrastructure Security
These are the techniques and regulations used to protect an infrastructure of systems and services. In general, infrastructure security can be divided into different layers, such as: hardware, system software, user management, cloud storage systems, communication and network systems and finally operations systems.
- Incident Response
The response to an IT security incident is very important, because if there is a case where the security of a system is violated, it must be possible to respond to this incident in a fast, forceful and efficient way. It is important that the response to incidents is planned in advance, so that it is possible to work more effectively without having to improvise on the spot.
- Vulnerability management
There are different methods that are used to manage the vulnerabilities that an organization or business may encounter. The first thing is system identification: vulnerable systems must be identified so that they can be prioritized.
As we have seen, information security is a concept that covers many different areas and is developed by carrying out different practices and based on different rules or regulations. It aims to prevent the leakage, theft and manipulation of any type of data or information that could be considered as critical, of high value or very sensitive.
Today, information security is a concept closely related to cybersecurity, however the latter applies only to security in computer systems, while information security applies to any area that involves the storage of information or data that must remain private.