Introduction to Information Security – Free Udemy Courses

Information Security is not only about securing information from unauthorized access. Information Security is the practice of preventing unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, inspection, recording, or destruction of information.

Information can be physical or electronic. Information can be anything like Your details or we can say your profile on social media, your data on your mobile phone, your bio-metrics, etc. This Information Security spans so many research areas like Cryptography, Mobile Computing, Cyber Forensics, Online Social Media, etc.

Information Security programs are built around 3 objectives, commonly known as CIA – Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability.

Cryptography is a method of protecting information and communications through the use of codes so that only those for whom the information is intended can read and process it. The prefix “crypt-” means “hidden” or “vault” — and the suffix “-graphy” stands for “writing.” This short course will run you through a few of the most important cryptographic protocols.

1. Confidentiality – means information is not disclosed to unauthorized individuals, entities and processes. For example, if we say I have a password for my Gmail account but someone saw it while I was doing a login into my Gmail account. In that case, my password has been compromised and Confidentiality has been breached.
2. Integrity – means maintaining the accuracy and completeness of data. This means data cannot be edited in an unauthorized way. For example, if an employee leaves an organization then in that case data for that employee in all departments like accounts, should be updated to reflect status to JOB LEFT so that data is complete and accurate in addition to this only authorized person should be allowed to edit employee data.
3. Availability – means information must be available when needed. For example, if one needs to access information of a particular employee to check whether the employee has outstood the number of leaves, in that case, it requires collaboration from different organizational teams like network operations, development operations, incident response, and policy/change management.
   Denial of service attack is one of the factors that can hamper the availability of information.