CIA Triad.

Foundational information-security model that groups objectives into Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability. It belongs to the Compliance & Frameworks category of cybersecurity.

Foundational information-security model that groups objectives into Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability.

The CIA triad expresses the three core goals every security program must balance. Confidentiality limits access to information to authorized parties through encryption, access control, and data classification. Integrity ensures data and systems are not modified without authorization, supported by hashing, digital signatures, version control, and write-protected storage. Availability ensures authorized users can use services and data when needed, supported by redundancy, capacity planning, DDoS protection, and disaster recovery. The model is incomplete on its own; extensions such as Parkerian Hexad add Possession, Authenticity, and Utility, and modern frameworks layer Authentication, Authorization, Non-repudiation, and Privacy on top.

Defences for CIA Triad typically combine technical controls and operational practices, as detailed in the full definition above.

Common alternative names include: Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability.