Information

Information can be defined as processed or organized data that conveys meaning to the recipient.

It is the result of processing raw data through various operations such as sorting, analyzing, summarizing, and
interpreting.

Key attributes of information

Meaningful

Accurate

Structured

Dynamic

What is Information Security?

Information security is the practice of protecting information by mitigating information risks.

It involves the protection of information systems and the information processed, stored and transmitted
by these systems from unauthorized access, disclosure ,modification or destruction.

Application of Information Security

Risk management- Identifying and mitigating potential security threats

Authentication- Verifying the identity of users accessing information systems.

Disaster recovery-Developing and implementing a plan to quickly recover from data loss

advantages
Improved security- organizations can better protect their most critical assets from unauthorized
access

Improved efficiency- employees can quickly and easily determine the appropriate handling and
access

Disadvantages

Complexity- Developing and maintaining system can be complex and time-consuming,

Maintenance- it should be reviewed and updated frequently, if not it can become outdated

Tools of Information Security:

Authentication: This is the foremost important tool , The process of authentication is when the system
identifies someone with one or more than one factors

Access Control: After ensuring that the right individual gets the access to information, one has to
make sure that only the appropriate information reaches him or her.
Encryption: Sometimes the information is transmitted over the internet so the risk of anyone accessing
it increases and now the tools have to be strong to avoid it.

Need Of Information Security

Protecting Confidential Information: Confidential information, such as personal data, financial
records must be kept secure to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands.

Preventing Cyber-attacks: Information security helps prevent the attacks like viruses, malware,
phishing, and ransomware.

Maintaining Business Continuity: Information security helps ensure that critical business operations
can continue in the event of a disaster, such as a cyber-attack or natural disaster.

Complying with Regulations: Many industries are subject to strict regulations Failure to comply with
these regulations can result in legal and financial penalties

Principle of Information System Security

Confidentiality: The main essence of this feature lies in the fact that only the authorized personnel
should be allowed the access to the data and system. The unauthorised individuals must be kept away
from the information. This is ensured by checking the authorisation of every individual who tries to
access the database.

Integrity: Integrity is ensured when the presented data is untouched or rather, is not altered by any
unauthorized power.

Availability: This feature means that the information can be accessed and modified by any authorized
personnel within a given time frame.

Data security

Data security is the practice of protecting digital information from unauthorized access,
corruption, destruction, modification, theft, or disclosure. It includes hardware security, software
security, and legal security.

five essential components of data security:

authentication

access control

data encryption

data backup and recovery

security monitoring and threat detection

Data security is important because data is the lifeblood of every organization. It informs
decision-making, improves operations, boosts customer service
 Risk Management?
Risk management in data security is the practice of identifying and minimizing potential risks to data,
and users.

Risk management involves:

 Risk identification: Understanding the organization's assets, the threats they face, and the potential
consequences of those threats
 Risk reduction: Identifying, assessing, and reducing risks to an acceptable level
The five basic techniques of risk management are:

Avoidance: Many times it is not possible to completely avoid risk but the possibility should not
be overlooked

Retention: At times, based on the likely frequency the risks presented, retaining the risk or a
portion of the risk may be cost-effective even though other methods of handling the risk are
available

Spreading: Duplication of records and documents and then storing the duplicate copies in a
different location is an example of spreading risk.

Loss Prevention and Reduction: When risk cannot be avoided, the effect of loss can often be
minimized in terms of frequency and severity.

Transfer: In some cases risk can be transferred to others, usually by contract.

physical security

Physical security is a critical aspect of data security that focuses on protecting physical assets, facilities, and
infrastructure from unauthorized access, theft.

some key components of physical security

Access Control

Perimeter Security

Surveillance and Monitoring

Inventory and Asset Management

Assets
an asset refers to any piece of digital information, system, resource, or entity that holds value to an organization
and requires protection from unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction. Protecting these assets
is paramount to ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data

types of assets
Data Assets: These are the most critical assets in terms of data security. They include various types of data such
as:

Personal Identifiable Information (PII): Information that can be used to identify an individual,

Protected Health Information (PHI): Health-related information that is protected

Financial Data: Data related to financial transactions

Hardware Assets: Physical devices and equipment used to store, process, or transmit data, including:
 Servers: Computing devices that host applications, databases, and other services.
 Computers: Workstations, laptops, tablets, and other end-user devices
 Networking Equipment: Routers, switches, firewalls
 Storage Devices: Hard drives, solid-state drives (SSDs), tape drives

Software Assets: Applications, operating systems, and other software components used to manage and
manipulate data, including:
 Operating Systems: Software that manages hardware resources and provides a platform for running
other applications.
 Productivity Software: Office suites, email clients, web browsers
 Security Software: Antivirus programs, firewalls, intrusion detection systems
Human Assets: People within an organization who play a role in managing, accessing, or protecting data

Infrastructure Assets: Physical and virtual infrastructure components that support data processing and storage

asset classification

Asset classification is the process of categorizing assets based on their value, criticality, sensitivity, and other
attributes to determine appropriate security controls, access levels, and protection measures.

Criticality: Assets are classified based on their importance to the organization's operations and objectives.

Sensitivity: Assets are classified based on the sensitivity of the information they contain or handle.

Confidentiality: This classification focuses on the level of confidentiality required for assets.

Availability: Assets are classified based on the importance of ensuring uninterrupted access and availability.

Lifecycle Stage: Assets can also be classified based on their lifecycle stage, including development, production,
testing, and retirement phases.

Security Goals
The objective of data security is to protect information from being stolen, compromised or attacked. Data
security can be measured by at least one of three goals-

1. Protect the confidentiality of data.

2. Preserve the integrity of data.
 3. Promote the availability of data for authorized users.

Attacks- In data security, various types of attacks can threaten the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of
data and information systems. These attacks are done by malicious actors with the intent to gain unauthorized
access, steal sensitive information

Types of Attacks
Phishing: Phishing attacks involve the use of deceptive emails, websites, or messages to trick individuals into
providing sensitive information

Malware: Malware, short for malicious software, refers to any software designed to damage a computer system
without the owner's consent

Denial-of-Service (DoS) It is an attack which meant to make a server or network resource unavailable to the
users. It accomplishes this by flooding the target with traffic or sending it information that triggers a crash.

Man-in-the-Middle : MitM attacks involve intercepting and eavesdropping on communication between two
parties to steal sensitive information or manipulate data.

Brute force

It is a type of attack which uses a trial and error method. This attack generates a large number of guesses and
validates them to obtain actual data like user password and personal identification number.

Session Hijacking It is a security attack on a user session over a protected network. Web applications create
cookies to store the state and user sessions. By stealing the cookies, an attacker can have access to all of the
user data.

Trojan horse

It is a malicious program that occurs unexpected changes to computer setting and unusual activity, even when
the computer should be idle.

Worm

It is a type of malware whose primary function is to replicate itself to spread to uninfected computers

Zero-Day Exploits: Zero-day exploits target vulnerabilities in software, hardware, or firmware that are unknown
to the vendor or have not yet been patched.

security Mechanism
security mechanism can be termed as is set of processes that deal with recovery from security attack.
Various mechanisms are designed to recover from these specific attacks are:
Encipherment :
This security mechanism deals with hiding and covering of data which helps data to become
confidential.

Access Control :
This mechanism is used to stop unattended access to data which you are sending.

Notarization :
This security mechanism involves use of trusted third party in communication. It acts as mediator
between sender and receiver so that if any chance of conflict is reduced.

Authentication exchange :
This security mechanism deals with identity to be known in communication. This is achieved at the
TCP/IP layer where two-way handshaking mechanism is used to ensure data is sent or not
Digital Signature :
This security mechanism is achieved by adding digital data that is not visible to eyes.

Cryptography
Cryptography is a technique of securing information and communications through the use of some
algorithms so that only those persons for whom the information is intended can understand it and
process it.

Types of Cryptography:

Symmetric-key cryptography: This type of cryptography involves the use of a single key to encrypt
and decrypt data. Both the sender and receiver use the same key, which must be kept secret t o
maintain the security of the communication.
Asymmetric-key cryptography: Asymmetric-key cryptography, also known as public-key
cryptography, uses a pair of keys – a public key and a private key – to encrypt and decrypt data. The
public key is available to anyone, while the private key is kept secret by the owner.

Applications of Cryptography:

Secure online transactions

Digital signatures

Password protection

Challenges

 Key management: Cryptography relies on the use of keys, which must be managed carefully to
maintain the security of the communication.
 Quantum computing: The development of quantum computing poses a potential threat to
current cryptographic algorithms, which may become vulnerable to attacks.
 Human error: Cryptography is only as strong as its weakest link, and human error can easily
compromise the security of a communication.
What is Data Encryption?
Data Encryption is a method of preserving data confidentiality by transforming it into ciphertext, which
can only be decoded using a unique decryption key produced at the time of the encryption or before it.
Types of Data Encryption
Symmetric Key Encryption
For encryption and decryption processes, some algorithms employ a unique key. In such operations,
the unique key must be secured since the system knows the key has complete authentication to
decode. This approach is known as “symmetric encryption

Asymmetric Key Encryption

Some cryptography methods employ one key for data encryption and another key for data decryption.
As a result, anyone who has access to such a public communication will be unable to decode it. This
type of cryptography, known as “public-key” encryption

Uses of Data Encryption

VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) uses encryption

Data Migration is used when transferring data over a network to ensure that no one else on the network
can read it.
Encryption can be used to erase data

Using digital signatures

Data Encryption Algorithms

Data encryption standard
Data Encryption Standard (DES) is a block cipher with a 56-bit key length that has played a significant
role in data security.

DES encrypts data in blocks of size of 64 bits each, which means 64 bits of plain text go as the input to
DES, which produces 64 bits of ciphertext.

DES is based on the two fundamental attributes of cryptography: substitution) and transposition
DES consists of 16 steps, each of which is called a round. Each round performs the steps of
substitution and transposition.

 the 64-bit plain text block is handed over to an initial Permutation

 The initial permutation is performed on plain text.
 the initial permutation produces two halves of the permuted block; Left Plain Text (LPT) and Right
Plain Text (RPT).
 Now each LPT and RPT go through 16 rounds of the encryption process.
 LPT and RPT are rejoined and a Final Permutation is performed on the combined block
 The result of this process produces 64-bit ciphertext.
Advanced Encryption Standard
Advanced Encryption Standardis a majorly used symmetric encryption algorithm. It is mainly used for
encryption and protection of electronic data. It was used as the replacement of DES(Data encryption
standard) as it is much faster and better than DES.

AES has keys of three lengths which are of 128, 192, 256 bits.
It is flexible and has implementation for software and hardware.
it doesn’t have any copyright so it can be easily used globally.
It consists of 10 rounds of processing for 128 bit keys.
Creation of Round keys : A Key Schedule algorithm is used to calculate all the round keys from the
key. So the initial key is used to create many different round keys which will be used in the
corresponding round of the encryption.
Each round comprises of 4 steps :
 SubBytes- In this step each byte is substituted by another byte. Its performed using a lookup table
also called the S-box.
ShiftRows - Each row is shifted a particular number of times.
 The first row is not shifted
 The second row is shifted once to the left.
 The third row is shifted twice to the left.
 The fourth row is shifted thrice to the left.

 MixColumns- This step is basically a matrix multiplication. Each column is multiplied with a specific
matrix and thus the position of each byte in the column is changed as a result.
 Add Round Key- Now the resultant output of the previous stage is XOR-ed with the corresponding
round key

Triple DES:
Triple DES is a encryption technique which uses three instance of DES on same plain text. It uses
there different types of key choosing technique in first all used keys are different and in second two
keys are same and one is different and in third all keys are same.
Symmetric Cipher Model
It uses only one key for the process of both the encryption and decryption of data. Thus, it is also
known as Single-Key Encryption.

A symmetric cipher model is composed of five essential parts:

Plain Text (x): This is the original data/message that is to be communicated to the receiver by the
sender

Secret Key (k): It is a value/string/textfile used by the encryption and decryption algorithm to encode
and decode the plain text to cipher text and vice-versa respectively.

Encryption Algorithm (E): It takes the plain text and the secret key as inputs and produces Cipher
Text as output.

Cipher Text (y): It is the formatted form of the plain text (x) which is unreadable for humans, hence
providing encryption during the transmission.

Decryption Algorithm (D): It performs reversal of the encryption algorithm at the recipient’s side. It
also takes the secret key as input and decodes the cipher text received from the sender based on the
secret key.

Substitution Cipher
In a Substitution cipher, any character of plain text from the given fixed set of characters is substituted
by some other character from the same set depending on a key.

Note: Special case of Substitution cipher is known as Caesar cipher where the key is taken as 3.

Mathematical representation
Algorithm for Substitution Cipher:
Input:
 A String of both lower and upper case letters
 An Integer denoting the required key.
Procedure:
 Create a list of all the characters.
 Create a dictionary to store the substitution for all characters.
 For each character, transform the given character as per the rule,
 Print the new string generated.
Transposition Cipher
Columnar Transposition involves writing the plaintext out in rows, and then reading the ciphertext off in
columns one by one.
Encryption
In a transposition cipher, the order of the alphabets is re-arranged to obtain the cipher-text.
1. The message is written out in rows of a fixed length, and then read out again column by column,
and the columns are chosen in some scrambled order.
2. Width of the rows and the permutation of the columns are usually defined by a keyword.
Any spare spaces are filled with nulls or left blank or placed by a character
5. Finally, the message is read off in columns, in the order specified by the keyword.

Decryption
1. To decipher it, the recipient has to work out the column lengths by dividing the message length by
the key length.
2. Then, write the message out in columns again, then re-order the columns by reforming the key
word.
3. Block Cipher
Block ciphers are built in the Feistel cipher structure. Block cipher has a specific number of rounds
and keys for generating ciphertext.Block cipher is a type of encryption algorithm that processes fixed -
size blocks of data, usually 64 or 128 bits, to produce ciphertext
Some of these principles are:
Number of Rounds-The number of Rounds is regularly considered in design criteria, it just reflects the
number of rounds to be suitable for an algorithm to make it more complex
Design of function F-The core part of the Feistel Block cipher structure is the Round Function. The
complexity of cryptanalysis can be derived from the Round function
Confusion and Diffusion- The cipher should provide confusion and diffusion to make it difficult for an
attacker to determine the relationship between the plaintext and ciphertext. Confusion means that the
ciphertext should be a complex function of the key and plaintext, making it difficult to guess the key.
Diffusion means that a small change in the plaintext should cause a significant change in the
ciphertext,

RSA Algorithm
RSA is the most common public-key algorithm, named after its inventors Rivest, Shamir, and Adelman (RSA).
RSA algorithm uses the following procedure

o Select two large prime numbers, p and q.

o Multiply these numbers to find n = p x q, where n is called the modulus for encryption and decryption.

Choose a number e less than n, such that n is relatively prime to (p - 1) x (q -1).

If n = p x q, then the public key is <e, n>. C = me mod n
To determine the private key, we use the following formula to calculate the d such that:
De mod {(p - 1) x (q - 1)} = 1
The private key is <d, n>. A ciphertext message c is decrypted using private key <d, n>. m = cd mod n

The idea of RSA is based on the fact that it is difficult to factorize a large integer.
Advantages:
 Security: RSA algorithm is considered to be very secure
Key exchange: RSA algorithm can be used for secure key exchange
 Speed: The RSA technique is suited for usage in real-time applications since it is quite quick and
effective.
Disadvantages:
Complexity:
Vulnerability to side-channel attacks
 Vulnerability to Quantum Computing: Quantum computers have the ability to attack the RSA
algorithm, potentially decrypting the data.
Diffie-Hellman algorithm:
The Diffie-Hellman algorithm is being used to establish a shared secret that can be used for
secret communications while exchanging data over a public network using the elliptic curve to generate
points and get the secret key using the parameters.