Premium Resources

Important characteristics of Information

Information is meaningful data which has to be protected in order to protect the privacy, security, identity of an organization or a person or a nation. An information is called valuable because of few characteristics. The main characteristics which make an information valuable are

1. Confidentiality
Confidentiality ensures that an Information is accessible to only an authorized user. The main pupose of confidentiality is to protect the sensitive information from reaching the wrong hands.It is used to maintain the privacy of the people. Encryption is a good example of confidentiality.
2. Availability
Information should be available to an authorised person when it is requested for. It is the guarantee of access to the authorised individual to information. Keeping all the hardware and software up to date and keeping back up, taking proper recovery measures will ensure availability of data.
3. Integrity
Integrity maintains the correctness or accuracy of the information while the data is in transit, storage or processing. It is the guarantee that information is trust worthy and not tampered. This attribute ensures that an unauthorised person will not be able to modify the data.
RSA digital signature, SHA1 hash codes are good examples.
4. Authentication
It is verifying whether the user, data, transactions involved is genuine. This attribute ensures that only genuine or right people are given access to the information. Login mechanisms can be used to verify the authenticity of users
5. Non-Repuditiation
This is a property of information which is used to holds a person responsible for the information he sent or received. In future, he cannot deny his role in sending or receiving the information.

Disclaimer

PMI®, PMBOK®, PMP® and PMI-ACP® are registered marks of the Project Management Institute, Inc.

The Swirl logo™ is a trade mark of AXELOS Limited.

ITIL® is a registered trade mark of AXELOS Limited, used under permission of AXELOS Limited. All rights reserved.

PRINCE2® is a registered trade mark of AXELOS Limited, used under permission of AXELOS Limited. All rights reserved.

IASSC® is a registered trade mark of International Association for Six Sigma Certification.

Certified ScrumMaster® (CSM) is a registered trade mark of SCRUM ALLIANCE®

CISSP® is a registered mark of The International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium (ISC)2.

CCNA® is a trademark of Cisco.

Microsoft and MS Project are the registered trademarks of the Microsoft Corporation.

SAP Trademark(s) is/are the trademark(s) or registered trademark(s) of SAP SE in Germany.