Page 39 - How to be Cyber Safe + Savvy

when they want access to it. These three principles — confidentiality, integrity, and availability — make up the so-called “CIA triad,” a core principle of designing and managing online data networks.
Good passwords
are your best defense
As we said, the password sits
at the center of this environment
of assumed mistrust. Successfully deployed, it acts as the antidote
to mistrust, the clinching move in the digital handshake that signals a mutual trust between ourselves and the companies that hold our data online. But people are generally lousy at managing passwords, and companies are not always much bet- ter. The single most important thing people online can do to stay safer is step up their password game. Turn the page to find out how.
Look for the "S"
Online businesses signal their trustworthiness, and implicit commitment
to the CIA triad, in various ways. One way appears in the very name of
their website, which should start with the letters “https.” The "s" stands for “secure,” meaning that network data is encrypted into meaningless gibberish as it goes back and forth between user and system. And only the system can translate the gibberish into meaningful data. Trust can also originate with a business’s reputation, a user’s prior relationship with it, and persuasive rep- resentations of its approach to security. We should always monitor factors such as these to assess whether a business can be trusted to uphold the CIA triad and be a proper custodian of our personal data.
CYBER SAFE + SAVVY 39