The CIA Triad represents the three core goals of cybersecurity: Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability.

Confidentiality ensures that sensitive information is only accessible to authorized users. This includes protecting personal data, financial records, credentials, and intellectual property. Controls such as authentication, access control, and encryption support confidentiality.

Integrity ensures that data remains accurate and trustworthy. Information should not be altered, deleted, or manipulated without authorization. Integrity is protected through mechanisms such as hashing, checksums, logging, and change management.

Availability ensures that systems and data are accessible when needed. Even secure data has little value if systems are unavailable due to outages, attacks, or failures. Redundancy, backups, disaster recovery, and monitoring help support availability.

Most security controls support one or more of these principles. Understanding the CIA Triad provides a foundation for evaluating cybersecurity risks and solutions.