Foundations of Cybersecurity
Core concepts
Cybersecurity is the practice of protecting networks, devices, people, and data from unauthorized access and criminal exploitation. Its backbone is the CIA triad: confidentiality (only authorized people can access data), integrity (data is accurate, authentic, and unaltered), and availability (authorized users can reach systems and data when needed). Classify every control and every incident in those terms: encryption serves confidentiality, hashing and backups support integrity, redundancy and failover support availability.
Analysts also need the vocabulary of governance. A regulation is a rule enforced by a government or authority (GDPR, HIPAA); a framework is a recommended blueprint (NIST CSF, NIST SP 800-53, the CISSP eight domains, OWASP); a policy is an organization's own documented rule; compliance means meeting those external and internal requirements. Security posture is an organization's overall ability to defend its critical assets and respond to change.
Threat actors split into authorized (ethical) hackers who act with permission, semi-authorized hackers who act without full permission, and unauthorized (malicious) hackers. Common attack families are social engineering (phishing, vishing, smishing, baiting), malware (virus, worm, trojan, ransomware, spyware), and password attacks.
Traps
Questions swap compliance with security - being compliant does not make you secure. They also blur law, regulation, and framework, and they describe an incident then ask which leg of the triad broke.
Rule of thumb
Before answering any scenario, name the asset, the threat, and the affected CIA leg. If a record was simply disclosed, that is confidentiality; if it was changed, integrity; if a service was blocked, availability.