[Day 1] 1. Key Concepts

What is Compliance?

Compliance refers to adhering to established guidelines, regulations, laws, standards, and policies governing an organization or industry.

What is Audit?

An audit is a systematic and independent examination of an organization's adherence to established laws, regulations, policies, and procedures. The primary goal is to assess compliance and identify areas of non-compliance or risk.

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Data and Information

• Data: Raw, unprocessed facts and figures without context (e.g., numbers, dates, strings).
• Information: Processed, organized, or structured data with meaning, useful for decision-making.

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CIA Triad: Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability

1. Confidentiality: Ensures sensitive information is accessed only by authorised individuals, using measures like encryption, access controls, and authentication.
2. Integrity: Maintains accuracy and reliability of data, preventing unauthorised alteration using techniques like hashing, checksums, and version control.
3. Availability: Ensures information and resources are accessible to authorised users when needed through robust backups, disaster recovery, and system maintenance.

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Privacy vs Confidentiality

• Privacy: Focuses on an individual's control over their personal information (collection, use, sharing).
• Confidentiality: Ensures sensitive information shared in trust remains secure and accessible only to authorised parties.

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Key Security Concepts

1. Vulnerability: A weakness in a system, application, or network exploitable by attackers. Examples: software bugs, misconfigurations.
2. Threat: A potential event or danger that exploits vulnerabilities, such as cyber-criminals, malware, or natural disasters.
3. Exploit: A tool or technique used to leverage vulnerabilities for unauthorised actions.
4. Buffer Overflow: Occurs when a program writes more data than a buffer can hold, potentially allowing attackers to execute arbitrary code.
5. Risk: The potential for loss, damage, or harm when a threat exploits a vulnerability. Quantified by likelihood and impact.

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Risk vs Threat

• Threat: A potential source of harm (e.g., an attacker exploiting a vulnerability).
• Risk: The likelihood and impact of a threat materialising.

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Real-Life Example: Web Application Security

Scenario: A company develops a web application storing sensitive customer data.

1. Vulnerability: The application has a buffer overflow vulnerability due to improper input validation.
2. Threat: A cyber-criminal plans to exploit this vulnerability.
3. Exploit: A malicious payload is used to overwrite memory and execute arbitrary code.
4. Risk: High likelihood and severe impact, including data breaches, financial losses, and reputation damage.
5. Confidentiality: Attacker could access sensitive data.
6. Integrity: Attacker might alter customer data.
7. Availability: Exploit could disrupt the application, leading to a denial-of-service attack.

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