Table of Contents
- What is Information Security?
- What is Cybersecurity?
- Differences and Similarities Between Information Security and Cybersecurity
- Concluding Lines
What is Information Security?
Information security is all about shielding information from unauthorized access and data modification in order to grant confidentiality, integrity, and availability. In other words, information security deals with the security of data in general.
What is Cybersecurity?
Unlike information security, cybersecurity refers to the strategy of protecting the data from outside the resource on the internet. In other words, cybersecurity is all about defending data in cyberspace. The primary concern of cybersecurity professionals is to protect unauthorized electronic access to the data.
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Differences and Similarities Between Information Security and Cybersecurity
Both these terms are associated with the security of computer systems, and therefore they are used interchangeably most of the time. However, they are not the same. Let’s dive into explaining the differences between them.
As we already mentioned, cybersecurity deals with protecting the data and information in cyberspace, whereas information security deals with protecting the data in cyberspace and outside that. As a result, the cybersecurity domain has a more narrow focus.
Talking about information security, it ensures the prevention of unauthorized access or modification during the time of storing data or transferring where data can be related to biometrics, social media, mobile phone data, etc.; thus, the researcher covers several areas, including cryptocurrency and online forensics. In other words, we can say that information security is for information that is irrespective of the realm or domain, unlike cybersecurity that is restricted to the cyber realm itself.
Information security focuses on three objectives, namely confidentiality, integrity, and availability (commonly known as CIA). It ensures that information of high value is maintained and kept confidential while barring unauthorized access. Secondly, security professionals ensure integrity that the stored data needs to be kept in the correct order, and in case of any unorderly modification by an unauthorized person needs to be cut out instantly. Lastly, it ensures availability that the data stored can be accessed anytime by an authorized person.
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An Information security executive holds expertise in developing, implementing, and managing information security programs for organizations and enterprises. The responsibilities of a security executive range from ensuring all the relevant software is updated regularly to installing new protective walls, preventing, monitoring, and responding to data breaches and cyberattacks.
Cybersecurity professionals, on the other hand, deal with protecting data from malicious attacks, which range from business organizations to personal devices. It deals with several attacks that can be classified as network security, application security, information security, operational security and can take several other forms. Cybersecurity deals with danger against cyberspace and strikes against cybercrimes, cyber frauds, and law enforcement. A Certified Cybersecurity Professional understands and manages cyber risk and implements the right security controls.
However, the key similarity of these terms is that both involve protecting cyberspace from hacks, ransomware, spyware, malware, and other types of harmful software that can wreak havoc on a computer and its network and can bring many problems that affect the daily operations as well as long-term security of one’s organization.
Concluding Lines
This has led us to the end of our discussion. Hope from the above discussion you have gained a clear understanding of what is the difference between cybersecurity and information security.
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