IBLS Contributor: Mark F. Foley, Partner, Foley & Lardner LLP

Confidentiality means keeping the access, use, and dissemination of information controlled to the extent required by law, contract, or business need (such as the protection of trade secrets or business plans). Integrity means keeping data and systems reliable -- secure against modifications by well-meaning but ill-informed employees, as well as secure against modification by competitors, viruses, hackers, or others who might want to maliciously modify data or take control of your systems to attack other networks. Availability means enabling data access to those who need it to do their jobs efficiently, effectively, and creatively, while preventing or defeating attacks such as denial of service attacks against Websites or Web-accessible data, introduction of viruses, Trojan horses, and other malware, and spam attacks, etc. -- activities that can reduce the efficiency or availability of critical business systems. ... Protecting these assets requires top down policy development and enterprise-wide implementation. Rules and procedures must be established for proper access to, and use of, information assets. These rules must be enforced and managers must be held accountable because failures are likely to cause harm.