Information assurance

Information assurance (IA) is the practice of assuring information and managing risks related to the use, processing, storage, and transmission of information. Information assurance includes protection of the integrity, availability, authenticity, non-repudiation and confidentiality of user data. IA encompasses both digital protections and physical techniques. These methods apply to data in transit, both physical and electronic forms, as well as data at rest. IA is best thought of as a superset of information security (i.e. umbrella term), and as the business outcome of information risk management. Information assurance (IA) is the process of processing, storing, and transmitting the right information to the right people at the right time. IA relates to the business level and strategic risk management of information and related systems, rather than the creation and application of security controls. IA is used to benefit business through the use of information risk management, trust management, resilience, appropriate architecture, system safety, and security, which increases the utility of information to only their authorized users. Besides defending against malicious hackers and code (e.g., viruses), IA practitioners consider corporate governance issues such as privacy, regulatory and standards compliance, auditing, business continuity, and disaster recovery as they relate to information systems. Further, IA is an interdisciplinary field requiring expertise in business, accounting, user experience, fraud examination, forensic science, management science, systems engineering, security engineering, and criminology, in addition to computer science. With the growth of telecommunication networks also comes the dependency on networks, which makes communities increasing vulnerable to cyber attacks that could interrupt, degrade or destroy vital services. Starting from the 1950s the role and use of information assurance has grown and evolved. These feedback loop practices were employed while developing WWMCCS military decision support systems.