Infosec

What are 3 basic principles of informational security?

• Confidentiality

• Obfuscation

• Integrity

• Availability

• Durability

Answer explanation

The basic principles of information security, often summarized as the CIA triad, encompass three core concepts:

Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability.

What principle of information security ensures that data remains accurate, complete, and trustworthy throughout its lifecycle?

• Confidentiality

• Integrity

• Availability

Answer explanation

Integrity ensures that data remains accurate, complete, and trustworthy throughout its lifecycle. Integrity measures, such as checksums, digital signatures, and access controls, safeguard data from unauthorized modification, deletion, or corruption.

They help maintain data consistency and reliability, ensuring that it can be trusted for decision-making and analysis.

What is the primary goal of confidentiality in data security?

• To ensure data is unmodified

• To prevent unauthorized access to data

• To verify the identity of users

• To detect and respond to security incidents

Answer explanation

Confidentiality refers to the protection of sensitive information from unauthorized access or disclosure. In an information security context, maintaining confidentiality means ensuring that only authorized individuals or systems can access certain data or resources. This is typically achieved through encryption, access controls, authentication mechanisms, and other security measures.

Which principle of information security ensures that data, systems, and resources are accessible and usable when needed by authorized users?

• Confidentiality

• Integrity

• Availability

Answer explanation

Availability ensures that data, systems, and resources are accessible and usable when needed by authorized users.

Availability measures, such as redundancy, backup and recovery systems, and disaster recovery planning, mitigate disruptions caused by hardware failures, software errors, cyberattacks, or natural disasters. They ensure that critical services remain operational and accessible, even in adverse conditions.

What is the primary purpose of data encryption in information security?

• To increase data storage capacity

• To make data easier to access

• To protect data confidentiality

• To speed up data transmission

Answer explanation

Encryption is the basic building block of data security. It is the simplest and most important way to ensure a computer system's information can't be stolen and read by someone who wants to use it for malicious purposes.

Which statement best describes how encryption works?

• Encryption hides data using a secret code.

• Encryption converts data into unreadable ciphertext using a special key.

• Encryption removes sensitive information from data.

• Encryption hides data behind a password which user sets up

Answer explanation

Encryption involves converting human-readable data into incomprehensible text, which is known as ciphertext. Encryption involves using a cryptographic key.

What does the term "plaintext" refer to in encryption?

• Encrypted data

• Data after decryption

• Original, unencrypted data

• Data transmission protocol

What are cryptographic keys?

• Special codes used to access encrypted files

• Random numbers generated by encryption software

• Strings of data used in encryption and decryption processes

• Digital signatures used to verify data authenticity

Answer explanation

Encryption involves using a cryptographic key, a set of mathematical values both the sender and recipient agree on. The recipient uses the key to decrypt the data, turning it back into readable plaintext.

What is the primary difference between symmetric and asymmetric encryption?

• Symmetric encryption uses a single key for both encryption and decryption, while asymmetric encryption uses two different keys.

• Symmetric encryption is faster than asymmetric encryption.

• Asymmetric encryption is less secure than symmetric encryption.

• Symmetric encryption is only used for data transmission, while asymmetric encryption is used for data storage.

Answer explanation

Symmetric Encryption: In symmetric encryption, the same key is used for both encryption and decryption. This means that both the sender and receiver must have access to the same secret key.

Asymmetric Encryption: Asymmetric encryption uses two different keys: a public key and a private key. The keys are essentially large numbers that have been paired with each other but aren't identical

Which cryptographic key is used to decrypt encrypted data?

• Public key

• Private key

• Session key

• Master key

Answer explanation

In asymmetric encryption the public key is used for encryption, while the private key is used for decryption. Anything encrypted with the public key can only be decrypted with the corresponding private key, and vice versa.