Maintaining integrity

It's essential to keep data in its original, unaltered form. Although there may be threats to the organization, encryption can ensure data integrity and prevent data from being changed, destroyed, or lost in an unauthorized or accidental manner. Organizations seek to protect the data and system resources, by implementing security strategies.

In this section, we'll take a look at just what's at stake, by first outlining the meaning of assets. We'll then clarify the definition of risk, which is a product of threats and vulnerabilities. You'll then understand how decreasing vulnerabilities will reduce overall risk.

Let's start with defining assets.

Protecting assets

When implementing security strategies, an organization seeks to protect their assets from threats such as cyberattacks or theft. Assets are either tangible or intangible goods that can be assigned a value:

Figure 3.10 – Tangible...