What are the three components of the CIA triad in information security?

• A. Confidentiality, Anonymity, and Accessibility.
• B. Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability.
• C. Classification, Integrity, and Availability.
• D. Control, Integrity, and Auditability.

Answer: (B)

The CIA triad captures three fundamental goals of information security: confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Confidentiality means keeping data secret and accessible only to authorized people or systems, using controls like encryption, access management, and authentication. Integrity means data remains accurate and trustworthy, protected from unauthorized changes through measures such as hashing, digital signatures, and version control. Availability means authorized users can access the data and systems when needed, supported by reliable infrastructure, redundancy, and backups. These three together guide how security teams design protections and respond to risks. The other options mix terms that aren’t part of this standard trio—for example, anonymity isn’t the same as controlling who can read data, and terms like accessibility, classification, or auditability don’t represent the three core objectives.