Cybersecurity Cube Sorter

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About this interactive

The Cybersecurity Cube is built from three separate dimensions, and this sorter asks you to tell them apart rather than remember what each one protects. The CIA Triad bin — Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability — is the dimension you already know: it names the property a control is defending. The States of Data bin — Data at Rest, Data in Process, Data in Transit — is a different kind of thing entirely: it names when in a data's lifecycle the control applies, not what it defends. Encrypting a database and running a VPN can both serve confidentiality, but one operates at rest and the other in transit — same CIA objective, two different states. The third bin, Countermeasures, is where the sort gets genuinely hard, because none of its three items — People, Processes, and Technology — name a security property or a data state; they name how a control gets carried out. Technology is the tool itself (OpenVPN vs. Cisco AnyConnect). Processes are the policies and procedures governing how that tool is deployed and maintained (how often certificates rotate). People are the humans operating and maintaining it, and their training. A student who sorts 'Technology' into the CIA bin is confusing what a control does with how it's implemented — precisely the distinction the full 27-area cube depends on keeping straight.

What you'll learn

Sort the Cybersecurity Cube's nine elements into the three dimensions they belong to: the CIA Triad, the States of Data, and Countermeasures
Distinguish the CIA Triad's security objectives from the States of Data, which describe where data physically or logically sits rather than what property is being protected
Recognize Countermeasures — People, Processes, and Technology — as the dimension describing how a control is carried out, distinct from what it protects (CIA) or when it applies (data state)

Aligned to

ISC2 CC

1.1 Understand cybersecurity concepts

Cisco CCST Cybersecurity

1.1 Define essential security principles

NIST NICE

K0728 Knowledge of Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability (CIA) principles and practices

Key terms

Cybersecurity Cube: A three-dimensional framework that extends the CIA Triad by incorporating data states (at rest, in process, in transit) and Countermeasures (People, Processes, and Technology) to comprehensively evaluate security controls.
Confidentiality: The principle that information is accessible only to those authorized to access it.
Integrity: The assurance that data has not been tampered with and remains accurate and complete.
Availability: The assurance that systems and data are accessible and operational when needed by authorized users.
Data at Rest: Data that is stored on a device or medium and not actively moving through a network, which can be encrypted at the disk, partition, volume, file, or database level.
Data in Process: Data being actively used or computed by a processor, requiring decryption from memory to be handled and presenting the highest CPU performance cost of the three encryption states.
Data in Transit: Data that is actively moving across a network or communication channel between two endpoints, as opposed to data sitting on a storage device. Protocols such as TLS are commonly used to encrypt data in transit so it cannot be read if intercepted.
Countermeasures: The Cybersecurity Cube's third dimension, describing how a control is carried out rather than what it protects or when it applies. Broken down into People, Processes, and Technology (PPT).
People, Processes, and Technology: The three elements that make up the Cybersecurity Cube's Countermeasures dimension: the human, procedural, and technical elements that must each be evaluated when applying security controls.

Topics

Interactive Categorize Cybersecurity Cube Cia Triad Data States

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