CompTIA Security+ flashcards, generated for you.

The CIA triad (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability) provides a framework for evaluating and implementing security controls to protect information assets and ensure they are kept secret, accurate, and accessible.

Confidentiality ensures that information is accessible only to authorized individuals and is protected from unauthorized disclosure or access through encryption, access controls, and classification.

Authentication verifies the identity of a user or device (who you are), while authorization determines what resources and actions an authenticated user is permitted to access (what you can do).

Discretionary Access Control (DAC) allows owners to set permissions, Mandatory Access Control (MAC) enforces security labels and classifications, and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) grants permissions based on assigned roles.

Least privilege restricts users and systems to only the minimum permissions necessary to perform their job functions, reducing the attack surface and limiting damage from compromised accounts.

DRM protects intellectual property by controlling access to copyrighted digital content, preventing unauthorized copying, distribution, and use through encryption and license enforcement.

A vulnerability is a weakness in hardware, software, or processes that could be exploited, while an exploit is actual code or technique that takes advantage of a vulnerability to cause harm.

Identify (understand assets and risks), Protect (implement safeguards), Detect (identify security events), Respond (contain and eliminate threats), and Recover (restore operations after incidents).

Symmetric encryption uses a single shared key to encrypt and decrypt data (fast but key distribution is difficult), while asymmetric encryption uses a public key to encrypt and a private key to decrypt (slower but solves key distribution).

A zero-day is a previously unknown software vulnerability with no available patch; it is critical because attackers can exploit it before vendors are aware and have released a fix, making systems defenseless.