The main properties of the protected information
Information as an object of knowledge and an object of protection has many properties. Let's list the most important of them.
Value. As an object of ownership, information has a certain value. Precisely because information has value, it needs to be protected.
The secrecy (confidentiality) of information is a subjectively determined characteristic of information, indicating the need to impose restrictions on the range of subjects who have access to this information. This characteristic is provided by the ability of the system to keep the specified information secret from subjects who do not have the authority to access it. The objective prerequisites for such a restriction of the availability of information for some subjects are the need to protect the legitimate interests of other subjects of information relations.
The integrity of information is the property of information to exist in an undistorted form. Usually, we are interested in ensuring a broader property - the reliability of information, which consists of the adequacy (completeness and accuracy) of displaying the state of the subject area and directly the integrity of the information, that is, its undistorted. The issues of ensuring the adequacy of the display go beyond the problem of ensuring information security.
Accessibility of information is a property of the system in which information circulates, to ensure timely unhindered access of subjects to information of interest to them and readiness to service requests from subjects whenever there is a need to contact them.
Concentration. The total amount of information may turn out to be secret, summary data is usually more secret than single data.
Scattering. Valuable information can be divided into parts and mixed with less valuable information in order to mask the very fact that information is available. Examples of the use of this property are computer steganography.
Compression. Compression is possible without loss of information, such as archiving. To reduce the amount of information or increase the bandwidth of the information transmission channel, partial loss compression is used (for example, compression in graphic formats such as jpg). Irreversible compression is also used (for example, the algorithm of electronic digital signature (EDS), one-way HASH conversion).
Pragmatic properties:
importance;
completeness (degree of reduction of a priori uncertainty);
reliability;
timeliness;
expediency;
correlation with facts and phenomena.
In order to satisfy the legitimate rights and interests of information owners, it is necessary, first of all, to constantly maintain the secrecy, integrity and accessibility of information. If at least one of these properties is violated, the value of information decreases or is lost altogether:
if the value is lost when it is disclosed, then it is said that there is a danger of violating the secrecy of information;
if the value of information is lost when information is changed or destroyed, then it is said that there is a danger to the integrity of the information;
if the value of information is lost during its non-operational use, then it is said that there is a danger of violating the availability of information.
The value of information changes over time. The dissemination of information and its use lead to a change in the value of information. The nature of the change in value over time depends on the type of information.
The value of most types of information circulating in an information system decreases over time - information ages. The aging of Si information in the first approximation can be approximated by an expression of the form
C0(t) = C0ehr (-2.3t/tj.c),
where C0 is the value of information at the time of its occurrence (creation); t is the time from the moment of information occurrence to the moment of its use; tj.c is the duration of the information life cycle (from from the moment of occurrence to the moment of obsolescence).
According to this expression, the value of information decreases 10 times over the life cycle.
