Information security, sometimes shortened to infosec, is the practice of protecting information by mitigating information risks. It is part of information risk management. It typically involves preventing or reducing the probability of unauthorized or inappropriate access to data or the unlawful use, disclosure, disruption, deletion, corruption, modification, inspection, recording, or devaluation of information. It also involves actions intended to reduce the adverse impacts of such incidents. Protected information may take any form, e.g., electronic or physical, tangible, or intangible. Information security's primary focus is the balanced protection of data confidentiality, integrity, and availability while maintaining a focus on efficient policy implementation, all without hampering organization productivity. This is largely achieved through a structured risk management process that involves:Identifying information and related assets, plus potential threats, vulnerabilities, and impacts;
Evaluating the risks
Deciding how to address or treat the risks, i.e., to avoid, mitigate, share, or accept them
Where risk mitigation is required, selecting or designing appropriate security controls and implementing them
Monitoring the activities and making adjustments as necessary to address any issues, changes, or improvement opportunities
Poster promoting information security by the Russian Ministry of Defence
Information is an abstract concept that refers to something which has the power to inform. At the most fundamental level, it pertains to the interpretation of that which may be sensed, or their abstractions. Any natural process that is not completely random and any observable pattern in any medium can be said to convey some amount of information. Whereas digital signals and other data use discrete signs to convey information, other phenomena and artifacts such as analogue signals, poems, pictures, music or other sounds, and currents convey information in a more continuous form. Information is not knowledge itself, but the meaning that may be derived from a representation through interpretation.
Galactic (including dark) matter distribution in a cubic section of the Universe
Information embedded in an abstract mathematical object with symmetry symmetry-breaking nucleus
Visual representation of a strange attractor, with converted data of its fractal structure