Integrated Information Assurance

Enterprise data is the most valuable asset of a company. In a more restricted definition, data is bits of factual information and information is organized data. Thereby, enterprise information can be referred as a form of corporate data containing business sensitive relationships and processes. The essential functions of information assurance (IA) include the information operations that protect and defend information and information systems. The objectives of IA are to provide availability, integrity, authentication, confidentiality, and non-repudiation of corporate information. The process includes protection, detection, reaction, as well as the capability to incorporate information restoration. These objectives rely heavily upon a structured approach to sustain and improve the survivability of information, the constituent computing systems, and networking infrastructure components. From the user front, a common operation picture containing unified assurance indices to support cross-functional and aggregated effectiveness reports can be tailored to provide a higher degree of operational awareness. Its real-time business insights allow service consumers and operators to interactively acquire timely, conclusive, and secure business intelligence for enforced assurance and continuous improvement. Thus IA is one of the most critical building blocks in enterprise service architecture.