ISC certification CC Passing Score

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks primarily impactavailability, one of the three pillars of the CIA triad. DDoS attacks overwhelm systems, networks, or applications with massive volumes of traffic, exhausting resources such as bandwidth, CPU, or memory and preventing legitimate users from accessing services.

The goal of a DDoS attack is not to steal data, alter information, or deny accountability, but rather todisrupt access. Confidentiality and integrity may remain intact, but users are unable to reach the system, resulting in service outages, financial loss, and reputational damage.

Availability is a critical security objective for public-facing services such as websites, APIs, and online platforms. Defenses against DDoS attacks include traffic filtering, rate limiting, content delivery networks (CDNs), scrubbing services, and redundant architectures.

Security frameworks such as NIST and ISO/IEC explicitly associate denial-of-service attacks with availability risks, making availability the most directly affected cybersecurity principle.

Information riskrefers to the potential harm arising from the unauthorized access, disclosure, modification, or destruction of sensitive information. This includes credentials, financial records, intellectual property, and personally identifiable information (PII).

Information risk directly impacts theconfidentiality, integrity, and availability (CIA triad)of data. While such incidents may also lead to reputational damage or compliance violations, the primary category describing the exposure of sensitive data itself is information risk.

NIST SP 800-30 emphasizes information risk as a core component of enterprise risk management, especially in organizations that rely heavily on digital data for operations and decision-making.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provides security teams with the greatest access to forensic data because customers retain control over operating systems, logs, storage, and network configurations.

In SaaS and FaaS models, the provider controls most of the infrastructure, limiting visibility. PaaS provides partial access but still restricts OS-level forensics.

IaaS allows collection of disk images, memory dumps, system logs, and network traffic, which are essential for incident response and forensic investigations.

Security teams prefer IaaS for high-control environments where deep visibility is required.

Deterrent controls are designed to discourage individuals from attempting unauthorized or malicious actions. CCTV systems act as deterrent controls because their visible presence can discourage theft, vandalism, or unauthorized access by increasing the perceived risk of being caught.

Business Continuity Plans (BCP), Disaster Recovery Plans (DRP), and Incident Response Plans (IRP) are corrective and recovery-focused controls, not deterrents. They address what happensafteran incident occurs.

Deterrent controls are often combined with preventive and detective controls to form a layered security strategy. Examples include warning signs, lighting, guards, and surveillance cameras. These controls play an important psychological role in reducing security incidents.