Information Assurance - Overview

Overview

Information assurance is related to the field of information security, in that it is primarily concerned with the protection of information systems and their contents. Generally considered the more broadly-focused of these two fields, IA consists more of the strategic risk management of information systems rather than the creation and application of security controls. In addition to defending against malicious hackers and code (e.g., viruses), IA practitioners consider corporate governance issues such as privacy, regulatory and standards compliance, auditing, business continuity, and disaster recovery as they relate to information systems. Further, while information security draws primarily from computer science, IA is an interdisciplinary field requiring expertise in accounting, fraud examination, forensic science, management science, systems engineering, security engineering, and criminology, in addition to computer science. Therefore, IA is best thought of as a superset of information security (i.e. umbrella term).