What foundational principle of cybersecurity ensures that information is protected from unauthorized access?

The foundational principle of cybersecurity that ensures information is protected from unauthorized access is confidentiality. This principle focuses on preventing unauthorized individuals from gaining access to sensitive data. It emphasizes the importance of keeping information secret from those who do not have permission to view or use it. This may involve implementing various security measures, such as encryption, access controls, and authentication processes, to ensure that only authorized personnel can access specific information.

While integrity refers to the protection of data from being altered or tampered with, and availability ensures that information and resources are accessible to authorized users when needed, these concepts do not directly address the protection against unauthorized access. Authentication, on the other hand, is the process used to verify the identity of a user or system trying to access information, but it is a mechanism that supports confidentiality rather than being a principle itself. Thus, confidentiality is the principle specifically aimed at safeguarding against unauthorized access to information.