Cybersecurity & Information Assurance

Doyen

As I am nearing the end of my undergraduate program, I having been looking into graduate programs. Is it me or does Cybersecurity and Information Assurance seems to be the same thing reworded. The DOD seems to just refer to as "information security", while its NSA branch seems to use the term cyber security and information assurance interchangeably. A friend of mine in the field told me this when I pester her about it: "What you don't seem to comprehend is that Cybersecurity is both a coined marketing term and is a PART of information assurance. I will say it again, YOU WILL LEARN YOUR CYBERSECURITY BY STUDYING INFORMATION ASSURANCE."

Do other people in the field get that same impression or have a different viewpoint on it? Any advantage of one over the other?

AverageJoe

DoD recently published new directives that basically replaced "information assurance" with "cybersecurity." DoDI 8500 was the main Information Assurance pub, but now it's titled Cybersecurity and on page 1 it says "Adopts the term “cybersecurity” as it is defined in National Security Presidential Directive-54/Homeland Security Presidential Directive-23 (Reference (m)) to be used throughout DoD instead of the term “information assurance (IA).”"

Available at this link: DoD Issuances Website: DoD Instructions.

Doyen

Thank you for clearing up the DoD view on the term for me and the web link +rep

Now that the DoD viewpoint has been settled, how about other views on the terms "cybersecurity" and "information assurance" getting tossed around?

colemic

I would actually disagree with your friend - I view Information Assurance as a subset of the broader Cybersecurity field. I view it that way because I feel that offensive security (cybercommand, for example) has, in principle, very little in common with information assurance, which focuses on defensive posturing.

dmoore44

colemic wrote: »

I would actually disagree with your friend - I view Information Assurance as a subset of the broader Cybersecurity field. I view it that way because I feel that offensive security (cybercommand, for example) has, in principle, very little in common with information assurance, which focuses on defensive posturing.

I would agree with you. Considering the way DOD defines cyberspace, cybersecurity becomes the discipline that secures cyberspace for use by the USA and her allies. So, there are a bunch of constituent disciplines that comprise the greater whole.