Conflicts Among the Pillars of Information Assurance

Interactions between the five pillars of information assurance-availability, integrity, authentication, confidentiality, and nonrepudiation-can be problematic. Measures taken to further the goal of one pillar are often blind to the needs of another pillar. The author explores such interactions using graphical forms to better represent conflicts. For example, availability might introduce conflicts with confidentiality, integrity and authentication, but confidentiality and integrity are largely complementary. This article is part of a special issue on security.