What is Availability?
Availability Definition: Ensuring timely and reliable access to and use of information by authorized users.
Understanding Availability
Ensuring timely and reliable access to and use of information by authorized users. Availability ensures information and services are accessible and usable when needed by authorized entities. It is one of the three core principles of the CIA triad, alongside confidentiality and integrity. Availability is a requirement in frameworks like ISO 27001, NIST CSF, and regulations like HIPAA and NIS Directive. Organizations implement availability through redundant systems, fault tolerance, disaster recovery planning, load balancing, and resilient architecture. For example, a critical e-commerce platform might implement geographic redundancy across multiple cloud regions to ensure continuous operation even if one data center experiences an outage. Related terms: Business continuity, Disaster recovery, High availability, Redundancy, Service level agreement, Uptime.