What’s next?
Indeed, if the CIA triad has failed to answer the modern challenges, what should take its place? To be effective, any new direction must take information security beyond the triad’s flat, solely technical perspective. It must be layered, contextual, capable of mapping core technical foundations, not only to governance requirements, but ultimately to their real-world impact on business outcomes and societal safety.
A successful model must explicitly encompass the principles that the triad overlooked — such are authenticity, accountability, and resilience. Those principles must be added as foundational pillars. Furthermore, the model should have the capability to help CISOs and their teams navigate the veritable forest of frameworks, harmonize regulatory demands, and eliminate duplicate work, while also giving them a way to speak to their boards in terms of resilience, accountability, and trust, rather than just uptime and firewalls.
The 3C Model: A strategic lens
The 3C Model (core, complementary, contextual) offers a layered, hierarchical system designed to map today’s threats and obligations. Its strength lies in creating order from chaos, by building the following three layers into your security operations strategy.