What is Availability
The term availability is used in Information security to indicate whether a user has access to any information, or the system that contains/processes that information, when the user needs this access.
An attack on availability can involve deleting information or crashing a system, but it may also prevent access to the system by cutting or overloading the communication channel to that system. The most common attacks on availability are, however, simple things like hardware failure or power failure.
Related terms: