Which principle ensures that only authorized individuals can access certain data?

The principle that ensures only authorized individuals can access certain data is confidentiality. Confidentiality focuses on protecting sensitive information from unauthorized access and disclosure. This is crucial in various fields, particularly in cybersecurity, where safeguarding personal information, trade secrets, and other sensitive data is paramount.

Confidentiality is achieved through various means, such as encryption, access control mechanisms, and secure communications protocols, which require that only designated individuals have the ability to view or interact with specific datasets. This principle not only helps maintain privacy but also reinforces trust in systems that handle sensitive information.

Other concepts like integrity, authentication, and non-repudiation play important roles in information security but address different aspects. Integrity ensures that data remains unaltered and accurate, authentication is the process of verifying the identity of users attempting to access data, and non-repudiation provides proof of the origin and delivery of data, mitigating disputes over whether a specific action was taken. However, none of these directly address the need to limit data access to only authorized individuals in the same way that confidentiality does.