Availability is when data and systems are accessible to authorized users at any time or under any circumstances. Even if data is kept confidential and its integrity remains intact, that does you no good if you can’t access it when you need it to perform critical business functions. Availability ensures you have this data (and the information systems that process it) at your fingertips. Just as confidentiality and integrity have their opposites, data destruction or denial of service is the opposite of availability. This risk to your information systems could prevent authorized consumers of that data or users of that information system from performing their jobs, thus severely impacting your business operations.