Chapter 1 Risk Management Flashcards
An item of value to an institution, such as data, hardware, software, or physical property. An asset is an item or collection of items that has a quantitative (numeric) or qualitative (subjective) value to a company.
Asset
The probability or likelihood of the occurrence or realization of a threat.
Risk
A weakness in hardware, software, or components that may be exploited in order for a threat to destroy, damage, or compromise an asset.
Vulnerability
Any agent, condition, or circumstance that could potentially cause harm, loss, damage, or compromise to an IT asset or data asset.
Threat
Probability of occurrence or the odds that the event will actually occur.
Likelihood of Threat
Driving force behind the activity.
Motivation
What are some common motivations of risk activities such as hacking?
prestige, money, fame, and challenge
What are some examples of Internal Risk?
- disgruntled employee
- failed hard drive
What are some examples of External Risk?
- Natural disasters such as floods
- Person-made events such as strikes and protests
Internal or external cause of risk
Risk Source
Events over which we have no control, such as bad weather (hurricanes, snowstorms, tornadoes), fires, floods, earthquakes, and tsunamis, but could also include global events like pandemics.
Natural Disaster
All forms of damaging programs, such as viruses, worms, Trojans, keyloggers, and so forth. This software is distinguishable in that it is developed to damage, alter, expose, or destroy a system or data. For example, viruses are executable programs that can replicate and attach to and infect other executable objects. Some viruses also perform destructive or discreet activities (payload) after replication and infection are accomplished.
Malicious Code
Instigated by a trusted insider or an untrusted outsider. Intruders, vandals, and thieves remove sensitive information, destroy data, or physically damage or remove hardware such as hard drives and mobile devices.
Breach of Physical Security
Stolen, lost, damaged, or modified data. Loss or damage to an organization’s data can be a critical threat if there are no backups or external archiving of the data as part of the organization’s data recovery and business continuity plan. Also, if the compromised data is of a confidential nature, this can also be a critical threat to the organization, depending on the potential damage that can arise from this compromise.
Hacker Attack
Attack on a network or web-based system is designed to bring down the network or prevent access to a particular device by flooding it with useless traffic. Can be launched in several ways. What was done manually with simple tools before is now automated and coordinated, on a massive scale with multiple systems.
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attack
When attackers use computers, Internet communications, and other cyber tools to penetrate and disrupt critical national infrastructures such as water, electric, and gas plants; oil and gasoline refineries; nuclear power plants; waste management plants; and so on.
Cyberterrorism
Identify weaknesses and gaps in the deployment of controls and to identify more accurately what areas require the highest level of protection.
Risk Assessment
Process of identifying all of the organization’s assets.
Asset Identification
What are the two types of assets?
Tangible and Intangible
What are some types of tangible assets?
Documentation, Data, Hardware, Software
What are some types of intangible assets?
Reputation, Services, Knowledge
What are the 5 aspects of the Risk Assessment Process?
- Asset Identification
- Information Classification
- Risk Assessment
- Risk Analysis
- Implementing Controls
What is the CIA Security Triad?
Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability
Strengthens the organization in many ways. Labeling information secret or strictly confidential helps employees see the value of the information and give it a higher standard of care.
Information Classification
Specifies how employees are to handle specific information. For example, company policy might state, “All sensitive documents must be removed from the employee’s desk when leaving work. We support a clean desk policy.”
Information Classification
What are the two widely used classification systems?
Government Classification System and Commercial Classification System
Which aspect of the CIA Triad does the Government Classification System focus on?
Confidentiality
Which aspect of the CIA Triad does the Commerical Classification System focus on?
Integrity
What are the four categories of the Government Classification System?
Unclassified, Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret
Which Governmental Information Classification, if disclosed, would cause grave damage to national security.
Top Secret
Which Governmental Information Classification, if disclosed, would be expected to cause serious damage to national security.
Secret
Which Governmental Information Classification, if disclosed, could cause damage to national security and should be safeguarded against.
Confidential
Which Governmental Information Classification, does not have sensitive information and need not be protected unless For Official Use Only (FOUO) is appended to the classification.
Unclassified
Information that would not normally cause damage, but over time FOUO information could be compiled to deduce information of a higher classification.
Unclassified Information
Which Commercial Information Classification has the most sensitive rating.
Confidential
Which Commercial Information Classification includes the information that keeps a company competitive.
Confidential
Which Commercial Information Classification includes information that is internal use only, but its release or alteration could seriously affect or damage a corporation.
Confidential
Which Governmental Information Classification includes information that requires the highest level of control.
Top Secret
Which Governmental Information Classification includes information that may divulge significant scientific, technological, operational, and logistical as well as many other developments.
Secret
Which Commercial Information Classification includes restricted information that is considered personal in nature and might include medical records or human resource information.
Private
Which Commercial Information Classification includes information that requires controls to prevent its release to unauthorized parties. Damage could result from its loss of confidentiality or its loss of integrity.
Sensitive
Which Commercial Information Classification includes information, if disclosed, that could result in damage to the company due to loss of confidentiality or loss of integrity.
Sensitive
Which Commercial Information Classification includes information similar to unclassified information in that its disclosure or release would cause no damage to the corporation.
Public
Step of the Risk Assessment Process where potential risks and threats are identified and their impact determined.
Risk Assessment
Responsible for identifying and analyzing risks. Its members should consist of managers and employees from across the company.
Risk Management Team
What are the two techniques of Risk Analysis?
Quantitative and Qualitative
Method of the Risk Assessment Process that assigns a cost (monetary value) to the elements of risk assessment and the assets and threats of a risk analysis.
Quantitative
Method of the Risk Assessment Process that ranks threats by nonmonetary value and is based on scenario, intuition, and experience.
Qualitative
What are the two most widely used Quantitative Risk Assessment formulas?
- SLE = AV x EF
- ALE = ARO x SLE
What does SLE stand for in the SLE = AV x EF formula?
Single Loss Expectancy
What does AV stand for in the SLE = AV x EF formula?
Asset Value
What does EF stand for in the SLE = AV x EF formula?
Exposure Factor
What does ALE stand for in the ALE = ARO x SLE formula?
Annualized Loss Expectancy
What does ARO stand for in the ALE = ARO x SLE formula?
Annualized Rate of Occurrence
What does SLE stand for in the ALE = ARO x SLE formula?
Single Loss Expectancy
What are some examples of the resulting loss of a threat or vulnerabiity?
- Financial loss
- Danger or injury to staff, clients, or customers
- Breach of confidence or violation of law
- Exposure of confidential information
- Theft of equipment, hardware, or software
What are the quantifiable steps to calculate a loss?
- Determine the asset value (AV) for each information asset.
- Identify threats to the asset.
- Determine the exposure factor (EF) for each information asset in relation to each threat.
- Calculate the single loss expectancy (SLE).
- Calculate the annualized rate of occurrence (ARO).
- Calculate the annualized loss expectancy (ALE).
What is the strength of a quantitative risk assessment?
It assigns dollar values and dollar values are easy to understand.
What is the primary disadvantage of a quantitative risk assessment?
Because it is dollar-based, the team must attempt to compute a dollar value for all elements, which can be time consuming.
Type of risk assessment that is scenario-based and does not attempt to assign dollar values to the components of the risk analysis.
Qualitative
Risk assessment method that ranks the potential of a threat and sensitivity of assets by grade or scale such as low, medium, or high
Qualitative
Potential impact level assigned for risks that are a minor inconvenience.
Low
Potential impact level assigned for risks that can result in damage to an organization, cost a moderate amount of money to repair, and result in negative publicity.
Medium
Potential impact level assigned for risks that will result in a loss of goodwill between the company and client or employee.
High
Potential impact level assigned for risks that may result in a large legal action or fine or cause the company to lose significant revenue or earnings.
High
Potential impact level assigned for risks that can be tolerated for a short period of time but will not result in financial loss.
Low
What is a disadvantage of Qualitative Risk Assessments?
It does not provide cost values.
What are some examples of Qualitative assessment techniques?
ISAM, Delphi, and FRAP
What does ISAM stand for?
INFOSEC Assessment Methodology
Provides nongovernment organizations with the ability to complete a qualitative assessment that ranks assets as critical, high, medium, or low and to determine the impact based on CIA.
ISAM or INFOSEC Assessment Methodology
Group assessment process that allows individuals to contribute anonymous opinions and is often used to forecast the likelihood and outcomes of different types of events.
Delphi Technique
What does FRAP stand for?
Facilitated Risk Assessment Process
Subjective process that obtains results by asking a series of questions. It is designed to be completed in a matter of hours, making it a quick process to perform.
FRAP or Facilitated RIsk Assessment Process
What are the two assessment techniques used to study failures?
- Failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA)
- Failure mode, effects, and criticality analysis (FMECA).
What does FMEA stand for?
failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA)
What does FMECA stand for?
failure mode, effects, and criticality analysis (FMECA)
What is the next step after a quantitative or qualitative risk assessment is complete?
Make a risk determination and decide which security controls should be applied.
What is an assessment technique that can assist with examining loss and impact?
Risk Ranking using Aggregate Score
The total amount of risk the company is willing to accept.
Risk Appetite
Which alternative for handling potential risk eliminates the risk, to withdraw from the practice, or to not become involved. This may be a viable option; there may also be an opportunity cost associated with avoiding the activity.
Avoid
Which alternative for handling potential risk means that it is understood and has been evaluated. Senior management has made the decision that the benefits of moving forward outweigh the risk. If those in charge have not been provided with good data on risk or have made invalid assumptions, poor choices may be made. This can give rise to disasters with global impact (BP, Fukushima, Chernobyl, Challenger, and so on).
Accept
Which alternative for handling potential risk deflects it to a third party. For example, insurance is obtained. Instead of managing the risk directly, the organization incurs an ongoing continual cost from that third party.
Transfer