Information Security Chap 4 Review

Defining Risk Management. Without directly referring to your text, construct a definition (as you understand it) of at least 3 of the following:

Risk Management is an internal IT strategy used to align the IT risk management plans with the business strategic initiatives to reduce the IT threats. Incorporating this process will ensure IT risks are managed, and the impacts are identified and monitored effectively.

In today’s IT world every organization has a responsibility to protect the information and sensitive data they have. Protecting data is not only responsibility of security and IT staff but every individual is involved in protecting the information. The risks to information security are not digital only, but it involves technology, people and process that an organization may have. These threats may represent the problems that are associated to complex and expensive solution, but doing nothing about these risks is not the solution.

In order to diminish both security and privacy risks to organizations, measures need to be taken to combat risks throughout the various stages of the threat’s life cycle. Specific processes must be implemented to identify threats, procedures to follow when the attack occurs, and finally methods to recover from the attack (Houlding, 2011).

Risk management includes the “overall decision-making process of identifying threats and vulnerabilities and their potential impacts, determining the costs to mitigate such events, and deciding what actions are cost effective to take to control these risks” (Conklin et al, 2012, pg. 678). For the proper development of risk management techniques, every person at every level of the organization, especially those involved in the Information Security (IS) department “must be actively involved in the following activities:

An effective information security program should include, periodic assessments of risk, including the magnitude of harm that could result from the unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, or destruction of information and information systems that support the operations and assets of the organization. Policies and procedures should be based on risk assessments, cost effective reduced information security risk, and it should ensure that the information security is addressed throughout the entire life cycle of each and every organizational information system. Subordinate plans for providing sufficient information security for groups of the information system, facilities, networks, or information systems.

In the final chapter of CompTIA Security + Study Guide eBook, it covers some great topics, key elements of implementation, support, and managing the security efforts in a company or organization. It’s important for IT Professionals to understand their role in a company/ organization. It’s also extremely important for them to understand the boundaries of security within that company/organization. Adopting best security practices while adhering to company policies will ensure that both parties are happy. There are many fines lines with security management.

Different types of security threats can occuring on the job. Such as vulnerabilities that continue to grow and evolve in scale but also in complexity. Technology roles such as system/network administrators get exposed to a variety of technologies which benefits them in the security analyst work field. The vast cooperation between new members and senior members of the team allow improvements of each other's skills. New knowledge and practices come to be understood during the exchange of

Risk refers to a likelihood, probability, a chance that a loss may occur in a given organization. Most of the times, there is a high risk when there is vulnerability. In this case, vulnerability refers to a weakness that the organization has. Risk assessment refers to the process of identification of potential hazards and proper analysis of the expected losses if those hazards occur (Homeland Security, n.d.). Risk assessment as a way of profiling risk according to impact to the organization. Some organizations have business impact analysis exercises geared towards determination of potential hazards based risk assessment approaches. Organizations’ risk differ depending on the size and the type of business they are doing. The disparity in organizations’ risk call for different adaptation of risk assessment approaches. Even with the disparities of the businesses, proper risk management not only ranks the risks according to the seriousness but also identifies the best methods to control risks in an organization.

Risk analysis is an integral part of data safety within an organization and the analysis is vital to the mission and success of an organization. Risk analysis is used “to identify threats and then provide recommendations to address these threats” (Taylor et al, 2006). Risk analysis encompasses not only the equipment and programs used in an organization but also covers the culture, managerial, and administrative processes to assure data security. A key factor in risk analysis is to have a good Information Resource Management Plan.

While running businesses, owners must be aware of crucial security threats that their organizations are exposed to in order to formulate

Risk management is the term applied to a logical and systematic method of establishing the context, identifying, analyzing, evaluating, treating, monitoring and communicating risks associated with any activity, function or process in a way that will enable organizations to minimize losses and maximize opportunities. (Lecture notes)Risk Management is also described as 'all the things you need to do to make the future sufficiently certain'. (The NZ Society for Risk Management, 2001)

Good security management requires risk management to mitigate or reduce risk to an acceptable level within an organization. Security management’s objective is to protect the company and its assets. A proper risk analysis will identify the company’s major assets, threats that put those assets at risk, and estimate the possible damage and loss a company may endure if any of the threats were to become real. With a good risk analysis, management can determine the type of budget they want to set to mitigate threats. Risk analysis justifies the cost of the countermeasures against the threats and determines the benefit or worth of security

The reader will become familiarised with the term risk and it definitions from specifically the ISO 31000 standard of risk management and also the definition of risk from the criminology crime triangle. Which one of these two definitions that are the most suitable for usage within the security industry will be discussed and evaluated. How and why consequence is important when assessing risk priorities and determining where to allocate resources will be examined and answered.

In order to effectively implement security governance, the Corporate Governance Task Force (CGTF) recommends that organizations follow an established framework, such as the IDEAL framework from the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute. This framework, which is described in the document “Information Security Governance: Call to Action,” defines the responsibilities of (1) the board of directors or trustees, (2) the senior organizational executive (i.e., CEO), (3) executive team members, (4) senior managers, and (5) all employees and users. This important document can be found at the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA) Web site at www.isaca.org/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm?ContentID=34997.