Risk Management for Cybersecurity and IT
Managers Study Guide
● Welcome
o What does this class cover?
▪ What is risk?
▪ What happens when risk management fails?
▪ What can you do with risk?
▪ How do you calculate risk?
● What is Risk?
o Assets
▪ Any item that has a value to the organization
o Vulnerabilities
▪ Any weakness in the system design, implementation, software code, or
lack of preventative mechanisms
▪ Cybersecurity and IT professionals are in control of vulnerabilities in their
platforms
▪ Vulnerabilities are internal factors
o Threats
▪ Any condition that could cause harm, loss, damage, or compromise to an
asset
▪ Cybersecurity and IT professionals cannot control threats in their
platforms
● Can only manage and mitigate them
▪ Threats are external factors
o What is RISK?
▪ Probability of the realization of a threat
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Risk Management for Cybersecurity and IT
Managers Study Guide
▪ There is no risk if a vulnerability AND a threat do not exist
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Risk Management for Cybersecurity and IT
Managers Study Guide
● Types of Risk
o Strategic Risk
▪ Resulting directly from operating within a specific industry at a specific
time
▪ Shifts in consumer preference or new technologies can make your
product lines obsolete
▪ Counteract by putting mitigations in place to detect changes early
o Compliance Risk
▪ Legislative laws and bureaucratic regulations are another form of risk for
our organizations
▪ Compliance is required with laws but also introduces risks to the
organization
o Financial Risk
▪ How does your organization handle money?
▪ How do you allow your customers to pay you?
▪ Do you extend credit to them?
▪ Also takes into account interest rates and foreign exchange rates
o Operational Risks
▪ Result from internal failures from internal processes, people, or systems
▪ Can result from unforeseen external events like power outage or cyber
attack
o Reputational Risk
▪ Loss of a company’s reputation or community standing from product
failures, lawsuits, or negative publicity
▪ Reputations take a long time to build, only a day to lose…
o Other Risks
▪ Much more difficult to categorize
▪ Environmental
● Natural Disasters
▪ Employee Management
● Maintaining a trained staff with up-to-date skills
▪ Political Instability
● Change in laws and regulations
● Types of Threats
o Adversarial Threats
▪ Consider their capability, intent, and likelihood
▪ Examples:
● Trusted insiders
● Competitors
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Risk Management for Cybersecurity and IT
Managers Study Guide
● Suppliers
● Customers
● Business partners
● Nation states
o Accidental Threats
▪ Occurs when someone makes a mistake that hurts the security of the
system
▪ Example:
● System administrator accidentally takes servers offline, causing
loss of availability
o Structural Threats
▪ Occurs when equipment, software, or environmental controls fail
▪ Example:
● IT server fails due to hard drive failure
● Servers fail due to overheating (HVAC fail)
● Software failure (OS bug or crash)
o Environmental Threats
▪ Occurs when natural or man-made disasters occur
▪ Example:
● Fires
● Flooding
● Severe storms
● Loss of power from the city power grid
● Fiber or telecommunication lines cut
o Always Remember…
▪ Threats come from both external and internal sources, but most risk
assessors think of internal sources first…
▪ We aren’t just worried about hackers, but also the trusted insider…
▪ As you design security controls, don’t forget to think about disgruntled
employees, inept administrators, or the insider threat!
● When Risk Management Fails?
o When Risk Management Fails…
▪ Amazon Web Services (Feb 28, 2017)
▪ 100s of websites were taken offline
▪ Technician utilized an SOP to take a small number of servers offline, but
input the command incorrectly
▪ It took down the entire US-EAST-1 region!
▪ Employees were debugging an issue with the billing system and
accidentally took more servers offline than intended
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Risk Management for Cybersecurity and IT
Managers Study Guide
▪ The error started a domino effect that took down two other server
subsystems
o Accidental Threats
▪ Removing a significant portion of the capacity caused each of these
systems to require a full restart
▪ While the subsystems were restarted, S3 was unable to service requests
▪ Other AWS services in the US-EAST-1 Region that rely on S3 for storage,
including the S3 console, EC2, EBS, and Lambda were impacted
o What Concepts Are Illustrated?
▪ Accidental threat
● Someone made a mistake, hurting the system
▪ Employee Risk Management
● Maintaining a trained staff with up-to-date skills
▪ Operational Risk
● Internal failure from internal processes and people
● What Can You Do With Risk?
o Management’s Responsibility
▪ Cybersecurity and IT managers minimize risk to the organization by
choosing the appropriate controls
o What Can You Do With Risk?
▪ Risk Mitigation
▪ Risk Transference
▪ Risk Avoidance
▪ Risk Acceptance
● Risk Mitigation
o Risk Mitigation
▪ Main goal of security is to minimize risk to an acceptable level
▪ Our goal is not necessarily to eliminate all risks…
▪ By adding risk controls, we can mitigate the risk down to an acceptable
level
● Risk Transference
o Risk Transference
▪ If the organization cannot afford to accept, avoid, or mitigate the risk,
they can transfer the risk to another business
▪ Example:
● If the organization is concerned that it would be too costly to
recover from a flood, they can purchase flood insurance
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Risk Management for Cybersecurity and IT
Managers Study Guide
● Risk Avoidance
o Risk Avoidance
▪ Risk is too high to accept, so the system configuration or design is
changed to avoid the risk associated with a specific vulnerability
▪ Example:
● Utilizing Windows XP is too dangerous, so we install Windows 10
instead to avoid the risk of an unsupported operating system
● Risk Acceptance
o Risk Acceptance
▪ Organization accepts the risk associated with a system’s vulnerabilities
and their associated risks
▪ Risk acceptance is common when the risk is low enough to not apply
countermeasures, or adequate countermeasures have already been
applied
● Risk Controls
o Risk Control
▪ Technical controls
▪ Operational controls
o Technical Controls
▪ Systems, devices, software, and settings used to enforce CIA
requirements
▪ Examples
● Using firewalls, IDS, and IPS
● Installing antivirus and endpoint security
o Operational Controls
▪ Practices and procedures to increase security
▪ Examples
● Conducting penetration tests
● Utilizing standard operating procedures
● Calculating Risk
o Calculating Risk
▪ Senior executives are always looking to compare one risk against another
in order to make the best resourcing decisions
▪ Should I fix this vulnerability or those multiple vulnerabilities?
▪ We need to have a way to compare…
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Risk Management for Cybersecurity and IT
Managers Study Guide
o Measuring Risk
▪ Qualitative is subjective
▪ Quantitative is countable
● Qualitative Risk Measurement
o Qualitative Risk
▪ Used when there aren’t any precise values
▪ Measures the probability of occurrence and the impact if it occurred
▪ Subjective in nature
▪ Most commonly used with a risk matrix
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Risk Management for Cybersecurity and IT
Managers Study Guide
o Qualitative Risk Example
▪ Considering allowing a BYOD policy
▪ You will save $$$ on buying devices
▪ But, inherit the risk of employee devices
▪ What is the risk associated with a cyber attack caused by your BYOD
policy?
▪ You purchased data breach insurance
▪ Insurance transfers risk of loss
▪ But, can’t transfer the negative affects to your reputation if a breach
occurs…
▪ What is the risk to your reputation if a data breach occurred?
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Risk Management for Cybersecurity and IT
Managers Study Guide
● Quantitative Risk Measurement
o Quantitative
▪ Seeks to numerically assess the risk
▪ Known as Probabilistic Risk Analysis
▪ Measures the probability of occurrence and the impact if it occurred
▪ Describes the consequences in dollars, time, lives lost, or other metrics
o Single Loss Expectancy
▪ Exposure Factor (EF) is the percentage of an asset lost during an event
▪ EF is 1.0 if the asset loses all value
o Annual Loss Expectancy
▪ Common calculation to determine the cost associated with a particular
risk
▪ Used by executives in determining when to mitigate, transfer, avoid, or
accept the risk
o Quantitative Example
▪ Assume that an organization will suffer one (1) data breach every three
(3) years
▪ Chief Security Officer suggests budgeting $524k annually to provide data
security protections
▪ Each breach is estimated to cost your organization $103k
▪ Should you authorize the budget?
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Risk Management for Cybersecurity and IT
Managers Study Guide
▪ Assume that an organization will suffer three (3) data breach every year
▪ Chief Security Officer suggests budgeting $214k annual to provides data
security protections
▪ Each breach is estimated to cost your organization $103k
▪ Should you authorize the budget?
● Case Study (Equifax)
o Equifax Data Breach
▪ 145 million Equifax customers affected
▪ Data breach occurred in July 2017
▪ Attackers used a vulnerability in Apache Struts
o CVE-2017-5638 (Released 3/6/17)
▪ Apache Struts 2 framework vulnerability
▪ Over the first 6 days of the vulnerability being discovered, thousands of
attacks occurred
o How to Mitigate Vulnerability?
▪ Upgrade Apache Struts to either version 2.3.32 or 2.5.10.1, or a different
multipart parser
▪ Requires rewriting, retesting, and redeploying their code
▪ Assumed cost:
● $3.5 million (man-hours & downtime)
o What’s At Risk?
▪ Social Security Numbers
▪ Dates of Birth
▪ Names
▪ Addresses
o How Much is Security Worth?
▪ In FY17-Q3, Equifax spent…
● Security Products ($55.5 million)
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Risk Management for Cybersecurity and IT
Managers Study Guide
● Consulting Fee ($17.1 million)
● Consumer Support ($14.9 million)
● Estimate additional costs still coming ($56 million to $110 million)
● Conclusion
o What did this class cover?
▪ What is risk?
▪ What happens when risk management fails?
▪ What can you do with risk?
▪ How do you calculate risk?
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