Introduction to Risk management

Managing security is all about risk management and analysis. If there are no risks to handle, we don't need any security measures. The amount of effort we put in securing our infrastructure should therefore be directly related to the risk we face. Risk management is the process of determining an acceptable level of risk, assessing the current level of risk, taking steps to reduce risk to the acceptable level, and maintaining that level.

Before getting into details, it is good to explain some terminology most used in risk management.  

• An asset is an infrastructure component that must be protected.
• A vulnerability is any weakness, process or physical exposure that makes an infrastructure component susceptible to exploit by a threat.
• A threat is a potential event that causes an unwanted impact to an infrastructure component by exploiting a vulnerability.

• Risk is the combination of the probability of a threat and its consequence.
• An exploit is actually using a vulnerability to attack an asset.
• A safeguard is the control or countermeasure employed to reduce risk.

Or in a more popular way:  

• Asset: that is your daughter
• Vulnerability: She is 13 years old and goes to school with her friends who have a big influence on her
• Threat: She gets addicted to smoking
• Risk: There is a high chance of her taking a cigarette and start smoking
• Exploit: Her friends offering her a cigarette
• Safeguard: Explain her about the risk of smoking cigarettes

To quantify risks first a risk list is compiled. This can best be done in a workshop with all relevant stakeholders of one or more assets. A risk list contains the following parts.  

• Asset name
• Threat and/or vulnerability
• Exploit
• Probability: an estimation of the likelihood of the occurrence of an exploit of the vulnerability (how often we estimate this will happen)
  • 5: Frequent
  • 4: Likely
  • 3: Occasional
  • 2: Seldom
  • 1: Unlikely
• Impact: the severity of the damage when the vulnerability is exploited:
  • 4: Catastrophic: Complete mission failure, death
  • 3: Critical: Major mission degradation, major system damage, exposure of sensitive data, or affecting all staff
  • 2: Moderate: Minor mission degradation, minor system damage, exposure of data, or affecting staff of one department
  • 1: Negligible: Some mission degradation, affecting less than 10 people
• The quantified risk (= Likelihood x Severity)

A typical risk list would look like this:

This entry was posted on Vrijdag 21 Januari 2011