Oct 11 2021

An Adoption Guide for FAIR

Category: Risk Assessment,Security Risk AssessmentDISC @ 12:09 pm

Jack draws on years of experience introducing quantified risk analysis to organizations like yours, to write An Adoption Guide For FAIR. In this free eBook, he’ll show you how to:

Lay the foundation for a change in thinking about risk

Plan an adoption program that suits your organization’s style.

Identify stakeholders and key allies for socialization of FAIR

Select and achieve an initial objective, then integrate business-aligned, risk-based practices across your organization.

Tags: A FAIR Approach, Cost-Benefit Analysis, Factor Analysis, FAIR in a Nutshell, Pure Risk Reduction, Quantitative Tactical Analyses, What is FAIR?


Oct 01 2021

CISA releases Insider Risk Mitigation Self-Assessment Tool

Category: Risk Assessment,Security Risk AssessmentDISC @ 9:39 am

The US CISA has released a new tool that allows to assess the level of exposure of organizations to insider threats and devise their own defense plans against such risks.

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has released the Insider Risk Mitigation Self-Assessment Tool, a new tool that allows organizations to assess their level of exposure to insider threats.

Insider threats pose a severe risk to organizations, the attacks are carried out by current or former employees, contractors, or others with inside knowledge, for this reason they are not easy to detect.

An attack from insiders could compromise sensitive information, cause economic losses, damages the reputation of the organization, theft of intellectual property, reduction of market share, and even physical harm to people. 

TheĀ tool elaborates the answers of the organizations to a survey about their implementations ofĀ a risk program management for insider threats.

ā€œTheĀ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)Ā released an Insider Risk MitigationĀ Self-Assessment ToolĀ today, which assists public and private sector organizations in assessing their vulnerability to an insider threat.Ā  By answering a series of questions, users receive feedback they can use to gauge their risk posture.Ā  The tool will also help users further understand the nature of insider threats and take steps to create their own prevention and mitigation programs.ā€ reads theĀ announcementĀ published by CISA.

Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2021 Toolkit: Key messaging, articles, social media, and more to promote Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2021

Held every October, Cybersecurity Awareness Month is a collaborative effort between government and industry to ensure every American has the resources they need to stay safe and secure online while increasing the resilience of the Nation against cyber threats.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) co-lead Cybersecurity Awareness Month.

Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2021 Toolkit: Key messaging, articles, social media, and more to promote Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2021 by [Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency]

Tags: CISA, Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2021, Risk Mitigation Self-Assessment Tool


Jun 17 2021

Calculating Your Company’s Total Cybersecurity Risk Exposure

Category: Risk Assessment,Security Risk AssessmentDISC @ 12:20 pm
Skyscrapers - Total Cyber Risk of an Organization copy

In the first part of my blog post I focused on calculating the impact of a cybersecurity breach in relation to a company’s size and industry. In part two, I present an approach to better understand how often a company will experience security breaches.

The probability is usually the big unknown. Not particularly helpful is that our abilities to estimate a probability are inferior to our abilities to estimate damage. In addition, we must consider a range of limitations to our abilities to estimate. We don’t estimate well in magnitudes very small or large. Once in 1,000 years and once in 10,000 years is harder to differentiate than once per year and once in 10 years. Also, we tend to overestimate the probability of recently occurred incidents.

The great uncertainty drives risk practitioners to reduce their risk assessments to pure impact assessments (ā€œEstimations of probability can only be wrong!ā€). However, we can use what is out there on data and make comparisons.

Source: Calculating Your Company’s Total Cybersecurity Risk Exposure

Tags: FAIR


May 25 2021

A leadership guide for mitigating security risks with low code platforms

Category: Risk Assessment,Security Risk AssessmentDISC @ 8:32 am

The lingering question of application code security follows, as stories of security breaches continue to pour, and remote teams across the world adopt low code for faster application delivery. Even as GartnerĀ predictsĀ that 65% of applications will be built using the low-code paradigm by 2024, it is important to understand the security implications that come with it and discuss how we can mitigate possible risks.

Most low code platforms enable non-technical users to build applications quickly and offer in-built security for various aspects of the application, such as APIs, data access, web front-ends, deployment, etc. Some go deeper with functionalities purpose-built for professional developers, with abilities to customize at a platform level. That said, no platform can claim to be the silver bullet when it comes to abstracting all security risks.

Business leaders should assess both internal and external risks that arise, and make sure there are certain guard rails enforced to secure low code-built applications. Let’s discuss some of these in detail.

The Enterprise Risk Management Program (ERMP) Guide provides program-level risk management guidance that directly supports your organization’s policies and standardizes the management of cybersecurity risk and also provides access to an editable Microsoft Word document template that can be utilized for baselining your organizations risk management practices. Unfortunately, most companies lack a coherent approach to managing risks across the enterprise:When you look at getting audit ready, your policies and standards only cover the “why?” and “what?” questions of an audit. This product addresses the ā€œhowā€ questions for how your company manages risk.

The ERMP provides clear, concise documentation that provides a “paint by numbers” approach to how your organization manages risk.The ERMP addresses fundamental needs when it comes to what is expected in cybersecurity risk management, how risk is defined, who can accept risk, how risk is calculated by defining potential impact and likelihood, necessary steps to reduce risk.Just as Human Resources publishes an ā€œemployee handbookā€ to let employees know what is expected for employees from an HR perspective, the ERMP does this from a cybersecurity risk management perspective.Regardless if your cybersecurity program aligns with NIST, ISO, or another framework, the Enterprise Risk Management Program (ERMP) is designed to address the strategic, operational and tactical components of IT security risk management for any organization.

Policies & standards are absolutely necessary to an organization, but they fail to describe HOW risk is actually managed. The ERMP provides this middle ground between high-level policies and the actual procedures of how risk is managed on a day-to-day basis by those individual contributors who execute risk-based controls.


May 03 2021

Risk-based vulnerability management has produced demonstrable results

Category: Risk Assessment,Security Risk AssessmentDISC @ 7:44 am

Risk-based vulnerability management

Risk-based vulnerability management doesn’t ask ā€œHow do we fix everything?ā€ It merely asks, ā€œWhat do we actually need to fix?ā€ A series of research reports from the Cyentia Institute have answered that question in a number of ways, finding for example, that attackers are more likely to develop exploits for some vulnerabilities than others.

Research has shown that, on average, about 5 percent of vulnerabilities actually pose a serious security risk. Common triage strategies, like patching every vulnerability with aĀ CVSSĀ score above 7 were, in fact, no better than chance at reducing risk.

But now we can say that companies using RBVM programs are patching a higher percentage of their high-risk vulnerabilities. That means they are doing more, and there’s less wasted effort. (Which is especially good because patch management is resource constrained.)

The time it took companies to patch half of their high-risk vulnerabilities was 158 days in 2019. This year, it was 27 days.

And then there is another measure of success. Companies start vulnerability management programs with massive backlogs of vulnerabilities, and the number of vulnerabilities only grows each year. Last year, about two-thirds of companies using a risk-based system reduced their vulnerability debt or were at least treading water. This year, that number rose to 71 percent.

When a company discloses that their networks have been breached and that their data has been stolen or encrypted for ransom, there is a steady drumbeat of critics. The company, these critics contend, is somehow at fault. Its security team didn’t do EVERYTHING it could have to prevent the breach. The proof of this doesn’t lie in knowledge of what preventative steps the security team did, but in the fact that it got breached. Victim blaming was alive and well in cybersecurity.

Thankfully, this mindset is fading away. But when cybersecurity companies with risk-based approaches began entering the market, they faced headwinds from the security nihilism crowd who thought if you can’t fix everything, then ā€œwhy bother?ā€

We can now say that, when it comes to vulnerability management – a complex, yet fundamental cybersecurity discipline – the risk-based approach has produced clear results. The proof is in the data.

Enterprises that use risk-based approaches to vulnerability management are getting faster and smarter at this foundational cybersecurity discipline. They are doing less work and seeing more impactful security improvements. It’s encouraging to see these year-over-year improvements and we believe this trend is likely to continue.

Risk Based Vulnerability ManagementĀ 

Risk Based Vulnerability Management A Complete Guide - 2019 Edition by [Gerardus Blokdyk]

Tags: Risk-based vulnerability management


Mar 30 2021

Risky business: 3 timeless approaches to reduce security risk in 2021

Category: Risk AssessmentDISC @ 9:57 pm

Steps to reduce security risk in 2021

A summary of the tactical and strategic moves CISOs can make to reduce security risk:

  • Look to reduce your ā€œhaystackā€ of threat avenues through smart policy enforcement. Consider DNS as a vector – for both attack and detection
  • Ensure that your cloud adoption strategy is coupled with sound cloud security policy and design
  • Educate your leadership team. ā€œWe aren’t a targetā€ is equivalent to sticking your head in the sand.

Are you doing enough? Do you understand your risks? What if the brightest aren’t always the best choice for your company?

The Smartest Person in the room
The Smartest Person in the Room: The Root Cause and New Solution for Cybersecurity by [Christian Espinosa]

Tags: reduce security risk


Mar 29 2021

Understanding Cyber Risk Quantification – A Four Minute Journey Into Your Future

Category: Risk Assessment,Security Risk AssessmentDISC @ 10:56 pm

Cyber Risk Quantification (CRQ) is now viewed as a core pillar of any effective Integrated Risk Management program. This short explainer video walks you through and gives you a glimpse into your future as a top tier cyber risk management organization.Ā 

A FAIR Approach

Tags: A FAIR Approach, cyber risk quantification


Mar 17 2021

Why is financial cyber risk quantification important?

In its 10th annual Risk Barometer, Allianz found that cyber incidents ranked third in a list of the most important global business risks for the upcoming year, coming in second behind risks stemming from the pandemic itself. We can expect cyber incidents to increase in frequency and sophistication as cyber criminals continue to leverage the various security lapses that accompany remote workforces.

However, something that has changed recently is how business leaders and boards of directors are viewing cyber risk. While previously seen as an issue solely for security and technology leaders to manage, executives are now pressuring security departments to financially quantify cyber risks facing their organizations.

In fact, a recent survey of 100 senior security professionals found that 70% of respondents have received pressure to produce cyber risk quantification for their business. Further, half of the respondents reported they have a lack of confidence in their ability to communicate and report the financial impacts of cyber risks, with a quarter saying they do not have a cyber risk quantification technology deployed at their company.

Why are executives pressuring CISOs to start financially quantifying cyber risk for their business? This process allows CISOs to identify and rank risk scenarios that are most critical to their enterprise, based on factors such as which attacks would have the biggest financial impact, and how equipped the company is to defend itself against any given attack.

Automated risk quantification makes this process even easier, removing the guesswork out of these decisions and streamlining the process of getting to actionable information. The potential for human error and subjectivity are removed completely from the equation.

Previously, security leaders have relied on theoretical models of risk like theĀ Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS). Even with this system, it can be difficult to prioritize the vulnerabilities that rank highest in terms of severity. This is even more challenging for leaders across the enterprise who may be unfamiliar with this system. Cyber risk quantification provides security leaders with a way to communicate the most pressing cyber threats facing a company that do not rely on a scoring system that is incomprehensible to anyone outside of the security department.

By assigning a dollar value to potential cyber incidents, business leaders have better visibility into the most pressing – and costly – threats facing the enterprise. With this information, the business and security teams can align their efforts and prioritize the largest risks, rather than dedicating resources to lower priority risks.

Teams can focus their efforts on ensuring the business has adequate controls and processes in place to defend against the costlier risks and make additional investments accordingly. It can also make it easier for leaders and boards to justify spending more time or money to proactively defend against certain risks.

For CISOs, cyber risk quantification also provides an easier way to communicate the value of their work to leadership. Security leaders can calculate the return on investment of their tools and teams in the context of risk reduction for the enterprise. This gives leaders better visibility into the risks facing their organizations in terms that are understandable and actionable. Conversely, cyber risk quantification can help to identify any issues with an organization’s existing cybersecurity program and measure improvement over time.

Overall, shifting to this type of risk-led approach for cybersecurity will result in data-driven and actionable insights that will allow leaders across all business departments to understand and act on the most critical cyber risks facing their enterprise.

We know that attacks are going to continue, whether they’re state-sponsored or cyber criminals, and it is critical for an enterprise to have a comprehensive view into your risk landscape. Now is the time for security leaders to adopt cyber risk quantification and more easily demonstrate how cybersecurity organizations are protecting their business operations from disruption and catastrophic harm.

Why is financial cyber risk quantification important?

Cyber Risk Quantification A Complete Guide

Tags: cyber risk quantification


Mar 16 2021

Risk management in the digital world: How different is it?

Category: Risk Assessment,Security Risk AssessmentDISC @ 3:33 pm

Prioritizing and communicating risk

Last year, the number of active phishing websites increased 350% from January to March alone. Now that employees are connecting to the office from their own remote networks and not through their office’s secure network, the chance of a security breach is higher than ever. While risk managers know this already, securing company data is essential to customer trust and longevity. To prioritize risk during remote work, risk managers need to involve executives and keep them updated and educated on potential problems and solutions. Prioritizing risk now will pay dividends in the long run.

Executive teams need to buy in — simply relegating all risk-related work to risk managers isn’t enough in the end. Investing time and money to form a risk-aware culture will better educate all employees on how to avoid common scams and prepare for larger-scale problems. Without prioritization and investment in risk, companies may not make it through the next major disruption and risk major security breaches.

A risk-aware culture can’t be created overnight. Risk managers and executives must first identify the risks and find out where the company stands, aligning risk culture with the existingĀ company culture. Then, they can implement new risk management strategies that may require drastic changes, such as new software, revised policies and educational tutorials on risk. IT teams need to be on top of their game for virtual risks, educating employees and preparing them to ask the right questions. With phishing on the rise and data at a very vulnerable point, employees must be able to assess risk on their own.

Risk management in the digital world: How different is it?

Build a Security Culture

Tags: Risk management in the digital world


Feb 25 2021

Proven Use Cases to Start Quantitative Cyber Risk Management

Category: Risk Assessment,Security Risk AssessmentDISC @ 11:05 am

With the growing interest in Factor Analysis of Information Risk (FAIR™), we hear a lot from people who have read about FAIR or even taken FAIR training and are really excited about the potential power of cyber risk quantification for risk management –  but have come away with the impression that to actually bring a quantitative risk management program to life in their organization would be…

…a slow, evolutionary process.

Well, itĀ isĀ a process of upward evolution from qualitative, opinion-driven, red-yellow-green risk analysis to critical thinking about risk in financial terms.Ā Ā And yes, bringing your entire organization to a common way of thinking about risk as loss events instead of vague worries like ā€œthe cloudā€ is a great step forward.

Proven Use Cases to Start Quantitative Cyber Risk Management

Tags: Quantitative Cyber Risk Management


Feb 24 2021

Nmap Cheat Sheet

Category: Cheat Sheet,Network security,Risk AssessmentDISC @ 9:52 am

Nmap Cheat Sheet – Infographic by SANS Institute

Tags: Nmap, Nmap network scanning


Aug 18 2020

Advice for senior management on their responsibilities towards information risk

Category: Risk Assessment,Security Risk AssessmentDISC @ 5:55 pm

IAAC Directors’ Guides

Source:Succinct advice for senior management on their responsibilities towards information risk, courtesy of the IAAC.





Oct 14 2019

The best practice guide for an effective infoSec function

Building ISMS

The best practice guide for an effective infoSec function: iTnews has put together a bit of advice from various controls including ISO 27k and NIST CSF to guide you through what’s needed to build an effective information security management system (ISMS) within your organization.

This comprehensive report is a must-have reference for executives, senior managers and folks interested in the information security management area.

 

Practice Guide

Open a PDF file The best practice guide for an effective infoSec function.

How to Build a Cybersecurity Program based on the NIST Cybersecurity Framework
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDra0cy5WZI

Beginners ultimate guide to ISO 27001 Information Security Management Systems
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LytISQyhQVE

Conducting a cybersecurity risk assessment


Subscribe to DISC InfoSec blog by Email




Tags: isms


Oct 06 2019

A CISO’s Guide to Bolstering Cybersecurity Posture

iso27032

When It Come Down To It, Cybersecurity Is All About Understanding Risk

Risk Management Framework for Information Systems

How to choose the right cybersecurity framework

Improve Cybersecurity posture by using ISO/IEC 27032
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX5RMGOcyBM

Cybersecurity Summit 2018: David Petraeus and Lisa Monaco on America’s cybersecurity posture
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8WGPZwlfj8

CSET Cyber Security Evaluation Tool – ICS/OT
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzuraQXDqMY


Subscribe to DISC InfoSec blog by Email




Tags: cybersecurity posture, security risk management


Jul 21 2019

When It Come Down To It, Cybersecurity Is All About Understanding Risk

Category: Risk Assessment,Security Risk AssessmentDISC @ 12:11 am

Get two risk management experts in a room, one financial and the other IT, and they will NOT be able to discuss risk.

Source: When It Come Down To It, Cybersecurity Is All About Understanding Risk

An Overview of Risk Assessment According to
ISO 27001 andĀ ISO 27005






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Mar 17 2019

Risk Management Framework for Information Systems

Risk Management Framework for Information Systems and Organizations:
A System Life Cycle Approach for Security and Privacy
NIST 800-37r2












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Tags: Risk Management Framework


Mar 07 2019

How to choose the right cybersecurity framework

Does your organization need NIST, CSC, ISO, or FAIR frameworks? Here’s how to start making sense of security frameworks.

Source: How to choose the right cybersecurity framework






Nov 05 2017

Breach highlights the need for a cyber health check

Category: cyber security,Risk AssessmentDISC @ 8:13 pm

Cyber Health Check

 

Deloitte breach highlights the need for a cyber health check

Javier Brias

Deloitte, one of the world’s biggest accounting organizations, recently suffered a data breach that compromised confidential emails and plans of some of its blue-chip clients, according to theĀ Guardian.

The hackers also had potential access to usernames, passwords, IP addresses, architectural designs and health information.

Deloitte has confirmed it was breached but said that only a small number of clients were affected.

This breach is even more unfortunate because Deloitte offers clients advice on how to manage risks posed by cyber attacks. Its Cyber Intelligence Centre states that it can ā€œintegrate state-of-the-art technology with industry insight to provide round-the-clock business-focused operational security.ā€

The problem with a solutions-based approach

The fact that Deloitte is a global consultant with interests in cyber security proves that no one is safe from a cyber attack.

In today’s cyber security market, technology vendors tend to focus on specific solutions, such as endpoint security, next-gen firewalls with IDS/IPS, email and web filtering, data loss prevention and identity access management. The problem is that mixing and matching solutions can cause interoperability gaps to materialise.

To understand the complexities of today’s IT infrastructure, companies need to have a strategic plan that takes a global view of the technological landscape and identifies the possible vulnerability points.

How Cyber Health Check fills the gaps

Our independent, three-phaseĀ Cyber Health CheckĀ service combines on-site consultancy and audit, remote vulnerability assessments and an online staff survey to identify your current cyber risks in the three key exposure areas of people, processes and technology.

This service will provide you with a concise report describing your current cyber risk status and critical exposures, and will draw on best practice – such as ISO 27001, 10 Steps to Cyber Security and Cyber Essentials – to provide recommendations for reducing your cyber and compliance risks. The report also provides feedback on basic cyber hygiene, cyber governance framework, policies and procedures, and technical controls.

TheĀ Cyber Health CheckĀ service identifies your actual cyber risks, assesses your responses to those risks and analyses your risk exposure. The result is a best-practice action plan to mitigate those risks effectively and in line with your business objectives.

For more information, visit ourĀ Cyber Health CheckĀ page.

Contact us for more information





Tags: Cyber Health Check


Oct 25 2017

Conducting an asset-based risk assessment in ISO 27001:2013

Category: ISO 27k,Risk AssessmentDISC @ 11:14 am

Conducting an asset-based risk assessment in ISO 27001:2013 – Vigilant Software

The nature of ISO27001Ā is that it is heavily focused on risk-based planning. This is to ensure that the identified information risks are appropriately managed according to the threats and the nature of the threats.Ā While asset-based risk assessments are still widely regarded as best practice, and present a robust methodology for conducting risk assessments, it is no longer a requirement under ISO 27001:2013. Ā ISO 27001:2013 leaves it to the organisation to choose the relevant risk assessment methodology, i.e. ISO 27005, or ISO/IEC 31010.

It is commonly believed that an asset-based information security risk assessment provides a thorough and comprehensive approach to conducting a risk assessment, and this article will look at the steps to follow when conducting this type of risk assessment.

Where do you start when you embark on an asset-based information security risk assessment?

The first step would be to produce an asset register, which can be done through a series of interviews with asset owners.Ā The ā€˜asset owner’ is an individual or entity that has responsibility for controlling the production, development, maintenance, use and security of an information asset.

Note: In the new standard, ISO 27001:2013, there is a stronger emphasis on the role of the ā€˜risk owner’, which pushes up the responsibility for the risks to a higher level within the organisation.Ā However, since the approach we are following is an asset-based methodology, the asset owner would be the logical point to start in order to compile an asset register.

Once the asset register has been compiled, the next step is to identify any potential threats and vulnerabilities that could pose risks to those assets. A vulnerability / weakness of an asset or control can be defined as one that can be exploited by one or more threats.

Risk assessment & impact determination

Once the threats and vulnerabilities have been identified, then an analysis of the risks should be undertaken, to establish the impact level of the risks. Ā The impact value needs to take into consideration how the Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability of data can be affected by each of the risks.

It should also consider the business, legal, contractual and regulatory implications of risks, including the cost of the replacement of the asset, the potential loss of income, fines and reputational damage.

ISO 27005 presents a structured, systematic and rigorous process of analysing risks, and for creating the risk treatment plan, and includes a list of known threats and vulnerabilities that can be used for establishing the risks your information assets are exposed to.

vsRisk comes with an optional, pre-populated asset library. Ā Organisational roles are pre-assigned to each asset group, and the corresponding potential threats / risks are pre-applied to each asset. vsRisk also pre-assigns the relevant controls from Annex A to each threat.Ā See sample below. View options to purchase vsRisk now.

Sample risk assessment

vsRiskā„¢ provides key benefits for anyone undertaking an asset-based risk assessment.

By providing a simple framework and process to follow, vsRisk minimises the manual hassle and complexity of carrying out an information security risk assessment, saving the risk assessor time and resources. In addition, once the assessment has been completed, the risk assessments can be repeated easily in a standard format year after year. Ā The tool generates a set of 6 reports that can be exported and edited, Ā presented to management and audit teams, and includes pre-populated databases of threats and vulnerabilities as well as 7 different control sets that can be applied to treat the risks.





Tags: Risk Assessment


Jul 25 2017

Fundamentals of Information Risk Management Auditing

Category: Risk AssessmentDISC @ 1:49 pm

New information and IT risks seem to be everywhere, so it is essential that organizations address these risks in the context of enterprise risk management (ERM).
ERM is a practice that has become increasingly popular. It’s important that an organization’s information risk management specialist or auditor understands this practice because much of their work will need to be in the context of ERM.
Kick-start your career in information risk management with introductory guidance.

Fundamentals of Information Risk Management Auditing

Provides insight and guidance into information risk management and ERM, ideal for those considering a career in information risk management, for non-specialist auditors, and for managers.
This book will give you an introduction to:
Risk and risk management
Information security and management risks
Concepts of application controls

Gain an insight into the risks and controls/mitigations that you might encounter when performing or managing an audit of information risk.
Buy Now >>>

 

Author Podcast: Fundamentals of Information Risk Management Auditing, with Christopher Wright

In the podcast Christopher discusses Lean, Agile, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and ERM.
Listen now >>







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