Mar 21 2024

HACK-PROOF YOUR CLOUD: THE STEP-BY-STEP CONTINUOUS THREAT EXPOSURE MANAGEMENT CTEM STRATEGY FOR AWS & AZURE

Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) is an evolving cybersecurity practice focused on identifying, assessing, prioritizing, and addressing security weaknesses and vulnerabilities in an organization’s digital assets and networks continuously. Unlike traditional approaches that might assess threats periodically, CTEM emphasizes a proactive, ongoing process of evaluation and mitigation to adapt to the rapidly changing threat landscape. Here’s a closer look at its key components:

  1. Identification: CTEM starts with the continuous identification of all digital assets within an organization’s environment, including on-premises systems, cloud services, and remote endpoints. It involves understanding what assets exist, where they are located, and their importance to the organization.
  2. Assessment: Regular and ongoing assessments of these assets are conducted to identify vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and other security weaknesses. This process often utilizes automated scanning tools and threat intelligence to detect issues that could be exploited by attackers.
  3. Prioritization: Not all vulnerabilities pose the same level of risk. CTEM involves prioritizing these weaknesses based on their severity, the value of the affected assets, and the potential impact of an exploit. This helps organizations focus their efforts on the most critical issues first.
  4. Mitigation and Remediation: Once vulnerabilities are identified and prioritized, CTEM focuses on mitigating or remedying these issues. This can involve applying patches, changing configurations, or implementing other security measures to reduce the risk of exploitation.
  5. Continuous Improvement: CTEM is a cyclical process that feeds back into itself. The effectiveness of mitigation efforts is assessed, and the approach is refined over time to improve security posture continuously.

The goal of CTEM is to reduce the “attack surface” of an organization—minimizing the number of vulnerabilities that could be exploited by attackers and thereby reducing the organization’s overall risk. By continuously managing and reducing exposure to threats, organizations can better protect against breaches and cyber attacks.

CTEM VS. ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES

Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) represents a proactive and ongoing approach to managing cybersecurity risks, distinguishing itself from traditional, more reactive security practices. Understanding the differences between CTEM and alternative approaches can help organizations choose the best strategy for their specific needs and threat landscapes. Let’s compare CTEM with some of these alternative approaches:

1. CTEM VS. PERIODIC SECURITY ASSESSMENTS

  • Periodic Security Assessments typically involve scheduled audits or evaluations of an organization’s security posture at fixed intervals (e.g., quarterly or annually). This approach may fail to catch new vulnerabilities or threats that emerge between assessments, leaving organizations exposed for potentially long periods.
  • CTEM, on the other hand, emphasizes continuous monitoring and assessment of threats and vulnerabilities. It ensures that emerging threats can be identified and addressed in near real-time, greatly reducing the window of exposure.

2. CTEM VS. PENETRATION TESTING

  • Penetration Testing is a targeted approach where security professionals simulate cyber-attacks on a system to identify vulnerabilities. While valuable, penetration tests are typically conducted annually or semi-annually and might not uncover vulnerabilities introduced between tests.
  • CTEM complements penetration testing by continuously scanning for and identifying vulnerabilities, ensuring that new threats are addressed promptly and not just during the next scheduled test.

3. CTEM VS. INCIDENT RESPONSE PLANNING

  • Incident Response Planning focuses on preparing for, detecting, responding to, and recovering from cybersecurity incidents. It’s reactive by nature, kicking into gear after an incident has occurred.
  • CTEM works upstream of incident response by aiming to prevent incidents before they happen through continuous threat and vulnerability management. While incident response is a critical component of a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy, CTEM can reduce the likelihood and impact of incidents occurring in the first place.

4. CTEM VS. TRADITIONAL VULNERABILITY MANAGEMENT

  • Traditional Vulnerability Management involves identifying, classifying, remediating, and mitigating vulnerabilities within software and hardware. While it can be an ongoing process, it often lacks the continuous, real-time monitoring and prioritization framework of CTEM.
  • CTEM enhances traditional vulnerability management by integrating it into a continuous cycle that includes real-time detection, prioritization based on current threat intelligence, and immediate action to mitigate risks.

KEY ADVANTAGES OF CTEM

  • Real-Time Threat Intelligence: CTEM integrates the latest threat intelligence to ensure that the organization’s security measures are always ahead of potential threats.
  • Automation and Integration: By leveraging automation and integrating various security tools, CTEM can streamline the process of threat and vulnerability management, reducing the time from detection to remediation.
  • Risk-Based Prioritization: CTEM prioritizes vulnerabilities based on their potential impact on the organization, ensuring that resources are allocated effectively to address the most critical issues first.

CTEM offers a comprehensive and continuous approach to cybersecurity, focusing on reducing exposure to threats in a dynamic and ever-evolving threat landscape. While alternative approaches each have their place within an organization’s overall security strategy, integrating them with CTEM principles can provide a more resilient and responsive defense mechanism against cyber threats.

CTEM IN AWS

Implementing Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) within an AWS Cloud environment involves leveraging AWS services and tools, alongside third-party solutions and best practices, to continuously identify, assess, prioritize, and remediate vulnerabilities and threats. Here’s a detailed example of how CTEM can be applied in AWS:

1. IDENTIFICATION OF ASSETS

  • AWS Config: Use AWS Config to continuously monitor and record AWS resource configurations and changes, helping to identify which assets exist in your environment, their configurations, and their interdependencies.
  • AWS Resource Groups: Organize resources by applications, projects, or environments to simplify management and monitoring.

2. ASSESSMENT

  • Amazon Inspector: Automatically assess applications for vulnerabilities or deviations from best practices, especially important for EC2 instances and container-based applications.
  • AWS Security Hub: Aggregates security alerts and findings from various AWS services (like Amazon Inspector, Amazon GuardDuty, and IAM Access Analyzer) and supported third-party solutions to give a comprehensive view of your security and compliance status.

3. PRIORITIZATION

  • AWS Security Hub: Provides a consolidated view of security alerts and findings rated by severity, allowing you to prioritize issues based on their potential impact on your AWS environment.
  • Custom Lambda Functions: Create AWS Lambda functions to automate the analysis and prioritization process, using criteria specific to your organization’s risk tolerance and security posture.

4. MITIGATION AND REMEDIATION

  • AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager: Automate the process of patching managed instances with both security and non-security related updates.
  • CloudFormation Templates: Use AWS CloudFormation to enforce infrastructure configurations that meet your security standards. Quickly redeploy configurations if deviations are detected.
  • Amazon EventBridge and AWS Lambda: Automate responses to security findings. For example, if Security Hub detects a critical vulnerability, EventBridge can trigger a Lambda function to isolate affected instances or apply necessary patches.

5. CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

  • AWS Well-Architected Tool: Regularly review your workloads against AWS best practices to identify areas for improvement.
  • Feedback Loop: Implement a feedback loop using AWS CloudWatch Logs and Amazon Elasticsearch Service to analyze logs and metrics for security insights, which can inform the continuous improvement of your CTEM processes.

IMPLEMENTING CTEM IN AWS: AN EXAMPLE SCENARIO

Imagine you’re managing a web application hosted on AWS. Here’s how CTEM comes to life:

  • Identification: Use AWS Config and Resource Groups to maintain an updated inventory of your EC2 instances, RDS databases, and S3 buckets critical to your application.
  • Assessment: Employ Amazon Inspector to regularly scan your EC2 instances for vulnerabilities and AWS Security Hub to assess your overall security posture across services.
  • Prioritization: Security Hub alerts you to a critical vulnerability in an EC2 instance running your application backend. It’s flagged as high priority due to its access to sensitive data.
  • Mitigation and Remediation: You automatically trigger a Lambda function through EventBridge based on the Security Hub finding, which isolates the affected EC2 instance and initiates a patching process via Systems Manager Patch Manager.
  • Continuous Improvement: Post-incident, you use the AWS Well-Architected Tool to evaluate your architecture. Insights gained lead to the implementation of stricter IAM policies and enhanced monitoring with CloudWatch and Elasticsearch for anomaly detection.

This cycle of identifying, assessing, prioritizing, mitigating, and continuously improving forms the core of CTEM in AWS, helping to ensure that your cloud environment remains secure against evolving threats.

CTEM IN AZURE

Implementing Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) in Azure involves utilizing a range of Azure services and features designed to continuously identify, assess, prioritize, and mitigate security risks. Below is a step-by-step example illustrating how an organization can apply CTEM principles within the Azure cloud environment:

STEP 1: ASSET IDENTIFICATION AND MANAGEMENT

  • Azure Resource Graph: Use Azure Resource Graph to query and visualize all resources across your Azure environment. This is crucial for understanding what assets you have, their configurations, and their interrelationships.
  • Azure Tags: Implement tagging strategies to categorize resources based on sensitivity, department, or environment. This aids in the prioritization process later on.

STEP 2: CONTINUOUS VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT

  • Azure Security Center: Enable Azure Security Center (ASC) at the Standard tier to conduct continuous security assessments across your Azure resources. ASC provides security recommendations and assesses your resources for vulnerabilities and misconfigurations.
  • Azure Defender: Integrated into Azure Security Center, Azure Defender provides advanced threat protection for workloads running in Azure, including virtual machines, databases, and containers.

STEP 3: PRIORITIZATION OF RISKS

  • ASC Secure Score: Use the Secure Score in Azure Security Center as a metric to prioritize security recommendations based on their potential impact on your environment’s security posture.
  • Custom Logic with Azure Logic Apps: Develop custom workflows using Azure Logic Apps to prioritize alerts based on your organization’s specific criteria, such as asset sensitivity or compliance requirements.

STEP 4: AUTOMATED REMEDIATION

  • Azure Automation: Employ Azure Automation to run remediation scripts or configurations management across your Azure VMs and services. This can be used to automatically apply patches, update configurations, or manage access controls in response to identified vulnerabilities.
  • Azure Logic Apps: Trigger automated workflows in response to security alerts. For example, if Azure Security Center identifies an unprotected data storage, an Azure Logic App can automatically initiate a workflow to apply the necessary encryption settings.

STEP 5: CONTINUOUS MONITORING AND INCIDENT RESPONSE

  • Azure Monitor: Utilize Azure Monitor to collect, analyze, and act on telemetry data from your Azure resources. This includes logs, metrics, and alerts that can help you detect and respond to threats in real-time.
  • Azure Sentinel: Deploy Azure Sentinel, a cloud-native SIEM service, for a more comprehensive security information and event management solution. Sentinel can collect data across all users, devices, applications, and infrastructure, both on-premises and in multiple clouds.

STEP 6: CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT AND COMPLIANCE

  • Azure Policy: Implement Azure Policy to enforce organizational standards and to assess compliance at scale. Continuous evaluation of your configurations against these policies ensures compliance and guides ongoing improvement.
  • Feedback Loops: Establish feedback loops using the insights gained from Azure Monitor, Azure Security Center, and Azure Sentinel to refine and improve your security posture continuously.

EXAMPLE SCENARIO: SECURING A WEB APPLICATION IN AZURE

Let’s say you’re managing a web application hosted in Azure, utilizing Azure App Service for the web front end, Azure SQL Database for data storage, and Azure Blob Storage for unstructured data.

  • Identification: You catalog all resources related to the web application using Azure Resource Graph and apply tags based on sensitivity and function.
  • Assessment: Azure Security Center continuously assesses these resources for vulnerabilities, such as misconfigurations or outdated software.
  • Prioritization: Based on the Secure Score and custom logic in Azure Logic Apps, you prioritize a detected SQL injection vulnerability in Azure SQL Database as critical.
  • Mitigation: Azure Automation is triggered to isolate the affected database and apply a patch. Concurrently, Azure Logic Apps notifies the security team and logs the incident for review.
  • Monitoring: Azure Monitor and Azure Sentinel provide ongoing surveillance, detecting any unusual access patterns or potential breaches.
  • Improvement: Insights from the incident lead to a review and enhancement of the application’s code and a reinforcement of security policies through Azure Policy to prevent similar vulnerabilities in the future.

By following these steps and utilizing Azure’s comprehensive suite of security tools, organizations can implement an effective CTEM strategy that continuously protects against evolving cyber threats.

IMPLEMENTING CTEM IN CLOUD ENVIRONMENTS LIKE AWS AND AZURE

Implementing Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) in cloud environments like AWS and Azure involves a series of strategic steps, leveraging each platform’s unique tools and services. The approach combines best practices for security and compliance management, automation, and continuous monitoring. Here’s a guide to get started with CTEM in both AWS and Azure:

COMMON STEPS FOR BOTH AWS AND AZURE

  1. Understand Your Environment
    • Catalogue your cloud resources and services.
    • Understand the data flow and dependencies between your cloud assets.
  2. Define Your Security Policies and Objectives
    • Establish what your security baseline looks like.
    • Define key compliance requirements and security objectives.
  3. Integrate Continuous Monitoring Tools
    • Leverage cloud-native tools for threat detection, vulnerability assessment, and compliance monitoring.
    • Integrate third-party security tools if necessary for enhanced capabilities.
  4. Automate Security Responses
    • Implement automated responses to common threats and vulnerabilities.
    • Use cloud services to automate patch management and configuration adjustments.
  5. Continuously Assess and Refine
    • Regularly review security policies and controls.
    • Adjust based on new threats, technological advancements, and changes in the business environment.

IMPLEMENTING CTEM IN AWS

  1. Enable AWS Security Services
    • Utilize AWS Security Hub for a comprehensive view of your security state and to centralize and prioritize security alerts.
    • Use Amazon Inspector for automated security assessments to help find vulnerabilities or deviations from best practices.
    • Implement AWS Config to continuously monitor and record AWS resource configurations.
  2. Automate Response with AWS Lambda
    • Use AWS Lambda to automate responses to security findings, such as isolating compromised instances or automatically patching vulnerabilities.
  3. Leverage Amazon CloudWatch
    • Employ CloudWatch for monitoring and alerting based on specific metrics or logs that indicate potential security threats.

IMPLEMENTING CTEM IN AZURE

  1. Utilize Azure Security Tools
    • Activate Azure Security Center for continuous assessment and security recommendations. Use its advanced threat protection features to detect and mitigate threats.
    • Implement Azure Sentinel for SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) capabilities, integrating it with other Azure services for a comprehensive security analysis and threat detection.
  2. Automate with Azure Logic Apps
    • Use Azure Logic Apps to automate responses to security alerts, such as sending notifications or triggering remediation processes.
  3. Monitor with Azure Monitor
    • Leverage Azure Monitor to collect, analyze, and act on telemetry data from your Azure and on-premises environments, helping you detect and respond to threats in real-time.

BEST PRACTICES FOR BOTH ENVIRONMENTS

  • Continuous Compliance: Use policy-as-code to enforce and automate compliance standards across your cloud environments.
  • Identity and Access Management (IAM): Implement strict IAM policies to ensure least privilege access and utilize multi-factor authentication (MFA) for enhanced security.
  • Encrypt Data: Ensure data at rest and in transit is encrypted using the cloud providers’ encryption capabilities.
  • Educate Your Team: Regularly train your team on the latest cloud security best practices and the specific tools and services you are using.

Implementing CTEM in AWS and Azure requires a deep understanding of each cloud environment’s unique features and capabilities. By leveraging the right mix of tools and services, organizations can create a robust security posture that continuously identifies, assesses, and mitigates threats.

AWS Security

Azure Security

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Tags: AWS, AWS security, Azure, Azure Security, cloud security


Sep 20 2023

Balancing budget and system security: Approaches to risk tolerance

Category: Risk Assessment,Security Risk Assessmentdisc7 @ 10:56 am

Recently, it was revealed that Nickelodeon, an American TV channel and brand, has been the victim of a data leak. According to sources, the breach occurred at the beginning of 2023, but much of the data involved was “related to production files only, not long-form content or employee or user data, and (appeared) to be decades old.” The implication of this ambiguous statement: because the data is old and not related to individuals’ personally identifiable information (PII) or any proprietary information that hasn’t already been publicly released, this is a non-incident.

Let’s say Nickelodeon didn’t suffer any material harm because of this incident — great! It’s probable, though, that there are facts we don’t know. Any time proprietary data ends up where it shouldn’t, warning bells should go off in security professionals’ heads. What would be the outcome if the “decades old” files did contain PII? Some of the data would be irrelevant, but some could be crucial. What if the files contained other protected or private data? What if they compromised the integrity of the brand? All organizations need to think through the “what ifs” and apply the worst and base case scenarios to their current security practices.

The Nickelodeon case raises the question of whether keeping “decades old” data is necessary. While holding onto historical data can, in some cases, benefit the organization, every piece of kept data increases the company’s attack surface and increases risk. Why did Nickelodeon keep the old files in a location where it could be easily accessed? If the files were in a separate location, the security team likely did not apply adequate controls to accessing the files. Given that the cost of securing technology and all its inherent complexity is already astronomically high, CISOs need to prioritize budgetary and workforce allocation for all security projects and processes, including those for all past, present, and future data protection.

In a slow economy, balancing system security and budget requires skill and savvy. Even in boom times, though, throwing more money at the problem doesn’t always help. There is no evidence that an increase in security spending proportionately improves an organization’s security posture. In fact, some studies suggest that an overabundance of security tools leads to more confusion and complexity. CISOs should therefore focus on business risk tolerance and reduction.

Approaches to cyber risk management

Because no two organizations are alike, every CISO must find a cyber risk management approach that aligns with the goals, culture, and risk tolerance of the organization. Budget plays an important role here, too, but securing more budget will be an easier task if the security goals align with those of the business. After taking stock of these considerations, CISOs may find that their organizations fall into one or more core approaches to risk management.

Risk tolerance-based approach

Every company– and even every department within a company– has a tolerance for the amount and type of risk they’re willing to take. Security-specific tolerance levels must be based on desired business outcomes; cyber security risk cannot be determined or calculated based on cybersecurity efforts alone, rather how those efforts support the larger business.

To align cybersecurity with business risk, security teams must address business resilience by considering the following questions:

  • How would the business be impacted if a cybersecurity event were to occur?
  • What are the productivity, operational, and financial implications of a cyber event or data breach?
  • How well equipped is the business to handle an event internally?
  • What external resources would be needed to support internal capabilities?

With answers to these types of questions and metrics to support them, cyber risk levels can be appropriately set.

Maturity-based approach

Many companies today estimate their cyber risk tolerance based on how mature they perceive their cybersecurity team and controls to be. For instance, companies with an internal security operations center (SOC) that supports a full complement of experienced staff might be better equipped to handle continuous monitoring and vulnerability triage than a company just getting its security team up and running. Mature security teams are good at prioritizing and remediating critical vulnerabilities and closing the gaps on imminent threats, which generally gives them a higher security risk tolerance.

That said, many SOC teams are too overwhelmed with data, alerts, and technology maintenance to focus on risk reduction. The first thing a company must do if it decides to take on a maturity-based approach is to honestly assess its own level of security maturity, capabilities, and efficacy. A truly mature cybersecurity organization isbetter equipped to manage risk, but self-awareness is vital for security teams regardless of maturity level.

Budget-based approach

Budget constraints are prevalent in all aspects of business today, and running a fully staffed, fully equipped cybersecurity program is no bargain in terms of cost. However, organizations with an abundance of staff and technology don’t necessarily perform better security- or risk-wise. It’s all about being budget savvy for what will be a true compliment to existing systems.

Invest in tools that move the organization toward a zero trust-based architecture, focusing on security foundation and good hygiene first. By laying the right foundations, and having competent staff to manage them, cybersecurity teams will be better off than having the latest and greatest tools implemented without mastering the top CIS Controls: Inventory and control of enterprise and software assets, basic data protection, secure configuration management, hardened access management, log management, and more.

Threat-based approach

An important aspect of a threat-based approach to risk management is understanding that vulnerabilities and threats are not the same thing. Open vulnerabilities can lead to threats (and should therefore be a standard part of every organization’s security process and program). “Threats,” however, refer to a person/persons or event in which a vulnerability has the potential to be exploited. Threats also rely on context and availability of a system or a resource.

For instance, the Log4Shell exploit took advantage of a Log4j vulnerability. The vulnerability resulted in a threat to organizations with an unpatched version of the utility running. Organizations that were not running unpatched versions — no threat.

It is therefore imperative for organizations to know concretely:

  • All assets and entities present in their IT estates
  • The security hygiene of those assets (point in time and historical)
  • Context of the assets (non-critical, business-critical; exposed to the internet or air-gapped; etc.)
  • Implemented and operational controls to secure those assets

With this information and context, security teams can start to build threat models appropriate for the organization and its risk tolerance. The threat models used will, in turn, allow teams to prioritize and manage threats and more effectively reduce risk.

People, process and technology-based approach

People, process, and technology (PPT) are often considered the “three pillars” of technology. Some security pros consider PPT to be a framework. Through whatever lens PPT is viewed, it is the most comprehensive approach to risk management.

A PPT approach has the goal of allowing security teams to holistically manage risk while incorporating an organization’s maturity, budget, threat profile, human resources, skill sets, and the entirety of the organization’s tech stack, as well as its operations and procedures, risk appetite, and more. A well-balanced PPT program is a multi-layered plan that relies evenly on all three pillars; any weakness in one of the areas tips the scales and makes it harder for security teams to achieve success — and manage risk.

The wrap up

Every organization should carefully evaluate its individual capabilities, business goals, and available resources to determine the best risk management strategy for them. Whichever path is chosen, it is imperative for security teams to align with the business and involve organizational stakeholders to ensure ongoing support.

RISK ASSESSMENT: AN INDEPTH GUIDE TO PRINCIPLES, METHODS, BEST PRACTISE, AND INTERVIEW QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

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Tags: risk tolerance


Mar 12 2023

Security Risk Assessment Services

Category: Risk Assessment,Security Risk AssessmentDISC @ 11:16 pm

Security risk assessment services are crucial in the cybersecurity industry as they help organizations identify, analyze, and mitigate potential security risks to their systems, networks, and data. Here are some opportunities for providing security risk assessment services within the industry:

  1. Conducting Vulnerability Assessments: As a security risk assessment service provider, DISC can conduct vulnerability assessments to identify potential vulnerabilities in an organization’s systems, networks, and applications. You can then provide recommendations to mitigate these vulnerabilities and enhance the organization’s overall security posture.
  2. Performing Penetration Testing: Penetration testing involves simulating a real-world attack on an organization’s systems and networks to identify weaknesses and vulnerabilities. As a security risk assessment service provider, DISC can perform penetration testing to identify potential security gaps and provide recommendations to improve security.
  3. Risk Management: DISC can help organizations identify and manage risks associated with their information technology systems, data, and operations. This includes assessing potential threats, analyzing the impact of these threats, and developing plans to mitigate them.
  4. Compliance Assessment: DISC can help organizations comply with regulatory requirements by assessing their compliance with industry standards such as ISO 27001, HIPAA, or NIST-CSF. DISC can then provide recommendations to ensure that the organization remains compliant with these standards.
  5. Cloud Security Assessments: As more organizations move their operations to the cloud, there is a growing need for security risk assessment services to assess the security risks associated with cloud-based systems and applications. As a service provider, DISC can assess cloud security risks and provide recommendations to ensure the security of the organization’s cloud-based operations.
  6. Security Audit Services: DISC can provide security audit services to assess the overall security posture of an organization’s systems, networks, and applications. This includes reviewing security policies, processes, and procedures and providing recommendations to improve security.

By providing these services, DISC can help organizations identify potential security risks and develop plans to mitigate them, thereby enhancing their overall security posture.

In what situations would a vCISO Service be appropriate?

Transition plan from ISO 27001 2013 to ISO 27001 2022

We’d love to hear from you! If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, please don’t hesitate to contact us. Our team is here to help and we’re always looking for ways to improve our services. You can reach us by email (info@deurainfosec.com), or through our website’s contact form

Contact DISC InfoSec if you need further assistance in your ISO 27001 2022 transition Plan

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Tags: Security Risk Assessment


Mar 01 2023

Best GRC tools in 2023

Category: GRC,Security Risk AssessmentDISC @ 1:28 pm

Best GRC tools

GRC (Governance, Risk, and Compliance) online tools are designed to help organizations manage their internal processes, risk assessments, compliance, and audits. Here are some of the best GRC online tools available:

  1. ZenGRC: ZenGRC is a cloud-based GRC tool that offers risk management, compliance management, and vendor management solutions. It allows users to streamline compliance tasks, track risks, and manage third-party vendors.
  2. LogicManager: LogicManager is a GRC platform that helps businesses identify, assess, and manage risks. It offers a variety of modules, including regulatory compliance, vendor risk management, and incident management.
  3. RSA Archer: RSA Archer is an enterprise GRC platform that helps businesses manage risk, compliance, and audit processes. It offers a variety of modules, including risk management, compliance management, and policy management.
  4. SAP GRC: SAP GRC is a suite of GRC tools that helps businesses manage risk, compliance, and audit processes. It offers a variety of modules, including access control, process control, and risk management.
  5. MetricStream: MetricStream is a cloud-based GRC platform that helps businesses manage compliance, risk, and audit processes. It offers a variety of modules, including regulatory compliance, risk management, and quality management.
  6. NAVEX Global: NAVEX Global is a GRC platform that helps businesses manage compliance, risk, and ethics. It offers a variety of modules, including policy management, incident management, and third-party risk management.
  7. Compliance 360: Compliance 360 is a GRC platform that helps businesses manage compliance, risk, and audit processes. It offers a variety of modules, including risk management, compliance management, and incident management.

Each of these tools offers unique features and benefits, so it’s important to evaluate your organization’s specific needs before choosing the best GRC tool for your business.

Cybersecurity Risk and Strategy

Gain the frameworks and vocabulary to make better strategic decisions that boost your organization’s cyber resilience from top to bottom.

ISO 27001/ISO 22301 RISK ASSESSMENT TOOLKIT

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Tags: GRC, GRC tools


Feb 27 2023

Understanding Cyber Risk Quantification: The Buyer’s Guide” by Jack Jones

Category: Risk Assessment,Security Risk AssessmentDISC @ 11:42 am

Version 2 Updated for Release – February 2023. 

From Jack Jones, Chairman of the FAIR Institute and creator of the FAIR model for cyber risk quantification (CRQ) — the definitive guide to understanding CRQ: What it is (and isn’t), its value proposition and limitations, and facts regarding the misperceptions that are commonplace. 

If you’re considering or are actively shopping for an analysis solution that treats cyber risk in financially-based business terms, Jack’s extensive, jargon-free guide — including an evaluation checklist — will give you the objective and practical advice you need.

And just in time. There’s never been more interest or, frankly, confusion in the marketplace over what exactly is cyber risk quantification. As you’ll read in this buyer guide, many solutions may count vulnerabilities, provide ordinal values, or deliver numeric “maturity” scores but don’t measure risk, let alone put a financial value on it to help make business decisions.

This paper answers questions such as:

  • What does CRQ provide that I’m not already getting from other cyber risk-related measurements?
  • What makes CRQ reliable? Why should I believe the numbers?
  • Do I have enough data to run an analysis?

Jack also provides red flags to look out for in CRQ solutions, such as:

  • Mis-identification of risks.
  • Mis-use of control frameworks as risk measurement tools.
  • Over-simplification that can result in poorly-informed decisions, especially when performed at scale.

The ‘Understanding Cyber Risk Quantification’ guide is designed to be of use to security and risk executives, industry analysts, consultants, auditors, investors, and regulators–essentially anyone who has a stake in how well cyber risk is managed.

Download Below

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Tags: CRQ, cyber risk quantification


Feb 26 2023

10 Best selling information security risk management books

Here are some of the best-selling books on information security risk management:

  1. Security Risk Management: Building an Information Security Risk Management Program from the Ground Up” by Evan Wheeler
  2. The Basics of Information Security: Understanding the Fundamentals of InfoSec in Theory and Practice” by Jason Andress and Steven Winterfeld
  3. Security Risk Assessment: Managing Physical and Operational Security” by John M. White
  4. IT Risk: Turning Business Threats into Competitive Advantage” by George Westerman and Richard Hunter
  5. Information Security Risk Management: Understanding ISO 27001” by Alan Calder and Steve Watkins
  6. Risk Management Framework: A Lab-Based Approach to Securing Information Systems” by James Broad and Andrew Green
  7. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection: Background, Policy, and Issues” by Thomas A. Johnson
  8. The Manager’s Guide to Cybersecurity Law: Essentials for Today’s Business” by Tari Schreider
  9. NIST Special Publication 800-30, Risk Management Guide for Information Technology Systems” by National Institute of Standards and Technology
  10. Information Security: Principles and Practices” by Mark Merkow and Jim Breithaupt.

InfoSec Risk Assessment

ISO 27001/ISO 22301 RISK ASSESSMENT TOOLKIT

Tags: Security Risk Assessment, security risk management


Nov 28 2022

Best practices for implementing a company-wide risk analysis program

Category: Risk Assessment,Security Risk AssessmentDISC @ 11:36 pm

The associated risk management programs are also constantly evolving, and that’s likely due to outside influences such as client contract requirements, board requests and/or specific security incidents that require security teams to rethink and strengthen their strategy. Not surprisingly, CISO’s today face several dilemmas: How do I define the business impact of a cyber event? How much will it cost to protect our company’s most valuable assets? Which investments will make the business most secure? How do we avoid getting sidetracked by the latest cyber breach headline?

A mature risk analysis program can be thought of as a pyramid. Customer-driven framework compliance forms the base (PCI/ISO frameworks required for revenue generation); then incident-driven infrastructure security in the middle (system-focused security based on known common threats and vulnerabilities); with analysis-driven comprehensive coverage at the pinnacle (identification of assets, valuations, and assessment of threat/vulnerability risk).

risk analysis

How do you kickstart that program? Here are five steps that I’ve found effective for getting risk analysis off the ground.

Determine enterprise-specific assets

The first step is determining what is critical to protect. Unlike accounting assets (e.g., servers, laptops, etc.), in cybersecurity terms this would include things that are typically of broader business value. Often the quickest path is to talk with the leads for different departments. You need to understand what data is critical to the functioning of each group, what information they hold that would be valuable to competitors (pricing, customers, etc.) and what information disclosures would hurt customer relationships (contract data, for instance).

Also assess whether each department handles trade secrets, or holds patents, trademarks, and copyrights. Finally, assess who handles personally identifiable information (PII) and whether the group and its data are subject to regulatory requirements such as GDPR, PCI DSS, CCPA, Sarbanes Oxley, etc.

When making these assessments, keep three factors in mind: what needs to be safe and can’t be stolen, what must remain accessible for continued function of a given department or the organization, and what data/information must be reliable (i.e., that which can’t be altered without your knowledge) for people to do their jobs.

Value the assets

Once you’ve identified these assets, the next step is to attach a value. Again, I make three recommendations: keep it simple, make (informed) assumptions, and err on the side of overestimating. The reason for these recommendations is that completing a full asset valuation for an enterprise would take years and wouldn’t ever be finished (because assets constantly change).

Efficient risk analysis requires a more practical approach that uses broad categories, which can then be prioritized to understand where deeper analysis is needed. For instance, you might use the following categories, and assign values based on informed assumptions:

  • Competitive advantage – the items/processes/data that are unique to your company and based on experience. These are items that would be of value to a competitor to build on. To determine value, consider the cost of growing a legitimate competitor in your dominant market from scratch, including technology and overhead.
  • Client relationships – what directly impacts customer relationships, and therefore revenue. This includes “availability” impacts from outages, SLAs, etc. Value determination will likely be your annual EBIT goal, and impact could be adjusted by a Single Loss Exposure.
  • Third-party partnerships – relating to your ability to initiate, maintain or grow partner networks, such as contractors, ISPs or other providers. When valuing, consider the employee labor cost needed to recruit and maintain those partners.
  • Financial performance – items that impact your company’s ability to achieve financial goals. Again, valuation might equate to annual EBIT.
  • Employee relations – the assets that impact your ability to recruit and retain employees. Valuation should consider the volume of potential losses and associated backfill needs, including base salaries, bonuses, benefit equivalencies, etc.

Determine relevant threats, assess vulnerability, and identify exposures

When it comes to analyzing risk from threats, vulnerabilities and exposures, start with the common security triad model for information security. The three pillars – Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability (CIA) – help guide and focus security teams as they assess the different ways to address each concern.

Confidentiality touches on data security and privacy; it entails not only keeping data safe, but also making sure only those who need access, have it.

Integrity reflects the need to make sure data is trustworthy and tamper-free. While data accuracy can be compromised by simple mistakes, what the security team is more concerned with is intentional compromise that’s designed to harm the organization.

Availability is just what it sounds like – making sure that information can be accessed where and when needed. Availability is an aspect of the triad where security teams need to coordinate closely with IT on backup, redundancy, failover, etc. That said, it also involves everything from secure remote access to timely patches and updates to preventing acts of sabotage like denial of service or ransomware attacks.

In undertaking this part of the risk assessment, you’re using this security triad to determine threats, and then identifying exposure and assessing vulnerability to better estimate both the potential impact and probability of occurrence. Once these determinations are made, you’re ready for the next step.

Define risk

AV = assigned Asset Value (quantitative/qualitative) as identified above.
EF = the Exposure Factor, a subjective assessment of the potential percentage loss to the asset if a specific threat is realized. For example, an asset may be degraded by half, giving an EF of 0.50.

From this we can calculate the Single Loss Expectancy (SLE) – the monetary value from one-time risk to an asset – by multiplying AV and EF. As an example, if the asset value is $1M, and the exposure factor from a threat is a 50% loss (0.50) then the SLE will be $500,000.

Risk definition also takes this one step further by using this SLE and multiplying it by a potential Annualized Rate of Occurrence (ARO) to come up with the Annualized Loss Expectancy (ALE). This helps us understand the potential risk over time.

When working through these figures, it’s important to recognize that potential loss and probability of occurrence are hard to define, and thus the potential for error is high. That’s why I encourage keeping it simple and overestimating when valuing assets – the goal is to broadly assess the likelihood and impact of risk so that we can better focus resources, not to get the equations themselves perfectly accurate.

Implement and monitor safeguards (controls)

Now that we have a better handle on the organizational risks, the final steps are more familiar territory for many security teams: implementing and monitoring the necessary and appropriate controls.

You’re likely already very familiar with these controls. They are the countermeasures – policies, procedures, plans, devices, etc. – to mitigate risk.

Controls fall into three categories: preventative (before an event), detective (during) and corrective (after). The goal is to try to stop an event before it happens, quickly react once it does, and efficiently get the organization back on its feet afterward.

Implementing and monitoring controls are where the rubber hits the road from a security standpoint. And that’s the whole point of the risk analysis, so that security professionals can best focus efforts where and how appropriate to mitigate overall organizational risk.

Security Risk Management: Building an Information Security Risk Management Program from the Ground Up

Tags: risk analysis program


Nov 16 2022

Risk Management Toolkit

“By implementing sound #management of our #risks and the threats and opportunities that flow from them we will be in a stronger position to deliver our organisational objectives, provide improved services to the community, achieve better value for money and demonstrate compliance with the Local Audit and Accounts Regulations. #Riskmanagement will therefore be at the heart of our good management practice and corporate governance arrangements.”

Tags: Risk Management Toolkit


Oct 20 2022

Why chasing risk assessments will have you chasing your tail

Category: Risk Assessment,Security Risk AssessmentDISC @ 10:07 am

Third-party risk assessments are often described as time-consuming, repetitive, overwhelming, and outdated. Think about it: organizations, on average, have over 5,000 third parties, meaning they may feel the need to conduct over 5,000 risk assessments. In the old school method, that’s 5,000 redundant questionnaires. 5,000 long-winded Excel sheets. No wonder they feel this way.

The reason why risk assessments have become so dreaded is that it has always been a process of individual inspection and evaluation. For perspective, that’s roughly 14 risk assessments completed per day in the span of one year. How can we expect security, risk, and procurement professionals to get any other work done with this type of task on their plate? With the state of today’s threat landscape, wouldn’t you rather your security team be focused on actual analysis and mitigation, rather than just assessing? And, not to mention the fact that a tedious risk assessment process will contribute to burnout that can lead to poor employee retention within your security team. With how the cybersecurity job market is looking now, this isn’t a position any organization wants to be in.

So, now that you know how the people actually with their ‘hands in the pot’ feel about risk assessments, let’s take a look at why this approach is flawed and what organizations can do to build a better risk assessment process.

The never-ending risk assessment carousel ride

The key to defeating cybercriminals is to be vigilant and proactive. Not much can be done when you’re reacting to a security incident as the damage is already done. Unfortunately, the current approach to risk management is reactive, and full of gaps that do not provide an accurate view into overall risk levels. How so? Current processes only measure a point-in-time and do not account for the period while the assessment is being completed–or any breaches that occurred after the assessment was submitted. In other words, assessments will need to be routinely refilled out, a never-ending carousel ride, which is not feasible.

It should come to no surprise that assessments are not updated nearly as much as they should be, and that’s to no one’s fault. No one has the time to continually fill out long, redundant Excel sheets. And, not to mention, unless the data collected is standardized, very little can be done with it from an analysis point of view. As a result, assessments are basically thrown in a drawer and never see the light of day.

Every time a third-party breach occurs there is a groundswell of concern and company executives and board members immediately turn to their security team to order risk assessments, sending them on a wild goose chase. What they don’t realize is that ordering assessments after a third-party breach has occurred is already too late. And the organizations that are chosen for a deeper assessment are most likely not the ones with the highest risk. Like a never-ending carousel ride, the chase for risk assessments will never stop unless you hop off the ride now.

Show me the data!

The secret ingredient for developing a better risk management collection process is standardized data. You can’t make bread without flour, and you can’t have a robust risk management program without standardized data. Standardized data is the process of gathering data in a common format, making it easier to conduct an analysis and determine necessary next steps. Think of it this way, if you were looking at a chart comparing student test grades and they were all listed in various formats (0.75, 68%, 3/16, etc.), you would have a difficult time comparing these data points. However, if all the data is listed in percentages (80%, 67%, 92%, etc.), you could easily identify who is failing and needs more support in the classroom. This is the way using standardized data in the risk assessment process works. All data collected from assessments would be in the same format and you can understand which third parties are high risk and require prioritized mitigation.

CISOs who are still focused on point-in-time assessments are not getting it right. Organizations need to understand that risk assessment collection alone does not in fact equal reduced risk. While risk assessments are important, what you do with the risk assessment after it is complete is what really matters. Use it as a catalyst to create a larger, more contextual risk profile. Integrate threat intelligence, security ratings, machine learning, and other data sources and you’ll find yourself with all the data and insights you need and more to proactively reduce risk. You’ll be armed with the necessary information to mitigate risk and implement controls before the breach occurs, not the rushed patchwork after. A data-driven approach to third-party risk assessment will provide a more robust picture of risk and put an end to chasing assessments once and for all.

risk assessment

Security Risk Assessment

How to do an information security risk assessment for ISO27001

Tags: data breach, Risk Assessment, Third Party Risk


Sep 14 2022

Risk Management document templates

Risk Assessment and Risk Treatment Methodology

The purpose of this document is to define the methodology for assessment and treatment of information risks, and to define the acceptable level of risk.

The document is optimized for small and medium-sized organizations – we believe that overly complex and lengthy documents are just overkill for you.

There are 3 appendices related to this document. The appendices are not included in the price of this document and can be purchased separately

Risk Assessment Table

The purpose of this table is to list all information resources, vulnerabilities and threats, and assess the level of risk. The table includes catalogues of vulnerabilities and threats.

The document is optimized for small and medium-sized organizations – we believe that overly complex and lengthy documents are just overkill for you.

This document is an appendix. The main document is not included in the price of this document and can be purchased separately

Risk Treatment Table

The purpose of this table is to determine options for the treatment of risks and appropriate controls for unacceptable risks. This table includes a catalogue of options for treatment of risks as well as a catalogue of 114 controls prescribed by ISO 27001.

The document is optimized for small and medium-sized organizations – we believe that overly complex and lengthy documents are just overkill for you.

This document is an appendix. The main document is not included in the price of this document and can be purchased separately

Risk Assessment and Treatment Report

The purpose of this document is to give a detailed overview of the process and documents used during risk assessment and treatment.

The document is optimized for small and medium-sized organizations – we believe that overly complex and lengthy documents are just overkill for you.

This document is an appendix. The main document is not included in the price of this document and can be purchased separately

Statement of Applicability

The purpose of this document is to define which controls are appropriate to be implemented in the organization, what are the objectives of these controls, how they are implemented, as well as to approve residual risks and formally approve the implementation of the said controls.

The document is optimized for small and medium-sized organizations – we believe that overly complex and lengthy documents are just overkill for you.

Risk Treatment Plan

The purpose of this document is to determine precisely who is responsible for the implementation of controls, in which time frame, with what budget, etc.

The document is optimized for small and medium-sized organizations – we believe that overly complex and lengthy documents are just overkill for you.

Toolkit below contains all the documents above

Tags: Risk Assessment, Security Risk Assessment


Sep 14 2022

Top 3 data security risks facing businesses

Category: data security,Security Risk AssessmentDISC @ 10:35 am

There are many ways that data security risks can occur, and it is important to be aware of them in order to protect our information.

Data security issues, continuous data breaches, and advanced cyber-criminal activity make it harder for businesses to stay updated with the latest strategy to keep their accounts and customer data protected.

We continue to see companies small or large being targeted by cybercriminals, according to Nexor, the UK experienced a 31% rise in cyber-attacks  during the height of the pandemic in May and June 2020.  

Cybercrimes from malware, insider threats, and stolen data to hacked systems will always be a threat so how can companies ensure they are prepared for security risks as technology and cyber criminals continue to advance? We take a look at the top 3 data security risks business are facing.

1)  Lack of resources to deter cyber threats

Hackers and companies are aware of issues concerning IT infrastructures and computer systems, but it is the responsibility of the business to ensure systems are guarded and secure from unauthorised access and that they are not vulnerable to cybercriminal threats through unsecure internal networks and software. 

A report in partnership with the office of cyber security and information assurance in the cabinet office, estimates the cost of cybercrime to the UK to be £27bn per annum

As the pressure for cyber professionals rises, panic in business also increases as there is a shortage of IT security professionals with skills in IT and cyber security. The ISC 2021 Cybersecurity Workforce Study states that the global cybersecurity skills shortage has fallen for the second consecutive year, but the size of the workforce is still 65% below what it needs to be. CEO, Clar Rosso at ISC shares her thoughts:

“Any increase in the global supply of cybersecurity professionals is encouraging, but let’s be realistic about what we still need and the urgency of the task before us…The study tells us where talent is needed most and that traditional hiring practices are insufficient. We must put people before technology, invest in their development, and embrace remote work as an opportunity. And perhaps most importantly, organizations must adopt meaningful diversity, equity, and inclusion practices to meet employee expectations and close the gap.”

UK government report published last year found that 48% of organisations lacked the expertise to complete routine cyber security practices, and 30% of organisations had skills gaps in more advanced areas, such as penetration testing, forensic analysis, and security architecture.

With a high demand for security professionals and a shortage in skills, could cyber criminals be a few steps ahead? 

Many businesses, especially most small businesses lack the capability and expertise to withstand a cyber security attack. Finding the right talent and investing in the skills can be a challenge, but there are consultants that specialise in working with various types of businesses that can add value and help place the right data protection strategies and provide businesses with the best tools and training.

Guard Wisely are independent data security specialists that are trusted by organisations to solve their biggest compliance, security, operations, and BAU challenges. They have delivered many successful security projects to a large variety of Enterprise Customers Globally and over 180,000 employees. 

2) Technology continues to accelerate 

The pandemic fast-forwarded the need for digitalisation, and the sudden change to remote working meant that more data was being shared across unsecure cloud environments, kept on networks and employee desktops. This meant an increased risk for businesses as they figured out how to maintain data security in a hybrid work environment.

We have seen that everything and everyone is connecting through the Internet, and wireless capabilities are bringing innovation to all areas of business and general life at unprecedented speed. 

With remote and hybrid working being a part of the future of work, data needs to be regularly monitored and controlled. Large enterprises need to manage their customers’ and employees’ data to remain compliant, to do this they need to understand where that data resides to secure it.  

Across the world, there are now nearly two billion internet users and over five billion mobile phone connections; every day, we send 294 billion emails and five billion SMS messages; every minute, we post 35 hours of video to YouTube, 3,000 photos to Flickr and nearly 35,000 ‘tweets’ according to this report .

Over 91 percent of UK businesses and 73 percent of UK households have internet access and £47.2 billion was spent online in the UK alone in 2009.

The issue arises for data security as the embedded operating system in any device is deployed in its firmware, and these operating systems are rarely designed with security as their prime focus. This means that many systems have flaws and vulnerabilities, which is a gateway for many hackers and cybercriminals. 

3) Weak passwords encourage cyber-attacks and “insider breaches” 

With so many passwords to remember for a variety of devices, sites, and networks, we will continue to see a security risk in passwords. In most cases, hackers do not find it difficult to figure out corporate passwords and, employee passwords tend to be easier to work out.  

Not only this, but once you know the password for a device, you’ll most likely be able to have access to other accounts. People tend to keep the same password across many of the accounts they hold, for the ease of remembering but this as much as we know it, is a security issue that needs to be addressed. 

Unsecure passwords could increase ‘insider’ breaches at the workplace. Organisations often overlook the threats residing inside their ecosystems which can have devastating effects. These companies, although they are aware of threats don’t usually have an insider threat program in place, and are therefore not prepared to prevent, detect, and respond to internal threats.

Having access to anyone’s computers or devices at work can mean that systems will be at a higher risk of attack from insider threats. Hackers are always looking for opportunities to steal passwords and break them into private and corporate accounts.

To minimise these risks, companies must evaluate and introduce measures to ensure access to certain files and folders is in place. They will have to make sure individuals have unique passwords to enter their computers so that other people cannot access or abuse computer activity. 

Tracking which files and folders are being used and accessed on individual machines will also be beneficial in a lot of cases. As a short-term fix, they can also ensure they turn on two-factor authentication (2FA), also known as multi-factor authentication where possible for important accounts, as a secondary method of authentication.

Top 3 data security risks facing businesses

Business Data Networks and Security 

Tags: data security risks


Mar 31 2022

How to read a SOC 2 Report

how to read a SOC 2 report
https://fractionalciso.com/how-to-read-a-soc-2-report/

The following conversation about reviewing a SOC 2 report is one to avoid. 

Potential Customer: “Hi Vendor Co., do you have a SOC 2?”

Vendor Co. Sales Rep: “Yes!”

Potential Customer: “Great! We can’t wait to start using your service.” 

The output of a SOC 2 audit isn’t just a stamp of approval (or disapproval). Even companies that have amazing cybersecurity and compliance programs have a full SOC 2 report written about them by their auditor that details their cybersecurity program. SOC 2 reports facilitate vendor management by creating one deliverable that can be given to customers (and potential customers) to review and incorporate into their own vendor management programs.

Vendor security management is an important part of a company’s cybersecurity program. Most mature organizations’ process of vendor selection includes a vendor security review – a key part of which includes the review of a SOC 2 report.

SOC 2 reports can vary greatly in length but even the most basic SOC 2 report is dense with information that can be difficult to digest, especially if you aren’t used to reading them. This article will teach you how to read a SOC 2 report by providing a breakdown of the report’s content, with emphasis on how to pull out the important parts to look at from a vendor security review perspective.

Please note that you should not use this as a guide to hunt and peck your way through a SOC 2 report. It is important to read through the entire report to gain a full understanding of the system itself. However, this should help draw attention to the particular points of interest you should be looking out for when reading a report. 

Many different auditing firms perform SOC 2 audits, some reports may look a little different from the others but the overall content is generally the same.

How to read a SOC 2 report: the Cover Page

Even the cover page of a SOC 2 report has a lot of useful information. It will have the type of SOC 2 report, date(s) covered, the relevant trust services criteria (TSC) categories, and the auditing firm that conducted the audit. 

What Type of SOC 2 Report?

There are two types of SOC 2 reports that can be issued: A SOC 2 Type I and a SOC 2 Type II. The type of report will be denoted on the cover page. The key difference is the timeframe of the report:

A SOC 2 Type I is an attestation that the company complied with the SOC 2 criteria at a specific point in time. 

A SOC 2 Type II is an attestation that the company complied with the SOC 2 criteria over a period of time, most commonly a 6 or 12 month period. 

SOC 2 Type II reports are more valuable because they demonstrate a long-term commitment to a security program – and any issues over the time frame will be revealed. It’s possible for a company to get a SOC 2 Type I report then fail to adhere to their controls. 

Key takeaway: If a company only has a SOC 2 Type I, ask if and when they are working on achieving a SOC 2 Type II. If they say they are not getting a Type II, this is indicative of a lower commitment to security. 

Trust Services Criteria

Cybersecurity for Executives in the Age of Cloud 

Tags: SOC 2 report, SOC2


Mar 12 2022

Integrating Cybersecurity and Enterprise Risk Management (ERM)

Source: https://

/10.6028/NIST.IR.8286-draft2

ISO 31000: 2018 Enterprise Risk Management (CERM Academy Series on Enterprise Risk Management)

Tags: ERM, ISO 31000


Feb 04 2022

What Is Information Risk Management? Definition & Explanation

Category: Information Security,Security Risk AssessmentDISC @ 12:54 am

Information risk management is the process of identifying the ways an organisation can be affected by a disruptive incident and how it can limit the damage.

It encompasses any scenario in which the confidentiality, integrity and availability of data is compromised.

As such, it’s not just cyber attacks that you should be worried about. Information risk management also includes threats within your organisation – such as negligent or malicious employees – as well as residual risks.

For example, the framework can help you address misconfigured databases, software vulnerabilities and poor security practices at third parties.

In this blog, we take a closer look at the way information risk management works and how organisations can use its guidance to bolster their security defences.

Why is information risk management important?

In the face of ever-growing cyber threats, it can be difficult for an organisation to protect its information assets.

Last year, the World Economic Forum listed cyber crime alongside COVID-19, climate change and the debt crisis as the biggest threats facing society in the next decade. It’s clear, then, that organisations need a plan for identifying and addressing security risks.

With an information risk management system, organisations gain a better understanding of where their information assets are, how to protect them and how to respond when a breach occurs.

One way it does this is by forcing organisations to not only identify but also assess their risks. This ensures that organisations prioritise scenarios that are most likely to occur or that will cause the most damage, enabling them to make informed decisions in line with their security budget.

How risk management works

To understand how risk management programmes work, we need to take a closer look at what ‘risk’ actually is.

In an information security context, risk can be defined as the combination of a vulnerability and a threat.

As we’ve previous discussed, a vulnerability is a known flaw that can be exploited to compromise sensitive information.

These are often related to software flaws and the ways that criminal hackers can exploit them to perform tasks that they weren’t intended for.

They can also include physical vulnerabilities, such as inherent human weaknesses, such as our susceptibility to phishing scams or the likelihood that we’ll misplace a sensitive file.

This is different from a threat, which is defined as the actions that result in information being compromised.

So, to use the examples above, threats include a criminal hacker exploiting a software flaw or duping an employee with a bogus email.

When a threat meets a vulnerability, you get a risk. In the case of the criminal hacker phishing an employee, the risk is that the attacker will gain access to the employee’s work account and steal sensitive information. This can result in financial losses, loss of privacy, reputational damage and regulatory action.

A risk management system helps organisations identify the ways in which vulnerabilities, threats and risks intertwine. More importantly, it gives organisations the ability to determine which risks must be prioritised and identify which controls are best equipped to mitigate the risk.

Start protecting your business

At the heart of risk management is the risk assessment. This is the process where threats and vulnerabilities are identified. Organisations can use the result of the assessment to plan their next moves.

This process can be labour-intensive, but you can simplify the task with our risk assessment tool vsRisk.

With vsRisk, you’ll receive simple tools that are specifically designed to tackle each part of the risk assessment.

This software package is:

  • Easy to use. The process is as simple as selecting some options and clicking a few buttons.
  • Able to generate audit reports. Documents such as the Statement of Applicability and risk treatment plan can be exported, edited and shared across the business and with auditors.
  • Geared for repeatability. The assessment process is delivered consistently year after year (or whenever circumstances change).
  • Streamlined and accurate. Drastically reduces the chance of human error.

Risk Management Training

Tags: information risk management, Risk Assessment, Risk management, risk management training


Dec 12 2021

LOG4SHELL REPORT

VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT AND MITIGATION

Download Log4Shell report – VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT AND MITIGATION

How the role of open-source maintainers could be professionalized, as the maintainer who fixed the log4j zero-day says he works on the project in his spare time — Open Source software runs the Internet, and by extension the economy. This is an undisputed fact about reality in 2021.

New zero-day exploit for Log4j Java library is an enterprise nightmare

Software Security: Building Security

This books explains how to introduce the security into the SDLC; how to introduce abuse cases and security requirements in the requirements phase; and how to introduce risk analysis (also known as Threat Modeling) in the design phase and software qualification phase. I really think that each software developer should at least read the first chapter of the book where the authors explain why the old way of securing applications (seeing software applications as “black boxes” that can be protected using firewalls and IDS/IPS) cannot work anymore in today’s software landscape. 

Tags: LOG4SHELL REPORT


Nov 24 2021

Governance, Risk Management and Compliance for InfoSec

Manage all your compliance documentation in one place | Access, customize and collaborate whenever, wherever and however you need | Shop toolkits 

Tags: Governance risk management and compliance


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. 

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

“The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released an Insider Risk Mitigation Self-Assessment Tool today, which assists public and private sector organizations in assessing their vulnerability to an insider threat.  By answering a series of questions, users receive feedback they can use to gauge their risk posture.  The tool will also help users further understand the nature of insider threats and take steps to create their own prevention and mitigation programs.” reads the announcement 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 (“Estimations of probability can only be wrong!”). 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 Gartner predicts 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 “how” 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 “employee handbook” 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.


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