Risk Management

Risk Management and Privacy #

Analyzing Risk #

  • Enterprise Risk Program (ERP) - Formal approach to risk analysis
      1. Identify Risks
      1. Depetermine severity for each risk
      1. Adopt risk management strategies to address risks
  • Clarification
    • Threats: any possible events that might impact CIA characteristics
      • The Bad Guy/Thing: It’s something that might cause trouble. Like a burglar who wants to break into your house.
    • Vulnerabilities: weaknesses in our systems/controls that could be exploted by a threat
      • The Weak Spot: It’s the thing that makes it easier for the bad guy. Like if you left the window unlocked.
    • Risk: Overlap between of Threats and Vulnerabilities
      • What could actually happen: It’s the chance of the bad guy using the weak spot to cause harm. Like the burglar actually climbing through your unlocked window and stealing your toys.
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    • A threat that has no corresponding Vulnerability to exploit, results in no risk.
  • CyberSecurity Example
    • Threat - An attacker with a brute-force tool
    • Vulnerability - Expose port 22 for SSH
    • Risk - The commbination is the risk.

Risk Identification #

Identify threats and vulnerabilities in your operation environment/scope/boundary

  • External Risks - from outside organization
  • Internal Risks - from inside organization
  • Multiparty Risks - Impacts more than one organization (e.g. Power Outage for entire city)
  • Legacy Systems - outdated systems that don’t receive updates, patches, etc…
  • Intelectual Property (IP) theft Risk - Organization’s IP that, when disclossed, impacts business advantage
  • Software Compliance/Licensing Risk - intentional/accidental breach of ToS/License cause Financial and Legal Risk.

Risk Assessment #

Not all risks are equal.

  • We asses risk on 2 dimensions:
    • Likelihood of it occuring, aka the probability.
      • Possible way of expressing 10% chance of happening this in the next year
    • Impact if it occures
      • Possible way of expressing financial cost of 100 000 EUR
  • Risk Severity = Likelihood * Impact
    • This is mostly conceptual, doesn’t habve to be dine literally.
  • Ways of performing Risk Assesment
    • One-Time - Snapshot of specific time, often in response to a security incident.
    • Ad-hoc - in response to specific event/change, like an new project, tech… . Often quickly to adress a certain set of concerns.
    • Recurring - on regular base, to track evolution of risks
    • Continious - on continious base through automation and tooling

Risk Analysis #

Formalized approach to risk prioritization in a structured maner.

  • 2 Methodologies
    • Quantitative Risk Analysis - Use numeric data in the analysis, allows for straightforward prioritization,
    • Qualitative Risk Analysis - Use subjective analysis, more difficult.
    • Not uncommon that they are combined.

Quantitative Risk Analysis #

Calculated for each threat/vulnerability combination

  • Determine Asset Value (AV) - that is affected by the risk
  • Determine Annualized Rate Of Occurance (ARO) - probability of the risk occuring annually
    • ARO of 2.0 => Probable that the risk occurs 2x per year.
    • ARO of 1.0 => Probable that the risk occurs 1x per year.
    • ARO of 0.01 => Probable that the risk occurs 1x per 100 year.
  • Detemine Exposure Factor (EF) - relative value of the asset to be affected if the risk materializes.
    • EF of 100% => Entire Asset destroyed
    • EF of 50% => Half Asset destroyed
  • Calculuate Single Loss Expectancy (SLE) - absolute value of the asset to be affected if the risk materializes.
    • Formula: AV * EF
    • Example: 1000 EUR * 50% => 500 EUR loss if the risk materializes
  • Calculuate Annualized Loss Expectancy (ALE) - absolute value of the asset to be affected if the risk materializes accordingly to annual probability.
    • Formula: SLE * ARO
    • Example: 500 EUR * 2.0 => 1000 EUR loss if the risk materializes
    • Use ALE to prioritize, if it cost more to protect an asset than the value of its ALE, there is no point arguably to put in the effort.
Example #

You have an email server that sends out emails to customers and generates 1000$ in sales per hour. Can happen up to 3x year to have a DDoS attack. It would take 3 hours to recover. When it happens, the email server would work only at 10% capacity.

  • AV - $1000/hour
  • ARO - 3.0
  • EF - 90% (because the server works at 10% when experiencing the attack)
  • SLE - ($1000/hour * 3h) * 90% => $2700
  • ALE - $2700 & 3 => $8100

Qualitative Risk Analysis #

Some risks don’t qualify easily (e.g. Risk to Reputation)

  • We rate the risk on 2 dimensions with a score of low, medium, high:
    • Magnitude
    • Probability
  • Risks with high magnitude and high probability should be prioritized
  • Risks with low magnitude and low probability should be deprioritized img

Supply Chain Assesment #

Don’t forget to also do a risk assesment of your supply chain.

Conclusion #

  • Risk Analysis provides guidance in prioritizing risk.
  • Quantitative Risk Analysis helps determine if the cost to avoid a risk is justified.

Managing Risk #

Once risk has been identified, assesed, analyzed/prioritized we can choose of the following 4 ways to manage/adress each risk.

Risk Mitigation #

Apply security controls to reduce probability and/or magnutide.

  • Per risk, you might apply multiple security controls to achieve mitigation.
  • Examples:
    • Buy DDoS protection
    • Locks for laptops

Risk Avoidance #

Change business pratices/systems to eleminiate the potential alltogether.

  • Examples:
    • Just don’t have laptops, if you don’t want them to be stolen.

Risk Transference #

Shifts (some of) the impadct to another entity

  • Examples
    • Buy Insurance for stolen laptop
    • Buy “distinct cybersecurity insurance” cause default insurances don’t cover this.
    • Use cloud servives, they take responsibility of the datacenters (hardware security)

Risk Acceptance #

Don’t do anything, accept the risk, the cost to avoid/transfer/avoid is bigger than the actual risk materializing.

  • This is not neglicence, here we conciously, intentionally choose to accept the risk.
  • Might require Exemptions or Exceptions on a policy to allow Risk Acceptance formally
    • Exceptions - cost is to high, organization accepts it thoughfully
    • Exemptions - more formal exceptions, may require high level approval and may come with an “end date”.

Risk Tracking #

  • Inherent Risk - original level of risk before any security controls were implemented.
    • Therefore, they are inherint to the business.
  • Residual Risk - level of risk after implementing controls
  • Risk Appetite - level of risk the organization is willing to accept
    • Expansionary Risk Appetite high risk, for high rewards. Typical for high growth organizations
    • Neutral Risk Appetite medium risk, medium rewards. Stability and growth is keu
    • Conservative Risk Appetite avoid high risk all together, prioritize security over high growth, risk averse.
  • Risk Threshold - the specific threshold where the risk appetite stops and would trigger some actions
  • Risk Tolerance - ability to whitstand risk and continue operations
  • Key Risk Indicator (KRI) - metrics to measure increased level of risk.
    • Measures effectiviness of risk mitigations and makeing sure the risks stays within the appetite.
    • A Key Risk Indicator (KRI) is a metric that signals increasing risk exposure in an organization — like an early warning system for potential problems.
    • measurable signs that a risk might materialize or worsen.
  • Risk Owner - Individual/entity responsible managing/monitoring risk and implementing controls.

Risk Register #

  • The tool that tracks all the risks.
  • Too communicate to leadership risk matrixes and heatmaps are often used.
  • To include: Risk Owner, RIsk Threshold information, KRIs.

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Risk Reporting #

Communicating the status and evolution of risks to stakeholders.

  • Reporting Methods
    • Regular Updates - routing reports to stakeholders with status, effectiveness of controls and changes
    • Dashboard Reporting - Real-time visual aids to summerize risk
    • Ad Hoc Reports - Created as needed
    • Risk Trend Analysis - Analyze history to indetify patterns/trends
    • Risk Event Reports - Document specific security events, like incidents

Disaster Recovery Planning (DRP) #

Develop as soon as possible in case of disaster. Usually the key focus is a plan for each facility, as disasters often are scoped to a facility.

Disaster Types (Examples) #

  • Hurricans
  • Floods
  • Natural disasters
  • human-made origin
  • internal risk
  • …

Business Impact Analysis (BIA) #

Formal process to indentify mission essential functions in an organization and identify the systems that support those functions.

  • Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) - measure stability of a system, how much time between failures

  • Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) - average time to restore operations after failure

  • Recovery Time Objective (RTO) - Time you can tolerate the system being down

  • Recovery Point Objective (RPO) - Amount of data you can tolerate to lose

  • Note: Focus on single-point-of-failure

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