Identifying Potential Risk, Response, and Recovery

Identifying Potential Risk, Response, and Recovery
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Executive summary
This document highlights the possible controls of the earlier identified risks it also looks into the details and recommendations to the CIO of the organization. Each and every organization intends to fulfill their agendas, and in this age, the use of information systems enhances that. Thereby risk management plays a key role in offering protection to the company’s assets. The process requires being viewed as one not just protecting the organization’s information but as an essential function of management of the organization. Malicious threats have proved pricey for organizations to take action against in both attack defense and risk mitigation. The organization faces both internal and external threats. The internet has played significantly in external threats to the organization while it still faces major internal threats. The internal threats pose a great threat for damage. Internally the malware and the conduct of the employees pose a potential risk to the system. I recommend that the organization needs to protect itself against the threats. However, it can be difficult, and the organization needs to create a balance between capability, operational considerations, protection, performance, and cost. Be at the forefront of mitigation strategies lie in between protecting the internet to internal networks boundaries and protecting the environment of computing.

Introduction
Risk management includes processes of risk assessment, risk mitigation, and risk evaluation.

This paper uses the strategy for dealing with the associated risk as risk mitigation. My decision is to deal with risk mitigation based on the rationale that it is fundamental to risk management proven from a comprehensive look at the risk management process. Additionally, mitigation is key to protection of information systems of the organization and realization of its goals.
Risk mitigation involved the evaluation, prioritization, and implementation of the appropriate controls of risk reduction that are recommended from the process of risk assessment. This strategy is mainly used by senior level management to reduce the threat risk. The process is very important for each of the three risks identified. Mitigation strategies lie in between protecting the boundaries of the internet to internal networks and protecting the environment of computing (Kim, 2014). Malicious threats are posed by malware such as viruses and worms. The malware has recently be designed to obtain sensitive data including passwords, visa card numbers, pins and social security numbers.
Protecting the computing environment involve defending the software and hardware. It is a secondary protection mechanism useful when the threat surpasses the firewall or the intrusion detection system. The strategies, in this case, include ensuring that only the authorized devices are used to connect to the network of the organization such as USB drives or laptops given by the organization (Smallwood. 2013). Updating of the antivirus, this is important as viruses emerge every other day while others are regularly upgraded. The antivirus should be set to update automatically and also perform regularly deep scans of the system as well as the update not only to the antivirus but also the other software.
The environment of control sets the pace of an organization. It influences the consciousness control of its members as it provides structure and discipline since it acts as a foundation for the rest of the sectors of internal control. This section looks into administrative, preventative, detective and corrective controls that the organization can use in mitigating the risks. Administrative controls involve enforcing of standards of documentation, design, testing, programming and management of configuration (Smallwood. 2013). It also requires audits on security and the separation of responsibilities among the employees. These controls involve processes used in developing and making sure that the organization complies with procedures. They regulate the behavior of employees dictating their duties.
Preventative controls are implemented to prevent the threat from getting into contact with the vulnerabilities. They inhibit any attempt at violation of security policy. They include firewalls, antiviruses, IPS, security awareness training, and security guard (Baracaldo, 2013). They are access control enforcers, involving encryption and authentication. Firewalls prevent Malware from harming the internal network. However, it offers just a single layer of protection. The different malware has different entry mechanisms as others do not use the front way. Others use the back door such as worms that infect the computer while downloading attachments from email, or via the use of instant messaging by employees or visiting web pages with malicious content. The use of intrusion detection systems helps mitigating malware. It is injected into the network to locate attacks to the network and analyze the effects. The use of file permissions and solid sharing are critical during login into applications, thereby tightening security controls. Monitoring the employees during working hours can provide better management hence information security (Baracaldo, 2013).
Detective controls are there to recognize that the malicious threats have gotten into the organization computer systems thereby give an alert that helps deal with the threat before irreparable damage is done. They include motion detectors, system monitoring, IPS, intrusion detection systems, antiviruses and audit trails (Baracaldo, 2013). The methods used include the auditing of events relevant to security while monitoring and tracking anomalies after the initial detection and recovery from security breaches. The intrusion detection system detects a breach of security enabling response to occur in a timely way. Virus detection and eradication software is installed on the servers and personal computers to identify, detect and remove malware from the entire system. The tool of system integrity analyses integrity of the system identifies and exposes potential threats. It assists in determining the appropriate corrective action to undertake.
Corrective controls are in existence to mitigate or rather reduce the impacts of the malicious threats from being manifested. They include data backup in external media or the cloud, upgrade of the operating system, antivirus, and mitigation of existing mitigations. They are all correspondents to the phases of a lifecycle of a security program (Kim, 2014). Restoration of a state of security is a corrective control. It enables the system to go back to its initial state after the security threat has occurred. The management should establish an incident response capability to recognize, report, prepare for and respond to the incident. The provision of continued support and development to testing and maintain operations plans for resuming business in the event of a surpassed disaster or emergency.
The reasons why I believe that risk management, control identification, and selection processes are important to the organization are discussed. Risk management involves the identification of the risks and the potential impacts of the risks noted. It is important to the organization as it assists their planning strategies against malicious threats. It involves four processes; assessing the risk where prioritization and risk identification is done; identification and evaluation of control solutions that have a basis on a good analysis of both cost and benefit; implementation of the controls that help reduce the risk to the organisation and finally, analysing the effectiveness of the risk management process while still verifying that the controls are offering the expected level of protection. Control identification is important as it assists the organization to eliminate or minimize the probability of a malicious threat preying on the vulnerability of a system. The selection process is vigor to give the organization a consistent and clear pathway to organization and prioritization of the resources available so as to manage the risk.

References
Baracaldo, N., & Joshi, J. (November 01, 2013). An adaptive risk management and access control framework to mitigate insider threats. Computers & Security: Part B, 39, 237-254.
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Kim, D and Solomon, M. (2014). Fundamentals of information systems security. Burlington, MA: Jones and amp; Barlett Learning. Northrup, T. firewalls. Retrieved from: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc700820.aspx
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Smallwood, R. F. (2013). Information governance: Concepts, strategies and best practices.
Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2014.
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