annualized rate of occurrence (ARO). ARO is an element of quantitative risk analysis that represents the expected frequency with which a specific threat or risk will occur (in other words, become realized) within a single year. Understanding AROs further enables you to calculate the risk and take proper precautions.
Know what annualized loss expectancy (ALE) is and how to calculate it. ALE is an element of quantitative risk analysis that represents the possible yearly cost of all instances of a specific realized threat against a specific asset. The formula is ALE = single loss expectancy (SLE) * annualized rate of occurrence (ARO).
Know the formula for safeguard evaluation. In addition to determining the annual cost of a safeguard, you must calculate the ALE for the asset if the safeguard is implemented. Use this formula: ALE before safeguard – ALE after implementing the safeguard – annual cost of safeguard = value of the safeguard to the company, or (ALE1 – ALE2) – ACS.
Know the options for handling risk. Reducing risk, or risk mitigation, is the implementation of safeguards and countermeasures. Assigning risk or transferring a risk places the cost of loss a risk represents onto another entity or organization. Purchasing insurance is one form of assigning or transferring risk. Risk deterrence is the process of implementing deterrents to would-be violators of security and policy. Risk avoidance is the process of selecting alternate options or activities that have less associated risk than the default, common, expedient, or cheap option. Accepting risk means management has evaluated the cost/benefit analysis of possible safeguards and has determined that the cost of the countermeasure greatly outweighs the possible cost of loss due to a risk. It also means that management has agreed to accept the consequences and the loss if the risk is realized.
Be able to explain total risk, residual risk, and the controls gap. Total risk is the amount of risk an organization would face if no safeguards were implemented. To calculate total risk, use this formula: threats * vulnerabilities * asset value = total risk. Residual risk is the risk that management has chosen to accept rather than mitigate. The difference between total risk and residual risk is the controls gap, which is the amount of risk that is reduced by implementing safeguards. To calculate residual risk, use the following formula: total risk – controls gap = residual risk.
Understand control types. The term control refers to a broad range of controls that perform such tasks as ensuring that only authorized users can log on and preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to resources. Control types include preventive, deterrent, detective, compensation, corrective, recovery, and directive. Controls can also be categorized by how they are implemented: administrative, logical, or physical.
Understand security control assessment (SCA). An SCA is the formal evaluation of a security infrastructure's individual mechanisms against a baseline or reliability expectation.
Understand security monitoring and measurement. Security controls should provide benefits that can be monitored and measured. If a security control's benefits cannot be quantified, evaluated, or compared, then it does not actually provide any security.
Understand risk reporting. Risk reporting involves the production of a risk report and a presentation of that report to the interested/relevant parties. A risk report should be accurate, timely, comprehensive of the entire organization, clear and precise to support decision making, and updated on a regular basis.
Know the need for continuous improvement. Security is always changing. Thus, any implemented security solution requires updates and changes over time. If a continuous improvement path is not provided by a selected countermeasure, then it should be replaced with one that offers scalable improvements to security.
Understand the Risk Maturity Model (RMM). The Risk Maturity Model (RMM) is a means to assess the key indicators and activities of a mature, sustainable, and repeatable risk management process. The RMM levels are ad hoc, preliminary, defined, integrated, and optimized.
Know about legacy system security risk. Legacy systems are often a threat because they may not be receiving security updates from their vendors. End-of-life (EOL) is the point at which a manufacturer no longer produces a product. End-of-service-life (EOSL) or end-of-support (EOS) are those that are no longer receiving updates and support from the vendor.
Know about risk frameworks. A risk framework is a guideline or recipe for how risk is to be assessed, resolved, and monitored. The primary example of a risk framework referenced by the CISSP exam is the Risk Management Framework (RMF) defined by NIST in SP 800-37 Rev. 2. Others include ISO/IEC 31000, ISO/IEC 31004, COSO, Risk IT, OCTAVE, FAIR, and TARA.
Understand social engineering. Social engineering is a form of attack that exploits human nature and human behavior. The common social engineering principles are authority, intimidation, consensus, scarcity, familiarity, trust, and urgency. Such attacks may be used to elicit information or gain access through the use of pretexting and/or prepending. Social engineering attacks include phishing, spear phishing, business email compromise (BEC), whaling, smishing, vishing, spam, shoulder surfing, invoice scams, hoaxes, impersonation, masquerading, tailgating, piggybacking, dumpster diving, identity fraud, typo squatting, and influence campaigns.
Know how to implement security awareness training and education. Before actual training can take place, awareness of security as a recognized entity must be created for users. Once this is accomplished, training, or teaching employees to perform their work tasks and to comply with the security policy, can begin. All new employees require some level of training so that they will be able to comply with all standards, guidelines, and procedures mandated by the security policy. Education is a more detailed endeavor in which students/users learn much more than they actually need to know to perform their work tasks. Education is most often associated with users pursuing certification or seeking job promotion.
Know about security champions. Often a security champion is a member of a group who decides (or is assigned) to take charge of leading the adoption and integration of security concepts into the group's work activities. Security champions are often non-security employees who take up the mantle to encourage others to support and adopt more security practices and behaviors.
Understand gamification. Gamification is a means to encourage compliance and engagement by integrating common elements of game play into other activities, such as security compliance and behavior change.
Know about the need for periodic content reviews and effectiveness evaluations. It is important to perform periodic content reviews of all training materials. This is to ensure that the training materials and presentation stays in line with business goals, organizational mission, and security objectives. Some means of verification should be used to measure whether the training is beneficial or a waste of time and resources.
Written Lab
1 Name six different administrative controls used to secure personnel.
2 What are the basic formulas or values used in quantitative risk assessment?
3 Describe the process or technique used to reach an anonymous consensus during a qualitative risk assessment.
4 Discuss the need to perform a balanced risk assessment. What are the techniques that can be used and why is this necessary?
5 What are the main types of social engineering principles?
6 Name several types or methods of social engineering.
Review Questions
1 You have been tasked with overseeing the security improvement project for your organization. The goal is to reduce the current risk profile to a lower level without spending considerable amounts of money. You decide to focus on the largest concern mentioned by your CISO. Which of the following is likely the element of the organization that is considered the weakest?Software productsInternet connectionsSecurity