Chapter 8, Exercise 1

Management of information security, Third Edition

1. If an organization has three information assets to evaluate for risk management purposes as shown in the accompanying data,  which vulnerability should be evaluated for additional controls first? Which vulnerability should be evaluated last?

Data for Exercise 1

Explain your reasons.

a. Switch L47 connects a network to the Internet. It has two vulnerabilities:  (1)susceptibility to  hardware failure with a likelihood of 0.2, (2) susceptibility to an SNMP buffer overflow attack with likelihood of 0.1. This switch has an impact rating of 90 and has no current controls in place. There is  a 75 percent certainty of the  assumption and data.

b. Server WebSrv6 hosts a company Web site and performs e-commerce transactions. It has  Web server software that is vulnerable  to attack via  invalid Unicode values. The likelihood of  such an  attack is estimated at 0.1. The server has been assigned an impact value of 100, and a control has been implemented that reduces the impact of the vulnerability by 75 percent. There is an 80 percent certainty of  the assumptions and data.

c. Operators use the MGMT45 control console to monitor operations in the server room. It has no passwords and is susceptible to unlogged misuse by the operators. Estimates show the likelihood of misuse is 0.1. There are no controls in place on this asset; which  has an impact rating of 5. There is a  90 percent certainty  of the assumptions and data.