Technical Paper: Risk Assessment

Due Week 10 and worth 160 points

Global Finance, Inc. Network Diagram

Above is the Global Finance, Inc. (GFI) network diagram. A hypothetical company, GFI has grown rapidly this past year and implemented a number of network devices as displayed in the diagram. The company invested in the network and designed it to be fault tolerant and resilient from any network failures. However, although the company’s financial status has matured and its network has expanded at a rapid pace, its overall network security posture has not kept up with the company growth.

GFI’s network has historically been fairly stable, and the company has not experienced many full scale network outages. GFI has hired three (3) network engineers to keep up with the network growth, as well as the bandwidth demand by the company employees and the clients. However, the company has not hired any security personnel who can take care of the operational security responsibility.

The trusted computing base (TCB) internal network within the Global Finance, Inc. Network Diagram hosts the company’s mission critical systems that are vital to the company’s operations that also affect the overall financial situation. The Oracle database and email systems are among the most intensively used application servers in the company. GFI cannot afford system or network outages, as its cash flow and financial systems heavily depend on the network stability and availability. GFI has experienced DoS network attacks twice this year, and its Oracle database and email servers had been down for a total of one (1) week as a result. The recovery process required GFI to utilize $25,000 to restore its operations to the normal operating baseline. GFI estimated the loss from these network attacks at more than $1,000,000, as well as lost customer confidence.

Write an eight to ten (8-10) page formal risk assessment proposal in which you:

1. Describe the company network, interconnection, and communication environment.
2. Assess risk based on the GFI, Inc. network diagram scenario. Note:Your risk assessment should cover all the necessary details for your client, GFI Inc., to understand the risk factors of the organization and risk posture of the current environment. The company management will utilize this risk assessment to determine what actions to take; therefore, it must be comprehensive for the business leaders to make data-driven decisions.
   1. Defend your assumptions where pertinent information from the scenario isn’t available.
   2. Ascertain apparent security vulnerabilities, and analyze at least three (3) such vulnerabilities. Such analysis should entertain the possibility of faulty network design. Recommend mitigation processes and procedures for each of the identified vulnerabilities.
   3. Justify your cryptography recommendations, based on security concerns and requirements, data-driven decision-making, and objective opinions.
3. Examine whether your risk assessment methodology is quantitative, qualitative, or a combination of these, and discuss the main reasons why you believe that the methodology that you utilized was the most appropriate.
4. Explain the way in which you would present your findings and assessment to the company’s management and thus facilitate security buy-in and concentration.
5. Using Microsoft Visio or its open source equivalent, redraw the CFI diagram, depicted as a secure and risk-mitigating model. Note: The graphically depicted solution is not included in the required page length.
6. Use at least three (3) quality resources in this assignment. Note: Wikipedia and similar Websites do not qualify as quality resources. 

Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements:

• Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides; citations and references must follow APA or school-specific format. Check with your professor for any additional instructions.
• Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student’s name, the professor’s name, the course title, and the date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in the required assignment page length.
• Include charts or diagrams created in Visio or an open source alternative such as Dia. The completed diagrams / charts must be imported into the Word document before the paper is submitted.

The specific course learning outcomes associated with this assignment are:

• Evaluate an organization’s security policies and risk management procedures, and its ability to provide security countermeasures.
• Analyze the methods of managing, controlling, and mitigating security risks and vulnerabilities.
• Explain access control methods and attacks.
• Describe the details and the importance of application security models and their implementation from a management perspective.
• Evaluate and explain from a management perspective the industry-standard equipment, tools, and technologies organizations can employ to mitigate risks and thwart both internal and external attacks.
• Use technology and information resources to research issues in security management.
• Write clearly and concisely about the theories of security management using proper writing mechanics and technical style conventions.