Libby Bevin

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a widely used cloud platform that allows organizations to leverage the many benefits of the cloud. They can choose from more than 200 services to move to a cloud infrastructure to lower costs, become more agile, and accelerate the pace of innovation.

But for U.S. federal agencies to use AWS services, these services must first be approved by FedRAMP – the set of standards that lets U.S. government agencies assess, adopt, and use cloud services (including AWS) in an expedited fashion.

This article takes a deep dive into FedRAMP and AWS services. If you’re part of a government agency and need more information about AWS and its FedRAMP status, read on!

What Is FedRAMP?

Established in 2011, the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) provides a standardized approach to security and risk assessment for cloud technologies and federal agencies.

This cloud compliance program acts as a seal of approval for cloud-based service providers. It establishes transparent standards and processes to assess the security authorization for cloud products and services, so that government agencies can begin using approved cloud providers more quickly.

It standardizes security requirements and authorizations for cloud services per FISMA and the Federal Cloud Computing Strategy. The program also uses the NIST Special Publication 800 series that help address the security requirements of information systems for the U.S. federal government.

FedRAMP standards and their implementation are governed by:

• Office of Management and Budget (OMB)
• U.S. General Services Administration (GSA)
• U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
• U.S. Department of Defense (DoD)
• National Institutes of Standards & Technology (NIST)
• Federal Chief Information Officers (CIO) Council

Why Is FedRAMP Important?

FedRAMP provides a cost-effective, risk-based approach for the whole federal government to adopt and use cloud services. It uses NIST and Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA)-defined standards to bring consistency into security authorizations for cloud solutions.

FedRAMP also creates a more transparent business environment between federal agencies and Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), promotes innovation in cloud computing technologies, and establishes confidence in the security of CSP offerings.

Without FedRAMP, each government agency would need to undertake its own laborious process to review cloud-based providers. That would drive up costs, slow adoption, and let a host of other inefficiencies endure – all for no good reason.

To Whom Does FedRAMP Apply?

FedRAMP compliance is mandatory for all U.S. federal agencies and their cloud deployments at the low-, moderate-, and high-risk impact levels. They must use the FedRAMP process for the security assessments, authorizations, and continuous monitoring of Cloud Service Offerings (CSOs).

CSPs looking to offer their services to the U.S. government must prove FedRAMP compliance. They must also complete an independent security assessment by a third-party assessment organization (3PAO) to show that received authorizations are FISMA-compliant.

The FedRAMP Compliance Process for CSPs Such as AWS

FedRAMP specifies these requirements for CSPs to achieve compliance:

• A U.S. federal agency has granted the CSP the Authority to Operate (ATO); or
• The Joint Authorization Board (JAB) has granted a Provisional Authority to Operate (P-ATO);
• System security packages use the established standard FedRAMP templates;
• An approved 3PAO must assess the CSP;
• The completed security assessment package must be posted in the FedRAMP secure repository.

The ATO is a formal declaration by the JAB or a federal agency. It authorizes the use of a CSO and explicitly accepts the risk of using the CSO. The JAB is the main FedRAMP decision-making body, comprising representatives from the Defense Department, Department of Homeland Security, and the General Services Administration (GSA).

The P-ATO is an initial approval of the CSP’s authorization package by the JAB. Federal agencies can review the P-ATO and grant an ATO to the CSP to use their CSO.

CSPs can obtain the FedRAMP ATO/P-ATO in two ways:

JAB authorization

The CSP will achieve the P-ATO directly from the JAB. But first, a FedRAMP-accredited 3PAO will assess it, and the FedRAMP project management office (PMO) will review it.

Agency authorization

Alternatively, a CSP can receive an ATO after a customer agency reviews the CSP’s offering. The FedRAMP project management office will also review it.

Once authorized, a CSP will get listed on FedRAMP’s marketplace. Three listing designations are available:

1. FedRAMP-ready. A 3PAO attests to a CSP’s readiness for the authorization process.
2. In process. For CSPs that are working toward a FedRAMP authorization.
3. Authorized. The CSP has successfully completed the FedRAMP authorization process.

Does AWS Have FedRAMP ATO?

The short answer is no, AWS as a single entity does not have FedRAMP ATO – because that’s not how the FedRAMP program was designed to work.

FedRAMP operates by granting a P-ATO for a cloud service provider. Individual federal agencies then review that P-ATO and issue their own authorization (that is, their own ATO) to use the cloud service provider. This process applies to all providers, including AWS.

Hence AWS services don’t automatically get a single ATO. That said, many individual AWS services have achieved the FedRAMP P-ATO. These are explored in detail in the next section.

AWS Services With FedRAMP Approval

Rather than say that AWS is FedRAMP-certified, it’s more accurate to say that numerous AWS offerings are FedRAMP-approved (P-ATO). As of February 2022, more than 200 AWS services were FedRAMP-approved.

Of those 200+ services, 111 were authorized for use by federal agencies in the AWS U.S. east/west regions under FedRAMP moderate authorization, and 91 achieved P-ATO for the AWS GovCloud (U.S.) regions under FedRAMP high authorization.

Some of the key FedRAMP-authorized services are described below:

Amazon Detective

Amazon Detective helps a business to analyze and investigate cloud security issues or suspicious activities. It automatically collects log data from multiple AWS resources such as Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Flow Logs and Amazon GuardDuty. It then presents a unified view of findings so investigators can find the underlying root cause of security issues.

Amazon FSx for Lustre and Amazon FSx for Windows File Server

Amazon FSx for Lustre and Amazon FSx for Windows File Server are both managed services for shared storage, built on the Lustre and Windows file systems, respectively. These AWS offerings help organizations to accelerate compute workloads with sub-millisecond latencies, potentially hundreds of GBps of throughput, and millions of IOPS.

Amazon Macie

Amazon Macie is a fully managed data security and data privacy service to discover and protect sensitive data in AWS. It uses machine learning and pattern matching to identify sensitive data buckets and raises alerts so organizations can take the necessary remediation actions.

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)

Amazon EKS is a managed container service to start, run, and scale Kubernetes applications in AWS. With this service, organizations can manage their Kubernetes clusters, create auto-scaled applications, and model machine learning workflows to run distributed training jobs.

Amazon Cognito

Amazon Cognito allows enterprise users to quickly add user sign-up, sign-in, and access control to their web and mobile apps. The service supports sign-in with multiple social identity providers and provides a secure identity store that can scale to millions of users at a time.

It also supports multiple identity and access management standards, multi-factor authentication, and the encryption of data-at-rest and data-in-transit.

The list of FedRAMP-approved AWS services is constantly growing and listed on the FedRAMP marketplace. AWS also offers the Authority to Operate (ATO) on AWS Program to help AWS Partners satisfy their customers’ authorization needs.

Does AWS Have FedRAMP-High Approval?

FedRAMP grants ATO and P-ATO to CSPs at three impact levels: low, medium, and high. The low-impact level is for offerings where the loss of data confidentiality, integrity, and availability (CIA) would have only limited harm on a federal agency’s operations or assets.

About 80 percent of FedRAMP authorization applications fall under the moderate-risk category. It is suitable for CSOs where the loss of CIA could have a serious adverse impact on a customer agency’s operations.

The high-impact risk level applies to the government’s most sensitive data (such as healthcare or financial) in the cloud. The loss of its CIA could have a catastrophic effect on the agency. All cloud service providers, including AWS, must align their offerings to the correct risk impact level before pursuing FedRAMP authorization.

In 2016, AWS GovCloud (U.S.) received a P-ATO under FedRAMP’s high baseline. Since then, many AWS CSOs have achieved FedRAMP high authorization. These include:

• AWS Systems Manager
• AWS Security Hub
• AWS CloudTrail
• Amazon CloudWatch
• Amazon Cognito

Manage FedRAMP Compliance with Reciprocity ZenComply

ZenComply is an integrated platform to simplify FedRAMP compliance and audit management. With ZenComply and its single system of record, organizations can keep up with regulatory changes. They can also eliminate tedious manual processes to meet all their compliance requirements.

ZenComply facilitates continuous compliance monitoring and automates the audit process. It also provides complete visibility into the enterprise FedRAMP compliance program. Schedule a demo to see how ZenComply can help you set up a successful FedRAMP compliance program.

In an increasingly interconnected world, anticipating and managing risk is more important — and more challenging — than ever before. Ultimately, you need a risk management program that will expand and evolve to meet the emerging and ever-changing threats to your organization.

Maintaining your risk management program is an ongoing process, and one that will require constant revision if you want it to last. Above all, your program needs to be scalable, growing as the rest of your enterprise grows.

In this article we’ll examine risk management programs, what makes them successful, and how they can be built to scale so your business is better prepared to meet the threats of tomorrow, today.

What Is Risk Management?

Risk management is the process of identifying, monitoring, and reducing the potential threats to your business and their negative impacts.

A risk is the potential for loss, damage, or destruction of your assets or data caused by a threat. Examples include data loss, cyberattacks, security breaches, or system failures. Some of the most common cyber threats — malware, phishing attacks, and viruses — can be responsible for some, or all, of these potential risks.

A risk management program better equips you to understand and control the risks to your business, so you can make better decisions and reach your business objectives. A successful risk management program will also help you identify the risks to your business through a process called risk identification.

It’s critical that your organization identifies potential risks to your business before they can do any harm. Doing so will make it easier for you to take the appropriate steps to prevent risks from actually happening. How you choose to respond to a risk is called a risk response plan, and it’s another important element of risk management.

Understanding risk is a critical component of project management as well. With each new project comes new project risk; an effective risk management strategy can help you identify each new project’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

One of the easiest ways to organize your project risk management program is to use a risk register: a tool to catalog all the information you have about potential risks to your business. Ideally, you would create a project risk register for each new project (and especially for complex projects). This results in a resource you can use to draw knowledge about past, present, and future risks to your projects and your business.

Ultimately, a business that plans for potential risks will be able to respond more quickly to those potential risks should they arise. Project managers should understand that risk management is an important part of project management, because both processes depend on planning, preparation, results, and evaluation for success.

All that said, your risk management program’s long-term success will depend on its scalability. A risk management program that can’t scale won’t last.

As risks to your business continue to change, your risk management program needs to follow suit. Creating a risk management program that has the capacity to scale with your business now will save you from any complications in the future.

Components of a Scalable Risk Management Program

Growth and change are inevitable for any business, regardless of industry. But creating a risk management program that’s built to respond to new risks as they arise isn’t easy.

Here are some of the most important components of a successful scalable risk management program to consider during the development process:

A Team of Experts

Before you begin creating your risk management program, it’s critical that you assign a team of experts to take on the task. This team should come from across your organization, with the single goal of identifying and reviewing potential risks to your enterprise.

Your team will ideally include senior management, your compliance officer, and various department managers. If your organization is developing software, you should also include one project manager from each project team to review project management and respond to project risks.

Once you’ve assembled a team, you can begin working on the other important components for your risk management process.

Clearly Defined Goals and Criteria

As with any enterprise-wide endeavor, the next step after assembling your team should be to establish clear short- and long-term goals. This is also an opportunity for you to establish uniformity in the criteria you will use to measure progress towards these goals.

Clearly defining the goals and criteria for your risk management program requires foresight. While it’s helpful to focus on the past and present when determining the context of your risk management program, the most successful risk management programs anticipate the future.

Ask yourself: what new areas of risk might arise? How will new technologies affect our current risk management process? If our business goals change, can our risk management program change to meet them?

Here, it might be helpful to examine some of the existing risk management methodologies or templates, and select one that’s the best fit for your business and the goals you’ve outlined.

Keep in mind that your risk management program will need to be integrated with departments throughout your enterprise, including your legal, IT, security, and enterprise risk. This level of integration will require some pre-planning, a process which will be augmented by increased collaboration, shared reporting, and shared resources among departments.

Whichever approach you choose, the foundation of your risk management program will ultimately determine its success. Creating a plan that aligns with your business’s existing goals and criteria lets you present a more coherent picture to the stakeholders and decision-makers who will determine how much funding the program should receive.

A Steady and Sufficient Budget

Any successful program needs funding, so it will be important to get the decision-makers in your company on board early. Make sure that their concerns are addressed when you’re creating your risk management plan, and invite them to participate in the process.

It’s likely that your risk management program will be expensive (although not as expensive as a data breach will be without a program in place). It’s important that you’re able to communicate to your C-suite, your board, and your business-line team how critical a thorough risk management program is for longevity.

As threats to your organization continue to evolve, your ability to respond to these threats will also depend on how quickly and flexibly you’re able to employ new technology. Risk management tools, however, can be expensive and hard to rationalize without data to back up your claims.

Make sure that you have clear, thorough data to support your requests for resource allocation. Also make sure that you can communicate that information to your C-suite and board members in a way they will understand.

Robust Procedures and Policies

The procedures and policies your organization uses to prevent and respond to risk should be designed to last. The purpose of your risk management policies should be to provide guidance regarding the management of risk, with the goal of supporting your corporate objectives, protecting staff and business assets, and assuring financial sustainability.

More specifically, your risk management policies should be robust enough to outlast those who create them.

First, you’ll need to develop internal policies that specify reporting and decision-making procedures. Consider your chain of command: who answers to who? Who is responsible for final decision-making? Who will report to senior leadership?

You’ll also need to develop policies that govern acceptable levels of risk. Using the uniform measurement scale you decided upon during the goal-setting stage, you’ll be better equipped to remove any subjectivity from your risk management procedures. These will include risk assessment and analysis, risk evaluation, and risk treatment.

Clearly define how you want these procedures to be carried out so that your team (or any future teams) will be able to do so without you there to guide them. These procedures should be explicitly outlined and strictly followed for the best results. They should be based on roles, rather than the specific people in those roles.

The policies and procedures you define early on in the design phase of your risk management program should also account for scalability. While it’s important that these “rules” are clearly defined, they should also be designed so that they can meet the changing needs of your business as it continues to grow.

Now that we’ve laid the foundation for the components your risk management program should contain, it’s time to put it all together and document the process in your risk management plan.

How to Build a Successful Risk Management Program

A successful risk management program considers all the components we listed above, and then applies them to each stage of the risk management process. Next, we’ll give you a brief overview of the necessary steps to build a successful risk management program.

Set Objectives

While clearly defined goals and criteria are something your team should consider before creating your risk management plan, it’s critical that you set specific objectives for risk management.

By beginning with business objectives, your risk management process will better align itself with your current and future goals. These goals may change as your business grows, which is why it’s important that your risk management program is built to scale.

While your objectives may change over time, your risk management program itself should have the ability to flexibly mold itself to meet any new objectives as they arise.

Identify, Monitor, and Manage Risks

Risk identification is the process of reviewing IT assets such as systems, networks, software, devices, vendors, and data. You should catalog these assets and then allow your team members to identify all the risks to them. Keep in mind that a risk, or uncertain event, can be both a positive or a negative condition that has a financial, operational, or reputational impact. Here, it would be useful to create and continually update a risk register with new risks as they are identified.

Risk assessment is the next step, and will require your team to evaluate the potential risks that you’ve previously identified. Be as specific as possible about the risk, without including any unnecessary information. If the risk is described vaguely, it may be harder to know whether an event fits the risk description or not. For instance, describing a risk as “the weather” will not be much help to most employees. On the other hand, “hurricane season in NY could result in shipping delays” will.

Risk analysis determines the likelihood that an event will happen and then estimates the impacts to your organization if it does. Try multiplying a risk’s likelihood by its estimated impact to give insight into the risk’s effect. For example, a risk with low likelihood might lead to a devastating financial impact, while a risk with high likelihood may have no impact at all. Part of your risk analysis will be to develop a risk assessment matrix using qualitative or quantitative measurement scales to assign risk ratings for each risk as either high, medium, or low.

Risk tolerance is where your team decides whether it will accept, transfer, mitigate, or refuse each risk. For accepted risks, your team should create a set of risk mitigation strategies. For any risks that your organization accepts or transfers, you will need to define responses to any issues that might occur. These risk mitigation strategies will act as a contingency plan if the event occurs to help limit the defined impact.

Repeat

After you execute this process and document each step along the way, it’s time to repeat. Your risk management program will ultimately consist of these steps, repeated over and over again, to make sure your organization can identify, monitor, and manage any new risks to your business as they arise.

Each time you repeat the process, you should aim for improvement. This might mean adjusting your policies and procedures for better outcomes, adding or subtracting team members to introduce new perspectives, or adding additional funding to satisfy needs for new technology or additional team members.

The scalability of your risk management program lies in your ability to repeat the risk management process over and over, fine-tuning it to meet the needs of your organization.

Be warned: your organization continues to grow, this step can also become overwhelming. Keeping track of everything all at once, and all the time, might seem impossible. Fortunately, there are solutions that can help.

Build Scalable Risk Management with Reciprocity ZenRisk

One of the most efficient ways to make risk identification and mitigation easier for your business is to employ tools that are designed to help.

Reciprocity ZenRisk is an integrated cybersecurity risk management solution designed to provide you with actionable insights to gain the visibility you need to stay ahead of threats and clearly communicate the impact of risk on high-priority business initiatives. Turn the unknown into quantifiable and actionable risk insights with built-in expertise that identifies and maps risks, threats and controls for you, so you can spend less time setting up the application and more time using it.

A single, real-time view of risk and business context allows you to communicate to the board and key stakeholders in a way that’s framed around their priorities, keeping your risk posture in sync with the direction your business is moving.

Reciprocity ZenRisk will even notify you automatically of any changes or required actions, so you can be on top of your risk posture like never before. Eliminate time-consuming, manual work and streamline collaboration by automating workflows and integrating with your most critical systems.

Plus, Reciprocity ZenRisk is seamlessly integrated with Reciprocity ZenComply so you can leverage your compliance activities to improve your risk posture with the use of AI. Built on the ZenGRC, the Reciprocity product suite gives you the ability to see, understand and take action on your IT and cyber risks.

Now, through a more proactive approach, you can give time back to your team with Reciprocity ZenRisk. Talk to an expert today to learn more about how the Reciprocity Product Suite can help your organization mitigate cybersecurity risk and stay ahead of threats.

Risk assessment is a critical component of enterprise risk management – perhaps even the most important component. If you assess your risks incorrectly, all the steps you subsequently take to control those risks can fall short.

Most risk management teams use two types of risk assessment methodologies: qualitative risk assessment and quantitative risk assessment. Within these two broad categories are various specific risk assessment techniques you can implement in your organization. This article explores these methods to guide your risk management efforts.

What Is Risk Assessment and Why Is It Required?

Understanding Risk Assessment

Risk assessment is an ongoing process of identifying, analyzing, and prioritizing risks that could harm your organization.

Your company might face any number of risks as it operates in its industry and market, and these risks are not all equal. Some can have a dire effect on your business continuity, cybersecurity posture, or financial stability; others might occur more frequently and cause ongoing headaches for your risk management team, but they won’t necessarily derail your organization.

To manage risk effectively, organizations must identify all their risks and then analyze the potential impact and probability of each one. This helps you to implement strategies that keep risk at acceptable levels. Many of these steps fall under the purview of risk assessment.

Benefits of Risk Assessment

With effective use of risk assessment methodologies, your organization can:

• Understand key risk factors, risk types, and risk sources;
• Decide how much risk your organization can tolerate;
• Assess the potential impact of identified risks and mitigate this impact to minimize potential harm.

With robust risk assessment methodologies, you can discern your organization’s risk exposure and compare that to the company’s risk appetite and tolerance. You can also assess your current risk management process and control measures. This improved visibility helps you to make better investments in risk mitigation tools and technologies.

Business risk assessments also help to increase risk awareness throughout the organization, and to build consensus to identify the most significant risks and take required steps for risk mitigation.

When to Conduct Risk Assessments

Risk assessments should be done at regular intervals, such as once a year. (Once you understand your most pressing risks you might also want to assess those even more often, such as every few months.)

You should also conduct new risk assessments after any major “triggering event.” Those events could be an acquisition your business just made, a new regulation that went into effect, an expansion into a new market, and so forth.

Common Challenges to Effective Risk Assessment

Effective risk assessment is crucial to risk management and mitigation. That said, many organizations struggle to assess risks, for various reasons:

• Missing common definitions of important risk terms;
• Little or no support from the board of directors, executive management, or process owners;
• Lack of established best practices and ground rules;
• Inadequate understanding of the organization’s culture and business context.

To address these challenges, you first must develop a common risk language, complete with a risk taxonomy, framework, knowledge base, dictionary, and templates. It’s also essential to choose the right risk assessment methodology to assure that all critical risks are identified, analyzed, addressed, and managed.

Quantitative vs. Qualitative Risk Assessments

Quantitative Risk Assessment

A quantitative risk assessment is objective in nature. It is driven by measurable data and metrics, where risk assessment teams quantify asset value, threat frequency, and threat probability.

For example, to assess the cost of a potential data breach (cybersecurity risk), the team might:

• Assign a dollar value to understand the breach impact on the company’s bottom line;
• Predict how many records or sensitive files may be exposed;
• Draw up a numbered list of assets that could be affected.

A quantitative risk assessment starts by compiling one list of possible risks, and another list of assets that might suffer if those risks materialize. The assets could include sensitive data, intellectual property, mission-critical applications, or the IT infrastructure itself. For each asset, assessors usually assign a financial value to quantify the harm of a risk on that asset.

A quantitative analysis is valuable since it reveals the risk in black-and-white numbers; that clarifies decision-making. Quantitative approaches, however, cannot answer all risk-related questions, such as the possible harm to organizational culture or corporate reputation. For such analyses, a qualitative risk assessment is required.

Qualitative Risk Assessment

A qualitative risk assessment is subjective. It helps answer questions such as, “What might happen if an identified risk were to materialize?” After all, a risk is about more than its financial or other quantifiable ramifications. A qualitative assessment can help reveal possible future situations and show how risk and uncertainty can affect the organization.

Assessors use qualitative assessments to group risks by category rather than specific dollar values. While the goal of a quantitative risk analysis is to define a risk by cost, delays, and other quantifiable parameters, the objective of qualitative assessment is to:

• Identify risks;
• Measure the likelihood and impact of a risk event;
• Determine risk severity based on this likelihood and impact;
• Implement controls to mitigate identified risks and prevent undesirable situations, such as chaos or productivity loss.

Qualitative risk analysis results are often recorded in a graphical report such as a risk matrix to communicate risk information to relevant stakeholders.

Five Proven Risk Assessment Methodologies

Here are five popular risk assessment techniques that organizations and their risk management teams use.

Asset Audits

Your company has many assets that influence its operations, business continuity, and competitiveness. These assets are business-critical, so it’s essential to assess the risks attached to them. This assessment is the key to protecting them.

Here’s where an asset audit comes in. An asset-based risk assessment is often associated with information technology, information systems security, and data privacy. The goals here are two:

• Identify the organization’s assets;
• Determine if each asset is being protected adequately and consistently.

The steps involved in a typical asset audit are:

1. Identify all the assets:
   • Data
   • Customer information
   • Hardware
   • Mission-critical systems
   • Software and applications
   • Source code
   • People
   • Equipment
   • Intellectual property
   • Physical property
2. Review each asset to determine potential threats and vulnerabilities.
3. Determine the likelihood of each threat and the impact on each asset.
4. Assess the effectiveness of existing security controls.
5. Design and implement additional safeguards to protect assets.

An asset audit is an easy and direct way to look at the organization’s assets, assess their risk exposure, and implement controls to protect them from harm.

Fault Trees

A fault tree analysis (FTA) is a risk assessment tool that represents undesirable events, faults, or failures in a tree-like structure. It is a great risk assessment methodology for complex systems since it offers a logical depiction of risks and their causes.

The fault tree consists of two critical elements: events and logic gates.

The steps in a fault tree analysis are:

• Define the undesirable events or risks;
• Construct the fault tree by connecting lower-level events with logic gates and moving up towards higher-level events;
• Evaluate the fault tree;
• Identify appropriate corrective measures.
• Implement these measures to protect against the identified risks.

The logic gates connect events so you can identify an undesired event’s cause (or fault). This top-down risk assessment approach aims to pinpoint the root causes of the lower-level, basic events on the tree that result in the high-level problem. Root cause identification is crucial to take suitable action to avoid the fault or mitigate its harm.

Attack Trees

An attack tree is a type of fault tree. It provides a systematic way to understand the organization’s security based on an analysis of how, when, and why an attack may happen and with what probability.

For example, if an attack tree is built to assess cybersecurity risk, the top of the tree (or its “root node”) represents the cyberattacker’s ultimate goal. The other nodes and branches in the tree show the various ways the attacker might accomplish that goal.

So if the attacker’s goal is to steal your organization’s sensitive data, that would be the top node. The branches and leaf nodes could be:

• Brute force attacks;
• Phishing;
• Spidering;
• Keystroke loggers;
• Social engineering;
• Shoulder surfing.

Here’s how to build an attack tree:

• Identify the various threat actors that pose a risk to the organization.
• If there’s more than one threat actor, create one attack tree for each actor.
• Explore the possible goal of each threat actor and assign that objective to the root node.
• Identify the possible ways the attacker could attain the goal and assign them to the second-level goals under the root node.
• For each second-level goal, consider whether there are any sub-goals and assign them to the third-level, fourth-level, and so on.
• Continue the process until each leaf node specifies a single attack method.
• Evaluate each attack path to determine the likelihood of its use and to assess the business impact if the attacker attains the ultimate goal.
• Identify and implement countermeasures to stop the attack.

Operationally Critical Threat, Asset, and Vulnerability Evaluation (OCTAVE)

OCTAVE defines a risk-based strategic assessment and planning methodology for security. It is a flexible, customizable, and self-directed risk assessment methodology, which means the organization assumes responsibility for setting its security strategy. Using OCTAVE, your company can:

• Direct and manage information security risk assessments;
• Identify the unique risks applicable to your organization;
• Protect key assets;
• Effectively communicate important security information to all relevant stakeholders.
• Improve risk decision-making.

The OCTAVE team generally consists of members from the company’s operational or business units and the IT department. These members collaborate and work together to address the organization’s security needs. To do this, they:

• Gather knowledge from the organization’s stakeholders;
• Define the current state of security;
• Identify risks to business-critical assets;
• Define and implement a security strategy.

Operational risk and security practices drive the OCTAVE approach to risk assessment rather than technology. The methodology is based on eight processes across three phases:

• Phase 1: Develop the initial security strategy.
• Phase 2: Identify infrastructure vulnerabilities.
• Phase 3: Analyze risks; develop the final security strategy and risk management plan.

NIST Risk Assessment Framework

The NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) risk assessment framework is a valuable way to understand your business’s risks, threats, and vulnerabilities. The framework provides tools to assess the impact, the likelihood of occurrence, and determine ways to mitigate the risks.

This assessment methodology consists of a set of procedures explained in Special Publication (SP) 800-30. In this document, the NIST breaks down the risk assessment process into four steps or components:

• Prepare for risk assessment;
• Conduct risk assessment;
• Communicate assessment findings to key stakeholders;
• Maintain risk assessments over time.

In the preparation stage, you should identify the assessment purpose and scope. You also define constraints, assumptions, sources of information, and your preferred analytic approach.

In Step 2, you conduct the risk evaluation by:

• Identifying threats and threat sources;
• Predicting what events could occur if one or more vulnerabilities are exploited;
• Determining all potential negative impacts of these events;
• Determining the relative likelihood of each possible scenario.

At the end of the assessment, you will have a set of findings and data that you can share with all stakeholders who might be affected by the identified risks and scenarios.

In the final step of the NIST risk assessment methodology, you will conduct ongoing risk assessments by monitoring previously identified risk factors and scanning for new ones. You will also update risk management procedures to reflect any changes to the risk landscape and the organization’s risk exposure.

What Is the Best Risk Assessment Methodology for My Organization?

Many risk assessment methodologies have emerged over the years. It’s essential to choose suitable methods for your organization and define rules and best practices. These definitions will help standardize assessments throughout the organization. Without them, different parts of the organization may use different approaches, which may cause confusion.

A standardized risk assessment methodology will also provide reasonable assurance to the board, customers, senior management, security management, and other stakeholders that all relevant risks are being taken into account for risk management. It will also help streamline risk communications and risk response.

The methodology you choose would depend on several factors, including your organization’s size, industry, business type, and risk landscape. Also consider the larger context, particularly:

• Legal, regulatory, and contractual obligations;
• Strategic objectives;
• Stakeholder needs and expectations.

These factors will generate their own demands and should factor into your choices.

When choosing a methodology, ask yourself some key questions:

• What are you hoping to learn with the assessment?
• Do you need concrete data? Then do a quantitative assessment.
• Are you looking for information about risk probability and impact? Then a qualitative assessment could be more helpful.
• Do you need an overview of the risks affecting the entire organization or just one department or business unit?

Asking these questions can narrow down your options and determine which methodology (or combination of methodologies) will best suit your needs. Further, some assessment methodologies are time-consuming and require a fair investment of funds and resources.

Others may require technological investments (such as software or automation) or the support of external consultants. When deciding which risk assessment methodology to employ in your firm, make sure to think about all these aspects – and when necessary, conduct a cost-benefit analysis.

Assess and Manage Risks With ZenRisk

Ongoing risk assessments and effective risk management are critical to protecting your organization. Reciprocity ZenRisk can help you to assess and manage risks throughout the organization, ensuring its continuity and longevity.

With this single, centralized tool for integrated risk management, you can examine vulnerabilities and threats in real-time. You can also see where risks are changing and leverage this information to implement robust controls.

If you’re looking for a world-class, visually-rich solution to mitigate business exposure and maintain a strong security profile, try ZenRisk. Schedule a demo today.

FROM THE BACK OFFICE TO THE BOARDROOM: EXECUTIVES DISCUSS THE ROLE’S EVOLUTION

Increasingly since the global pandemic struck in 2020, the world is being exploited by cyber criminals. This has resulted in a record number of ransomware attacks and data breaches globally — and shows no signs of slowing.

As these threats and the security landscape continue to evolve, the role of the CISO is also changing. Once a back-office “doer,” the CISO has now become a communicator and influencer to the C-suite. Their new mission: to ensure the organization understands the implications of business opportunities to IT and cybersecurity, balancing risk with opportunity.

Listen in as Rob Ellis, Reciprocity’s SVP of Strategy, moderates an executive discussion focused on:

• The forces driving the security leadership role’s evolution
• Challenges security leaders face today
• Steps to help elevate your influence and succeed in the role

Duration: 60 minutes