SSCP Exam Question 11
Risk mitigation and risk reduction controls for providing information security are classified within three main categories, which of the following are being used?
Correct Answer: C
Security is generally defined as the freedom from danger or as the condition of safety. Computer security, specifically, is the protection of data in a system against unauthorized disclosure, modification, or destruction and protection of the computer system itself against unauthorized use, modification, or denial of service. Because certain computer security controls inhibit productivity, security is typically a compromise toward which security practitioners, system users, and system operations and administrative personnel work to achieve a satisfactory balance between security and productivity.
Controls for providing information security can be physical, technical, or administrative. These three categories of controls can be further classified as either preventive or detective. Preventive controls attempt to avoid the occurrence of unwanted events, whereas detective controls attempt to identify unwanted events after they have occurred. Preventive controls inhibit the free use of computing resources and therefore can be applied only to the degree that the users are willing to accept. Effective security awareness programs can help increase users' level of tolerance for preventive controls by helping them understand how such controls enable them to trust their computing systems. Common detective controls include audit trails, intrusion detection methods, and checksums.
Three other types of controls supplement preventive and detective controls. They are usually described as deterrent, corrective, and recovery.
Deterrent controls are intended to discourage individuals from intentionally violating information security policies or procedures. These usually take the form of constraints that make it difficult or undesirable to perform unauthorized activities or threats of consequences that influence a potential intruder to not violate security (e.g., threats ranging from embarrassment to severe punishment). Corrective controls either remedy the circumstances that allowed the unauthorized activity or return conditions to what they were before the violation. Execution of corrective controls could result in changes to existing physical, technical, and administrative controls. Recovery controls restore lost computing resources or capabilities and help the organization recover monetary losses caused by a security violation.
Deterrent, corrective, and recovery controls are considered to be special cases within the major categories of physical, technical, and administrative controls; they do not clearly belong in either preventive or detective categories. For example, it could be argued that deterrence is a form of prevention because it can cause an intruder to turn away; however, deterrence also involves detecting violations, which may be what the intruder fears most. Corrective controls, on the other hand, are not preventive or detective, but they are clearly linked with technical controls when antiviral software eradicates a virus or with administrative controls when backup procedures enable restoring a damaged data base. Finally, recovery controls are neither preventive nor detective but are included in administrative controls as disaster recovery or contingency plans.
Reference(s) used for this question Handbook of Information Security Management, Hal Tipton
Controls for providing information security can be physical, technical, or administrative. These three categories of controls can be further classified as either preventive or detective. Preventive controls attempt to avoid the occurrence of unwanted events, whereas detective controls attempt to identify unwanted events after they have occurred. Preventive controls inhibit the free use of computing resources and therefore can be applied only to the degree that the users are willing to accept. Effective security awareness programs can help increase users' level of tolerance for preventive controls by helping them understand how such controls enable them to trust their computing systems. Common detective controls include audit trails, intrusion detection methods, and checksums.
Three other types of controls supplement preventive and detective controls. They are usually described as deterrent, corrective, and recovery.
Deterrent controls are intended to discourage individuals from intentionally violating information security policies or procedures. These usually take the form of constraints that make it difficult or undesirable to perform unauthorized activities or threats of consequences that influence a potential intruder to not violate security (e.g., threats ranging from embarrassment to severe punishment). Corrective controls either remedy the circumstances that allowed the unauthorized activity or return conditions to what they were before the violation. Execution of corrective controls could result in changes to existing physical, technical, and administrative controls. Recovery controls restore lost computing resources or capabilities and help the organization recover monetary losses caused by a security violation.
Deterrent, corrective, and recovery controls are considered to be special cases within the major categories of physical, technical, and administrative controls; they do not clearly belong in either preventive or detective categories. For example, it could be argued that deterrence is a form of prevention because it can cause an intruder to turn away; however, deterrence also involves detecting violations, which may be what the intruder fears most. Corrective controls, on the other hand, are not preventive or detective, but they are clearly linked with technical controls when antiviral software eradicates a virus or with administrative controls when backup procedures enable restoring a damaged data base. Finally, recovery controls are neither preventive nor detective but are included in administrative controls as disaster recovery or contingency plans.
Reference(s) used for this question Handbook of Information Security Management, Hal Tipton
SSCP Exam Question 12
What would BEST define risk management?
Correct Answer: C
Explanation/Reference:
This is the basic process of risk management.
Risk is the possibility of damage happening and the ramifications of such damage should it occur.
Information risk management (IRM) is the process of identifying and assessing risk, reducing it to an acceptable level, and implementing the right mechanisms to maintain that level. There is no such thing as a 100 percent secure environment. Every environment has vulnerabilities and threats to a certain degree.
The skill is in identifying these threats, assessing the probability of them actually occurring and the damage they could cause, and then taking the right steps to reduce the overall level of risk in the environment to what the organization identifies as acceptable.
Proper risk management requires a strong commitment from senior management, a documented process that supports the organization's mission, an information risk management (IRM) policy and a delegated IRM team. Once you've identified your company's acceptable level of risk, you need to develop an information risk management policy.
The IRM policy should be a subset of the organization's overall risk management policy (risks to a company include more than just information security issues) and should be mapped to the organizational security policies, which lay out the acceptable risk and the role of security as a whole in the organization.
The IRM policy is focused on risk management while the security policy is very high-level and addresses all aspects of security. The IRM policy should address the following items:
Objectives of IRM team
Level of risk the company will accept and what is considered an acceptable risk (as defined in the previous article)
Formal processes of risk identification
Connection between the IRM policy and the organization's strategic planning processes Responsibilities that fall under IRM and the roles that are to fulfill them Mapping of risk to internal controls
Approach for changing staff behaviors and resource allocation in response to risk analysis Mapping of risks to performance targets and budgets
Key indicators to monitor the effectiveness of controls
Shon Harris provides a 10,000-foot view of the risk management process below:
A big question that companies have to deal with is, "What is enough security?" This can be restated as,
"What is our acceptable risk level?" These two questions have an inverse relationship. You can't know what constitutes enough security unless you know your necessary baseline risk level.
To set an enterprise-wide acceptable risk level for a company, a few things need to be investigated and understood. A company must understand its federal and state legal requirements, its regulatory requirements, its business drivers and objectives, and it must carry out a risk and threat analysis. (I will dig deeper into formalized risk analysis processes in a later article, but for now we will take a broad approach.) The result of these findings is then used to define the company's acceptable risk level, which is then outlined in security policies, standards, guidelines and procedures.
Although there are different methodologies for enterprise risk management, the core components of any risk analysis is made up of the following:
Identify company assets
Assign a value to each asset
Identify each asset's vulnerabilities and associated threats
Calculate the risk for the identified assets
Once these steps are finished, then the risk analysis team can identify the necessary countermeasures to mitigate the calculated risks, carry out cost/benefit analysis for these countermeasures and report to senior management their findings.
When we look at information security, there are several types of risk a corporation needs to be aware of and address properly. The following items touch on the major categories:
Physical damage Fire, water, vandalism, power loss, and natural disasters Human interaction Accidental or intentional action or inaction that can disrupt productivity Equipment malfunction Failure of systems and peripheral devices
Inside and outside attacks Hacking, cracking, and attacking
Misuse of data Sharing trade secrets, fraud, espionage, and theft
Loss of data Intentional or unintentional loss of information through destructive means Application error Computation errors, input errors, and buffer overflows The following answers are incorrect:
The process of eliminating the risk is not the best answer as risk cannot be totally eliminated.
The process of assessing the risks is also not the best answer.
The process of transferring risk is also not the best answer and is one of the ways of handling a risk after a risk analysis has been performed.
References:
Shon Harris , AIO v3 , Chapter 3: Security Management Practices , Page: 66-68 and
http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/tip/Understanding-risk
This is the basic process of risk management.
Risk is the possibility of damage happening and the ramifications of such damage should it occur.
Information risk management (IRM) is the process of identifying and assessing risk, reducing it to an acceptable level, and implementing the right mechanisms to maintain that level. There is no such thing as a 100 percent secure environment. Every environment has vulnerabilities and threats to a certain degree.
The skill is in identifying these threats, assessing the probability of them actually occurring and the damage they could cause, and then taking the right steps to reduce the overall level of risk in the environment to what the organization identifies as acceptable.
Proper risk management requires a strong commitment from senior management, a documented process that supports the organization's mission, an information risk management (IRM) policy and a delegated IRM team. Once you've identified your company's acceptable level of risk, you need to develop an information risk management policy.
The IRM policy should be a subset of the organization's overall risk management policy (risks to a company include more than just information security issues) and should be mapped to the organizational security policies, which lay out the acceptable risk and the role of security as a whole in the organization.
The IRM policy is focused on risk management while the security policy is very high-level and addresses all aspects of security. The IRM policy should address the following items:
Objectives of IRM team
Level of risk the company will accept and what is considered an acceptable risk (as defined in the previous article)
Formal processes of risk identification
Connection between the IRM policy and the organization's strategic planning processes Responsibilities that fall under IRM and the roles that are to fulfill them Mapping of risk to internal controls
Approach for changing staff behaviors and resource allocation in response to risk analysis Mapping of risks to performance targets and budgets
Key indicators to monitor the effectiveness of controls
Shon Harris provides a 10,000-foot view of the risk management process below:
A big question that companies have to deal with is, "What is enough security?" This can be restated as,
"What is our acceptable risk level?" These two questions have an inverse relationship. You can't know what constitutes enough security unless you know your necessary baseline risk level.
To set an enterprise-wide acceptable risk level for a company, a few things need to be investigated and understood. A company must understand its federal and state legal requirements, its regulatory requirements, its business drivers and objectives, and it must carry out a risk and threat analysis. (I will dig deeper into formalized risk analysis processes in a later article, but for now we will take a broad approach.) The result of these findings is then used to define the company's acceptable risk level, which is then outlined in security policies, standards, guidelines and procedures.
Although there are different methodologies for enterprise risk management, the core components of any risk analysis is made up of the following:
Identify company assets
Assign a value to each asset
Identify each asset's vulnerabilities and associated threats
Calculate the risk for the identified assets
Once these steps are finished, then the risk analysis team can identify the necessary countermeasures to mitigate the calculated risks, carry out cost/benefit analysis for these countermeasures and report to senior management their findings.
When we look at information security, there are several types of risk a corporation needs to be aware of and address properly. The following items touch on the major categories:
Physical damage Fire, water, vandalism, power loss, and natural disasters Human interaction Accidental or intentional action or inaction that can disrupt productivity Equipment malfunction Failure of systems and peripheral devices
Inside and outside attacks Hacking, cracking, and attacking
Misuse of data Sharing trade secrets, fraud, espionage, and theft
Loss of data Intentional or unintentional loss of information through destructive means Application error Computation errors, input errors, and buffer overflows The following answers are incorrect:
The process of eliminating the risk is not the best answer as risk cannot be totally eliminated.
The process of assessing the risks is also not the best answer.
The process of transferring risk is also not the best answer and is one of the ways of handling a risk after a risk analysis has been performed.
References:
Shon Harris , AIO v3 , Chapter 3: Security Management Practices , Page: 66-68 and
http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/tip/Understanding-risk
SSCP Exam Question 13
Which of the following protocols is designed to send individual messages securely?
Correct Answer: D
Explanation/Reference:
An early standard for encrypting HTTP documents, Secure HTTP (S-HTTP) is designed to send individual messages securely. SSL is designed to establish a secure connection between two computers. SET was originated by VISA and MasterCard as an Internet credit card protocol using digital signatures. Kerberos is an authentication system.
Source: KRUTZ, Ronald L & VINES, Russel D., The CISSP Prep Guide: Mastering the Ten Domains of Computer Security, 2001, John Wiley & Sons, Page 89.
An early standard for encrypting HTTP documents, Secure HTTP (S-HTTP) is designed to send individual messages securely. SSL is designed to establish a secure connection between two computers. SET was originated by VISA and MasterCard as an Internet credit card protocol using digital signatures. Kerberos is an authentication system.
Source: KRUTZ, Ronald L & VINES, Russel D., The CISSP Prep Guide: Mastering the Ten Domains of Computer Security, 2001, John Wiley & Sons, Page 89.
SSCP Exam Question 14
Which of the following is an example of a passive attack?
Correct Answer: B
Explanation/Reference:
Shoulder surfing is a form of a passive attack involving stealing passwords, personal identification numbers or other confidential information by looking over someone's shoulder. All other forms of attack are active attacks, where a threat makes a modification to the system in an attempt to take advantage of a vulnerability.
Source: HARRIS, Shon, All-In-One CISSP Certification Exam Guide, McGraw-Hill/Osborne, 2002, chapter
3: Security Management Practices (page 63).
Shoulder surfing is a form of a passive attack involving stealing passwords, personal identification numbers or other confidential information by looking over someone's shoulder. All other forms of attack are active attacks, where a threat makes a modification to the system in an attempt to take advantage of a vulnerability.
Source: HARRIS, Shon, All-In-One CISSP Certification Exam Guide, McGraw-Hill/Osborne, 2002, chapter
3: Security Management Practices (page 63).
SSCP Exam Question 15
Which access control model provides upper and lower bounds of access capabilities for a subject?
Correct Answer: B
Explanation/Reference:
In the lattice model, users are assigned security clearences and the data is classified. Access decisions are made based on the clearence of the user and the classification of the object. Lattice-based access control is an essential ingredient of formal security models such as Bell-LaPadula, Biba, Chinese Wall, etc.
The bounds concept comes from the formal definition of a lattice as a "partially ordered set for which every pair of elements has a greatest lower bound and a least upper bound." To see the application, consider a file classified as "SECRET" and a user Joe with a security clearence of "TOP SECRET." Under Bell- LaPadula, Joe's "least upper bound" access to the file is "READ" and his least lower bound is "NO WRITE" (star property).
Role-based access control is incorrect. Under RBAC, the access is controlled by the permissions assigned to a role and the specific role assigned to the user.
Biba access control is incorrect. The Biba integrity model is based on a lattice structure but the context of the question disqualiifes it as the best answer.
Content-dependent access control is incorrect. In content dependent access control, the actual content of the information determines access as enforced by the arbiter.
References:
CBK, pp. 324-325.
AIO3, pp. 291-293. See aprticularly Figure 5-19 on p. 293 for an illustration of bounds in action.
In the lattice model, users are assigned security clearences and the data is classified. Access decisions are made based on the clearence of the user and the classification of the object. Lattice-based access control is an essential ingredient of formal security models such as Bell-LaPadula, Biba, Chinese Wall, etc.
The bounds concept comes from the formal definition of a lattice as a "partially ordered set for which every pair of elements has a greatest lower bound and a least upper bound." To see the application, consider a file classified as "SECRET" and a user Joe with a security clearence of "TOP SECRET." Under Bell- LaPadula, Joe's "least upper bound" access to the file is "READ" and his least lower bound is "NO WRITE" (star property).
Role-based access control is incorrect. Under RBAC, the access is controlled by the permissions assigned to a role and the specific role assigned to the user.
Biba access control is incorrect. The Biba integrity model is based on a lattice structure but the context of the question disqualiifes it as the best answer.
Content-dependent access control is incorrect. In content dependent access control, the actual content of the information determines access as enforced by the arbiter.
References:
CBK, pp. 324-325.
AIO3, pp. 291-293. See aprticularly Figure 5-19 on p. 293 for an illustration of bounds in action.
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