@GeorgeResse pointed out this article http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/five-facts-every-cloud-computing-pro-should-know-174 from @DavidLinthicum today. And from a Cloud advocate point of view I like four of the assertions. But his point about Cloud Security is off: “While many are pushing back on cloud computing due to security concerns, cloud computing is, in fact, as safe as or better than most [...]
Gideon Rasmussen, CISSP, CISA, CISM, CIPP, writes in his latest blog post (http://www.gideonrasmussen.com/article-22.html) about the BP Oil spill and operational risk, and the damages the spill is causing BP. Ignoring the hindsight bias of the article here… “This oil spill is a classic example of a black swan (events with the potential for severe impact [...]
In comments to my “Why I Don’t Like CRISC” article, Oliver writes: CobIT allows to segregate what is called IT in analysable parts. Different Risk models apply to those parts. e.g. Information Security, Architecture, Project management. In certain areas the risk models are more mature (Infosec / Project Management) and in certain they are not [...]
PREFACE: You might interpret this blog post as being negative about risk management here, dear readers. Don’t. This isn’t a diatrabe against IRM, only why “certification” around information risk is a really, really silly idea. Apparently, my blog about why I don’t like the idea of CRISC has long-term stickiness. Just today, Philip writes in [...]
Some time back, a friend of mine said “Alex, I like the concept of Risk Management, but it’s a little like the United Nations – Good in concept, horrible in execution”. Recently, a couple of folks have been talking about how security should just be a “diligence” function, that is, we should just prove that [...]
Longtime readers know that I’m not the biggest fan of GRC as it is “practiced” today. I believe G & C are subservient to risk management. So let me offer you this statement to chew on: “A metric for Governance is only useful inasmuch as it describes an ability to manage risk” True or False, [...]
A methodology is presented for guiding individual policy decisions from a risk management perspective, using a form of “abduction validation”. An example is presented using the case of password change policy, drawing from recent blog discussions.
I’d like to wish US readers a happy Thanksgiving. For those outside of the US, I thought this would be a nice little post for today: A pointer to an article in the Financial Times, “Baseball’s love of statistics is taking over football“ Those who indulge my passion for analysis and for sport know that [...]
Our friend Rich Mogull has an interesting post up on his blog called “Always Assume“. In it, he offers that “assumption” is part of a normal scenario building process, something that is fairly inescapable when making business decisions. And he offers a simple, pragmatic process for assumptions which is mainly scenario development, justification, and action. [...]
Near misses are very valuable signals regarding future losses. If we ignore them in our cost metrics, we might make some very poor decisions. This example shows that there is a qualitative difference between “ground truth data” (in this case, historical cash flow for data breach events) and overall security metrics, which need to reflect our estimates about the future, a.k.a. risk.