ABC International IT Risk Assessment Report

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* Overview
ABC International is a well-known cloud data storage company. Although it has sufficient protocols and safeguards against data breaches and security compromise, a recent phishing scheme led to a system compromise. This necessitated a significant capital expenditure for eradicating the treats and the restoration of the system. However, despite these new protocols, more effective risk-reduction and crisis response protocols should still be added as an extra layer of security for the whole system. This would reduce the possible threats against the system and improve metrics like Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs). Accordingly, this report presents some of the measures that could be added to improve ABC's security.
* Assets
Ї Physical Location Inventory
ABC's cloud data storage is located in five different cities in the world. Both the mainframe and the storage systems are located strategically to improve data transfer speed and efficiency, among others.
* Threats
Ї Types of Threats
Since ABC is a cloud storage company, two types of threats pose the greatest danger to its systems; (1) environmental and (2) security threats.
On the one hand, environmental threats are those which are related to the external environment of hardware systems, such as floods, fire, and earthquakes, among others. These vulnerabilities are recognized and even given utmost importance by various agencies for their direct and possibly irreversible effects on data systems CITATION NASnd \l 1033 (NASA.Gov, n.d.). More particularly, these environmental threats could be further classified between; (1) technical, (2) physical, and (3) environmental, and (4) site-support systems, which could only be mitigated with the installation of proper safety mechanisms to provide utmost protection to hardware inventories.
On the other hand, security threats are related to an external attack specifically directed towards ABC's systems. While environmental threats are relatively easier to manage, these threats may come in various forms, thereby necessitating a more stringent application of measures to reduce their effects. As a cloud-based storage company, the threats with the highest possibility of being used against its system are; (1) Phishing attacks, (2) cloud jacking, (3) highly developed ransomware attacks, and (4) API vulnerabilities and breaches CITATION Kwe21 \l 1033 (Kweon, Lee, Chai, & Yoo, 2021). Although direct insider attacks are also present, they could be mitigated with proper security protocols regarding who can access the system's mainframe and database.
* Vulnerabilities
The vulnerabilities of the current system are based on its protocols against environmental threats and its crisis response procedures in case of data breaches.
Ї Application and Protocol Vulnerabilities
On the one hand, ABC corporation's security protocols for who can access the mainframe lacks restriction. The mainframe system is located near the company's cafeteria, wherein most employees stay during their break times. This increases the threat of insider attack or an "a malicious attack perpetrated on a network or computer system by a person with authorized system access" CITATION Uki11 \l 1...