IT Controls and Countermeasures
Objective: Analyze the compliance and regulatory issues that face U.S. companies with regard to cybersecurity and information technologies and how to address them within the policy framework.
Competencies: Critical thinking, decision making
In 8-10 double-spaced pages, each student analyzes the policies, vulnerabilities, risks and internal controls for a French bank that was a victim of a large scale fraud and recommends improvements to the company’s IT security policies. Relate the identified policies, vulnerabilities, risks and internal controls to the technical material and vulnerability identification & exploitation materials presented in the Erickson and Weidman texts.
This assignment calls for a systematic analysis of an organization’s policies, vulnerabilities, risks, and internal controls as well as their relationship to current vulnerability identification and exploitation technologies. Many scientific, engineering, information, and accounting disciplines advocate general steps to problem solving utilizing a systems approach. At this point in your academic career, you should be proficient at applying such a general approach to solving specific problems. Select and adapt such an approach with which you are most comfortable from your prior professional and academic experiences to apply to this assignment. Suggested steps to the general systems approach to problem solving are as follows:
1. Define the problem
2. Identify evaluation criteria/measures of effectiveness
3. Identify alternatives/solutions
4. Evaluate/analyze alternatives utilizing analytical techniques consistent with step 2 criteria/measures
5. Select and display preferred alternative(s)/solution(s) consistent with the analysis in step 4
6. Implement and monitor step 5 solution(s)
Refer to the French Bank in the following URLs
• http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,530673,00.html
• http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22818054/ns/business-world_business/t/french-bank-blames-trader-billion-fraud/
• http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/04/business/main3785088.shtml
and your specific readings regarding security controls, audits, inspections, risk assessment, and countermeasures. Utilizing an appropriate methodology for analysis (which may be adapted from the above 6 steps), identify a set of 7-10 recommendations toward solving the fraud issue of the French Bank. The systems analysis approach as applied within the areas of risk analysis, vulnerability assessment, internal audits, and policy analysis should yield adequate justification for your recommendations.
There are three additional things to keep in mind. First, defining the problem or issue will require a data gathering stage. Second, problem solving is not a once-through sequence of steps always performed in a specified order. It is full of iteration and feedback loops. Finally, you will not be able to implement and monitor your recommendations in this assignment. Perhaps that means provisions for implementation and monitoring should be part of your evaluation criteria. It does not help the client to offer solutions that are prohibitively costly to implement.
The students
• identify and discuss the policies, vulnerabilities, risks and internal controls for the French bank
• evaluate the weaknesses and impact on secure bank operations
• recommend and discuss 7-10 security controls and countermeasures for mitigating problems in and improving the bank’s security posture.
• discuss the methods that organizations can use to effectively achieve the adoption and implementation of the security policies, controls and countermeasures.
Prepare your paper in either Word or PDF format as your instructor requires. It should be double-spaced with one-inch margins all around. The citations and the reference list in the paper should be formatted in accordance with APA 6th edition guidelines. References are NOT included in the page count.
