Calculated risk

So what is the risk? Here's one way to look at the problem:

Note

RISK = VULNERABILITY x THREAT

A vulnerability is a weakness, a crack in your armour. That could be a dodgy wireless setup or a poorly coded plugin, a password-bearing sticky note, or an unencrypted e-mail. It could just be the tired security guy. It could be 1001 things, and then more besides. The bottom line vulnerability though, respectfully, is our ignorance.

A threat, on the other hand, is an exploit, some means of hacking the flaw, in turn compromising an asset such as a PC, a router, a phone, your site. That's the sniffer tool that intercepts your wireless, the code that manipulates the plugin, a colleague that reads the sticky, whoever reads your mail, or the social engineer who tiptoes around security.

The risk is the likelihood of getting hacked. If you update the flawed plugin, for instance, then the threat is redundant, reducing the risk. Some risk remains because, when a further vulnerability is found there will be someone, somewhere, who will tailor an exploit to threaten it. This ongoing struggle to minimize risk is the cat and mouse that is security.

Note

To minimize risk, we defend vulnerabilities against threats.

You may be wondering, why bother calculating risk? After all, any vulnerability requires attention. You'd not be wrong but, such is the myriad complexity of securing multiple assets, any of which can add risk to our site, and given that budgets or our time are at issue, we need to prioritize. Risk factoring helps by initially flagging glaring concerns and, ideally assisted by a security policy, ensuring sensible ongoing maintenance.

Securing a site isn't a one-time deal. Such is the threatscape, it's an ongoing discipline.