CompTIA's CySA+ certification is a solid accredited certification that can layout a perfect pathway for your career in cybersecurity and related disciplines. So, what are you required to do to receive the certification in the first place? Simple enough, you will have to appear and then pass the CySA+ exams.
For the convenience of the candidates, the complete CySA+ certification is divided into four particular domains, but today we will only be discussing the first domain that is the Risk assessment. You will be provided with extended information regarding risk assessment, identifying and labeling threats, getting to know vulnerabilities and determining their impact, and how to tackle them profoundly. All of this and other related information that will subsequently help you in the completion of this course effectively and earn certification.
Terms Subjected under Risk Assessment Category
To better asses the information yet to be revealed, you will first have to be casually introduced with some of the terms associated with risk assessment. Some of them are;
- Threat: A threat in terms of cybersecurity is an external force or commodity that can attack a system taking advantage of its vulnerability.
- Vulnerability: Vulnerability is weakness or liability in a network system, data infrastructure or device that allows a breach to take place.
- Risk: Risk can be summarized as a possibility that can cause havoc if there is ever an intersection between vulnerability and havoc.
- Risk= Threat X Vulnerability
Risk Assessment
To assess the scope of the breach or a cyber-anomaly, the companies need to indulge in the risk assessment, doing it properly can lead to effective threat management in the real world. Doing risk assessment right is the only way a company can start with the threat management and dealing with the deep blows sustained during a breach.
At first, the threats and the vulnerabilities need to be identified, once these are identified can you start to determine an organization's original level of risk. Without first identifying the types of tools/software used by the hacker along with the scope of the attack, all of this can become a little too complicated to attend to. That is why risk assessment should be effectively done;
1- Prepare yourself for the assessment of the current threat
2- Conducting the assessment
- Label the sources of threats and possible anomalies in the security system
- Identify the vulnerabilities along with other potential areas of breach
- Chances of occurrence for the attack
- The scale of the attack or the impact
- Determination of actual risk
3- Describe/Showcase results
4- Optimize and maintain the assessment
Threat Identification
The initial step in assessing the risk is to identify various threats that can arise in cybersecurity systems. There are 4 different types of threat an organization might come by such as;
1. Adversarial Threats
These types of threats involve certain organizations, individuals, or other groups of people who are intentionally trying to undermine or dismantle the security system for a particular organization. It can be an inside job or a cyber-attack orchestrated at various individual levels such as trusted insiders, suppliers, competitors or the customers as well. Intent and reason for engagement are inspected while dealing with the adversarial threats.
2. Structural Threats
These types of threats arise only when the IT resources or system failure due to corruption of the available resources or dedicated systems, exceeding the operational capability and simply of the old age. When faced down with the structural threats, you need to assess the possible range of effects on the organization due to these structural threats.
3. Accidental Threats
These type of threats arise when a representative of the organization while doing their routine job accidentally undermine or corrupt the complete security system of the organization. So, this is an insider job, but with no consent at all, you need to find the range or scope of the ill effects caused by the accidental threats towards the organization or the company.
4. Environmental Threats
These types of threats are either natural or man-made in their action and by all means out of the organization's jurisdiction or control to deal with or attend to. Earthquakes, fires, tornados, floods, along with many other unintentional and uncontrollable events fall under this category.
Identifying the Vulnerabilities
When you have found out the potential threats being faced by the organization and their overall security or threat level, now you need to identify various vulnerabilities within the organization’s network. Finding out the potential nodes of the vulnerabilities and rectifying them with using the best of the security and technological approach should be your utmost priority.
Find out the likelihood, impact, and risk
After the vulnerabilities and the threats are recognized, assessed, and determined, then is the time to combine various combinations of them both to find out the likelihood of a further cyberattack, its impact on the company's integrity and confidential systems and the risk your organization will be facing.
To do this right you will have to create a waffle chart that can help you measure the likelihood that a particular risk will occur, its impact as well as exceeded risk over the integrity or performance of the organization as well, when you have determined the risk landscape comprising all the crucial factors of the risk assessment that is the likelihood of a particular risk to arise, the impact and the associated risk to the organization you need to make dedicated decisions to counteract the specific problems.
Threat management is a difficult concept to grab but using all the information that is provided in the article. You can understand its derivatives such as the risk assessment and all the other things such as likelihood, threat, and vulnerabilities to dissect the problem and apply particular solutions to these specific problems.
The first domain of the CySA exam is the threat management, and to grab a handle on this, you will need to work it out with various derivatives and related technicalities such as risk assessment and determining vulnerabilities along with finding out the exact scope of the threat at hand. Completing your CySA examination successfully will earn you the cyber-security certificate that will help you advance your career in the field of cybersecurity.