Risk Control Strategies

Once the ranked vulnerability risk worksheet has created, they should choose one of following 4 strategies to control each risk:
•Apply safeguards which eliminates/ reduce the remaining uncontrolled risks for the vulnerability.
•Transfer risk to other areas /to outside entities.
•Reduce impact should the vulnerability be exploited.
•Understand consequences and accept risk (acceptance) without control/mitigation.

Avoidance
•Attempts to avoid exploitation of vulnerability
•Preferred approach; accomplished through countering threats, restricting asset access, removing asset vulnerabilities, and adding protective safeguards
•Three basic methods of risk avoidance:
-Application of policy
-Training and education
- Applying technology

Transference
•Control approach which attempts to shift risk to other assets, or organizations
•If lacking, organization should hire individuals/firms which provide security management and administration expertise
•Organization may then transfer risk related with management of complex systems to another organization experienced in dealing with the risks.

Mitigation

•Attempts to reduce the impact of vulnerability exploitation through planning and preparation

•Approach includes 3 types of plans:
-Incident response plan (IRP)
-Disaster recovery plan (DRP)
-Business continuity plan (BCP)’

Acceptance

•Not doing anything to protect vulnerability and accepting outcome of its exploitation
•Valid when the particular function, information, or asset doesn’t justify cost of protection
•Risk appetite describes the degree to which the organization is willing to allow risk as trade off to the expense for applying the controls.