1 00:00:00,060 --> 00:00:01,620 In this lesson, we're going to cover 2 00:00:01,620 --> 00:00:03,480 threats and vulnerabilities. 3 00:00:03,480 --> 00:00:05,370 Now, our job as cybersecurity professionals 4 00:00:05,370 --> 00:00:06,930 is to prevent threats from exploiting 5 00:00:06,930 --> 00:00:09,150 our enterprise systems' vulnerabilities. 6 00:00:09,150 --> 00:00:11,790 Now, a threat is anything that could cause harm, loss, 7 00:00:11,790 --> 00:00:15,270 damage, or compromise to our information technology systems. 8 00:00:15,270 --> 00:00:17,370 And these threats come from external sources, 9 00:00:17,370 --> 00:00:18,810 things like natural disasters, 10 00:00:18,810 --> 00:00:21,120 cyber attacks, data integrity breaches, 11 00:00:21,120 --> 00:00:22,980 disclosure of confidential information, 12 00:00:22,980 --> 00:00:25,050 and many other incidents that can arise 13 00:00:25,050 --> 00:00:26,850 during our daily operations. 14 00:00:26,850 --> 00:00:29,220 Unfortunately for us though, as cybersecurity professionals, 15 00:00:29,220 --> 00:00:31,620 we cannot fully control all of these threats, 16 00:00:31,620 --> 00:00:33,570 but we can try to minimize their impact 17 00:00:33,570 --> 00:00:35,580 by mitigating against them. 18 00:00:35,580 --> 00:00:38,220 Unlike threats though, we do have the ability to control 19 00:00:38,220 --> 00:00:40,680 our known vulnerabilities within our systems. 20 00:00:40,680 --> 00:00:42,390 Now, a vulnerability is any weakness 21 00:00:42,390 --> 00:00:44,610 in the system design or implementation. 22 00:00:44,610 --> 00:00:46,860 As cybersecurity professionals, we can control 23 00:00:46,860 --> 00:00:49,650 vulnerabilities because they come from internal factors, 24 00:00:49,650 --> 00:00:52,380 things like software bugs, misconfigured software, 25 00:00:52,380 --> 00:00:54,360 improperly protected network devices, 26 00:00:54,360 --> 00:00:56,970 missing security patches, lacking physical security, 27 00:00:56,970 --> 00:00:58,500 and so much more. 28 00:00:58,500 --> 00:01:01,470 But these vulnerabilities are all within our control, 29 00:01:01,470 --> 00:01:03,270 or at least within our organization's control 30 00:01:03,270 --> 00:01:06,030 for us to prevent these vulnerabilities from being exploited 31 00:01:06,030 --> 00:01:09,330 by mitigating, transferring, avoiding, or accepting the risk 32 00:01:09,330 --> 00:01:11,370 involved with those vulnerabilities. 33 00:01:11,370 --> 00:01:14,040 This then becomes essentially a risk management decision, 34 00:01:14,040 --> 00:01:15,750 as we start looking at how we're going to handle 35 00:01:15,750 --> 00:01:17,790 the vulnerabilities inside of our systems 36 00:01:17,790 --> 00:01:19,530 and our networks at large. 37 00:01:19,530 --> 00:01:21,630 Now, when it comes to threats and vulnerabilities, 38 00:01:21,630 --> 00:01:23,940 it's important to remember that where they intersect, 39 00:01:23,940 --> 00:01:25,980 that is where the risk to your enterprise systems 40 00:01:25,980 --> 00:01:27,690 and networks actually lie. 41 00:01:27,690 --> 00:01:29,790 This is a key point for you to understand, 42 00:01:29,790 --> 00:01:32,010 because your job as a cybersecurity professional 43 00:01:32,010 --> 00:01:33,570 is essentially to manage the risk 44 00:01:33,570 --> 00:01:35,220 of those systems and networks. 45 00:01:35,220 --> 00:01:37,530 And every decision that you make during your workday 46 00:01:37,530 --> 00:01:40,500 is going to involve either mitigating, transferring, avoiding, 47 00:01:40,500 --> 00:01:43,410 or accepting the risk within those systems. 48 00:01:43,410 --> 00:01:46,110 Remember, if you have a threat, but there is no matching 49 00:01:46,110 --> 00:01:48,930 vulnerability to it, then you have no risk. 50 00:01:48,930 --> 00:01:50,400 The same holds true in reverse, 51 00:01:50,400 --> 00:01:52,980 because if you have a vulnerability, but there's no matching 52 00:01:52,980 --> 00:01:55,860 threat against it, there is also no risk. 53 00:01:55,860 --> 00:01:57,930 Let's consider the example of trying to get to work 54 00:01:57,930 --> 00:01:59,400 in the morning on time. 55 00:01:59,400 --> 00:02:02,070 Now, your alarm clock goes off just after 6:00 a.m. 56 00:02:02,070 --> 00:02:03,930 and you hop out of bed, you get dressed, 57 00:02:03,930 --> 00:02:04,800 you eat your breakfast, 58 00:02:04,800 --> 00:02:08,009 and now you have to get from your house over to your office. 59 00:02:08,009 --> 00:02:11,039 But there are vulnerabilities and threats all around you 60 00:02:11,039 --> 00:02:13,350 that could cause a bad outcome to occur. 61 00:02:13,350 --> 00:02:16,230 And in this example, that would be you arriving to work late 62 00:02:16,230 --> 00:02:18,120 and your boss getting upset with you. 63 00:02:18,120 --> 00:02:20,190 Now, I know this seems like a pretty simple example, 64 00:02:20,190 --> 00:02:22,230 but there is a variety of things that could happen 65 00:02:22,230 --> 00:02:24,150 to cause this negative outcome to occur. 66 00:02:24,150 --> 00:02:26,700 And as you go through your day, almost every day, 67 00:02:26,700 --> 00:02:28,140 you're conducting risk management 68 00:02:28,140 --> 00:02:29,520 without even thinking about it, 69 00:02:29,520 --> 00:02:32,130 as you navigate from your house to your office. 70 00:02:32,130 --> 00:02:34,740 So let's consider a few possible vulnerabilities 71 00:02:34,740 --> 00:02:37,110 that could cause you to not get to work on time. 72 00:02:37,110 --> 00:02:39,330 For example, you might've forgotten to fill up your car 73 00:02:39,330 --> 00:02:41,460 the night before, so now you won't have enough gas 74 00:02:41,460 --> 00:02:43,320 or energy or fuel to drive to work 75 00:02:43,320 --> 00:02:45,330 without stopping at a fueling station. 76 00:02:45,330 --> 00:02:48,270 We call this vulnerability a lack of preparation. 77 00:02:48,270 --> 00:02:50,490 Or you might have forgotten that it was your day to drop off 78 00:02:50,490 --> 00:02:52,470 the kids at school before you go into work. 79 00:02:52,470 --> 00:02:53,970 So this is something we might call 80 00:02:53,970 --> 00:02:55,800 a scheduling vulnerability. 81 00:02:55,800 --> 00:02:58,200 Or maybe you forgot to perform the routine maintenance 82 00:02:58,200 --> 00:03:00,360 on your car, and this could cause it to break down 83 00:03:00,360 --> 00:03:02,040 before you get to the office. 84 00:03:02,040 --> 00:03:04,860 And this we would call a vehicular vulnerability. 85 00:03:04,860 --> 00:03:06,750 There's lots of different possible vulnerabilities 86 00:03:06,750 --> 00:03:09,180 that could harm your plan of getting to work on time, 87 00:03:09,180 --> 00:03:11,970 but you do have control over these because these 88 00:03:11,970 --> 00:03:14,640 vulnerabilities were all created by internal factors 89 00:03:14,640 --> 00:03:16,470 that you could have done something about. 90 00:03:16,470 --> 00:03:18,480 Now, on the other side of the risk equation though, 91 00:03:18,480 --> 00:03:20,310 there are several threats that are trying to prevent you 92 00:03:20,310 --> 00:03:21,930 from arriving to work on time. 93 00:03:21,930 --> 00:03:25,050 And these are usually going to be outside of your control. 94 00:03:25,050 --> 00:03:27,660 For example, maybe an inpatient driver ended up 95 00:03:27,660 --> 00:03:29,850 causing an accident on the freeway and now you're stuck 96 00:03:29,850 --> 00:03:32,220 in traffic, which is going to cause a delay to your commute, 97 00:03:32,220 --> 00:03:34,380 and you're now going to be late to arrive to work. 98 00:03:34,380 --> 00:03:36,330 This is a realization of that risk, 99 00:03:36,330 --> 00:03:38,520 because somebody caused the accident. 100 00:03:38,520 --> 00:03:39,810 You can't prevent the other driver 101 00:03:39,810 --> 00:03:42,360 from having driven irresponsibly and causing an accident 102 00:03:42,360 --> 00:03:43,380 that delays your commute. 103 00:03:43,380 --> 00:03:45,090 That is outside of your control 104 00:03:45,090 --> 00:03:47,520 because it's an external threat factor. 105 00:03:47,520 --> 00:03:49,350 Or there could have been a natural disaster, 106 00:03:49,350 --> 00:03:51,270 like an earthquake, and this causes the road 107 00:03:51,270 --> 00:03:52,410 between your home and your office 108 00:03:52,410 --> 00:03:54,270 to be completely destroyed. 109 00:03:54,270 --> 00:03:56,490 Now, I know I'm being a little bit melodramatic here, 110 00:03:56,490 --> 00:03:58,590 but hopefully you're starting to get the idea here. 111 00:03:58,590 --> 00:04:00,060 This is an external threat 112 00:04:00,060 --> 00:04:01,920 that's caused by the environment itself. 113 00:04:01,920 --> 00:04:03,600 You simply can't stop an earthquake, 114 00:04:03,600 --> 00:04:06,240 it's going to happen when the earth wants it to happen. 115 00:04:06,240 --> 00:04:08,880 So there is a threat out there that you won't arrive 116 00:04:08,880 --> 00:04:11,700 to work on time if that earthquake actually happens, 117 00:04:11,700 --> 00:04:13,680 and that risk is materialized. 118 00:04:13,680 --> 00:04:15,420 So now that we have several threats 119 00:04:15,420 --> 00:04:17,339 and several vulnerabilities that we've talked about, 120 00:04:17,339 --> 00:04:20,339 we now need to think about what we can do about them. 121 00:04:20,339 --> 00:04:22,590 Well, if we're worried about being late for work, 122 00:04:22,590 --> 00:04:24,750 one thing we could do is wake up earlier. 123 00:04:24,750 --> 00:04:26,370 Instead of waking up at 6:00 a.m., 124 00:04:26,370 --> 00:04:28,320 we could choose to wake up at 5:00 a.m. 125 00:04:28,320 --> 00:04:30,390 That way, we have an extra hour of buffer time 126 00:04:30,390 --> 00:04:33,330 in case anything goes wrong, like we need to stop for gas 127 00:04:33,330 --> 00:04:34,710 or we run into traffic, 128 00:04:34,710 --> 00:04:36,750 or we have to find an alternative road to work 129 00:04:36,750 --> 00:04:38,340 because our normal roadway is blocked 130 00:04:38,340 --> 00:04:39,960 because of earthquake damage. 131 00:04:39,960 --> 00:04:42,270 In any of these scenarios, that extra time buffer 132 00:04:42,270 --> 00:04:44,670 that we create by waking up an extra hour early 133 00:04:44,670 --> 00:04:46,860 can serve as a mitigation to any of these risks 134 00:04:46,860 --> 00:04:48,420 that might be realized. 135 00:04:48,420 --> 00:04:50,010 We don't stop the traffic jam 136 00:04:50,010 --> 00:04:52,080 or try to prevent the earthquake from happening, 137 00:04:52,080 --> 00:04:54,690 but instead, we gave ourself time to change our routes 138 00:04:54,690 --> 00:04:57,030 and still get ourself to work on time. 139 00:04:57,030 --> 00:05:00,030 Now, this at its simplest form, is risk management. 140 00:05:00,030 --> 00:05:02,280 It's finding different ways to minimize the likelihood 141 00:05:02,280 --> 00:05:03,960 of a certain outcome from occurring, 142 00:05:03,960 --> 00:05:06,690 and achieving the outcomes that you really want to achieve. 143 00:05:06,690 --> 00:05:08,310 In the case of this daily commute, 144 00:05:08,310 --> 00:05:11,520 our outcome is getting to work on time without being late. 145 00:05:11,520 --> 00:05:12,930 In the world of cybersecurity though, 146 00:05:12,930 --> 00:05:14,610 it means we want to provide a continuity 147 00:05:14,610 --> 00:05:16,290 of services to our end users. 148 00:05:16,290 --> 00:05:18,540 We want to maintain the overall security of our systems, 149 00:05:18,540 --> 00:05:21,090 and we want to protect our organizations from data breaches 150 00:05:21,090 --> 00:05:22,770 by minimizing our vulnerabilities. 151 00:05:22,770 --> 00:05:25,920 Or utilizing proper mitigating actions to minimize 152 00:05:25,920 --> 00:05:27,420 the impact that the threat would have 153 00:05:27,420 --> 00:05:30,093 on our enterprise systems if the risk is realized.