Dyson College of Arts and Sciences
Issue link: http://dysoncollege.uberflip.com/i/128987
the benefits they will obtain from these crimes. The organization should publish previous cases where attackers were caught and punished. Deterrence theory is based on the assumption that when you punish a person for the benefit of society, you will deter others from doing the same (Whiteneck). Software and hardware tools may be useful in deterring potential attackers from conducting harmful attacks against the organization. Installing a firewall at network entry points may scare away those attackers who fear they will be detected and discovered by the firewall. The earlier you detect a disruptive event, the easier it will be to respond to the disruption and the easier it will be to recover from consequences caused by the disruption. Prevention is the most justifiable activity for an organization to protect its computing environment. It can save the organization all the adversity and losses in managing detection and correction activities. Most often, preventive safeguards do not cost the organization more than a fraction of the recovery costs in case a disruptive event takes place. Preventive controls have to be applied in many areas where risk is not acceptable. They may be adopted in human resource management where hiring procedures have to ensure that only safe and competent personnel are hired. Candidates for any position in the organization have to go through background checks, drug screening, etc., as stated in the organization's security policy. The organization's security policy also contains regulations on all types of physical security, as for fire safety, protection from water damage, or other aspects of physical security. Unless we have all the information needed about the current attack, the business components that have been attacked, and the damage caused to them, we cannot initiate any corrective actions. As soon as we have this information, the following activities can be started: 1) Rank affected business components in terms of their criticality; 2) Rank affected business components in terms of damage extent; 3) Identify alternate corrective actions; 4) Select the most feasible alternative corrective safeguard; 5) Apply the selected corrective actions to the selected business components. While the above steps should be undertaken whenever a business disruption takes place, there are several business disruptions that have to be managed through more comprehensive corrective approaches given the extensive damage and losses they can cause to the company. We only examine one comprehensive corrective safeguard: business continuity plan (BCP). A disaster recovery plan (DRP) is simply a part of the business continuity plan that is concerned with the organization's computing environment. What Is a Business Continuity Plan? Sun Microsystems (IDG Connect) defines business continuity as follows: "The process of creating, testing, and maintaining an organization-wide plan to recover from any form of disaster is called Business Continuity Planning (BCP). Every BCP strategy includes three fundamental components: risk assessment, contingency planning, and the actual disaster recovery process. BCP should encompass every type of business interruption—from the slightest two-second power outage or spike up to the worst possible natural disaster or terrorist attack." A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is a sequence of steps approved by upper management that presents what the organization should do to restore business operations when a 59