Tag: BS

About ISO 27001 Risk Statement and Controls

On the ISO27000 Forum list, someone asked:

I’m looking for Risk statement for each ISO 27k control; meaning
“what is the risk of not implementing a control”.

That’s a very ingenious way of looking at it!

One way of formulating the risk statement is from the control
objective mentioned in the standard.
Is there any other way out ?

Ingenious aside, I’d be very careful with an approach like this.

Risks and controlsare not, should not, be 1:1. Continue reading About ISO 27001 Risk Statement and Controls

All Threats? All Vulnerabilities? All Assets?

One list I subscribe I saw this outrageous statement:

ISO 27001 requires that you take account of all the relevant threats
(and vulnerabilities) to every asset – that means that you have to
consider whether every threat from your list is related to each of
your assets.

“All”? “Every”?
I certainly hope not!
Unless you have a rule as to where to stop those lists – vectors that you are going to multiply – are going to become indefinitely large if not infinite. Its a problem in set theory to do with enumberability.

See
http://infosecblog.antonaylward.com/2010/05/19/the-classical-risk-equation/
for a more complete discussion of this aspect of ‘risk’.

See
http://www.bloginfosec.com/2010/08/23/why-the-risk-threats-x-vulnerabilities-x-impact-formula-is-mathematical-nonsense/
in which Jeff Lowder has a discussion of the “utility value” approach to controls

Because its the controls and their effectiveness that really count. Continue reading All Threats? All Vulnerabilities? All Assets?