A Risk Strategy for Corporate Business Survival - Lesson 1 - Deter

“4D”
A Risk Strategy for Corporate Business Survival
Deter. Detect. Defend. Document.

By Peter L. Higgins

Lesson 1 of a 4 Part Series

Executive Summary
Our corporate assets are under attack by a continuous barrage of new laws, new employees, new competitors and new exploits. Business survival in the next decade will require a more effective and robust risk strategy to deter, detect and defend against a myriad of new threats to the organization.

Modern day attackers include hackers, spies, terrorists, corporate raiders, professional criminals, vandals and voyeurs. Simply said, these attackers use tools to exploit vulnerabilities. They create an action on a target that produces an unauthorized result. They do this to obtain their objective.

Here are four key lessons to create a “4D” risk strategy in your enterprise.

Lesson 1 – Deter

The Mission
Deter the attacker from launching a salvo of new threats to compromise your organizations assets. You first have to understand the value of your corporate assets to determine what are the most valuable in the eyes of your adversary. You must make it increasingly more difficult for these valuable assets to be attacked or you will find yourself under the constant eye of those who wish to create a significant business disruption.

These attackers are individuals who take on these quests or objectives for several key reasons. They include financial gain, political gain, damage or the simple challenge, status or thrill. It’s your job to create deterrence for each one of these objectives.

The Take Away
In order to effectively deter potential risks to your corporate assets, first you have to understand what they are and how valuable they are in the eyes of each kind of attacker. The more valuable the target, the more deterrence it requires.