Category Archives: Risk Assumptions

Collecting, Mining & Valuing Your Personal Data is Just part of the Information Age!

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Last week, the media went crazy reporting on the NSA’s collection of phone data on individuals calling foreign countries.  But, to me, that’s not so bad, because whether you’re aware of it or not, most of the companies you do business with every day are collecting lots of data about you, including:

How many children you have
Your Job Title
How much yogurt you buy every week
Whether you have health insurance
What music you like
Your age
Whether you have a dog or cat

For example, every time you go to the grocery store, you pull out your frequent buyer card
and hand it over to the Casher.  Did you know that by using that card, you allow the grocery store to gather all your personal information about what kind of food you like, whether you use coupons, how much milk you drink every week?  And then they look at that data, analyze it, and use it to send you new offers, or even to customize your cash register receipt?

That’s why I don’t use a grocery card!

If you ever buy anything online, those companies also gather and use all your information.
They put data together and decide whether they should make more size 12 or size 14 dresses for every county and state in the USA.   They even set their prices partially based on what you were willing to pay last month.

Same for the airlines companies, rental car, and hotel companies.  Last February, I traveled a lot and stayed in hotels about 15 days over a 5 week period.  So now I am still
getting dozens of online offers for hotel rooms.

I’m not saying this is bad, or that it’s good.  It doesn’t bother me, as long as I keep the number of promotional emails at a manageable level, but it is just a little taste of what the future holds, as we will be tracking, matched, aggregating and defined by the data that’s collected on everyone in the future.

Let’s not get so tough on NSA, unless you’re also willing to go after WalMart, Giant Foods, Publix, Safeway, Albertson’s, Amazon, Priceline, Macy’s, Barnes and Noble, and hundreds more!

 

Massive Tornado & Boston Marathon Bombs Should Nudge Organizations to do More Security Risk Assessments

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More Tornado victims will be buried this week.   Including many children who died at their schools because the school district didn’t spend the extra $3000 to have a storm cellar/safe room available.

One month ago, we watched as victims of the Boston Marathon Bombings were buried.

Yesterday, we watched an Islamic Jihadist savagely kill a  young British soldier with knives.

What other events do we have to witness before we start taking security assessments seriously?   How many more grieving parents do we have to watch crying on TV and, in my opinion, the casualities did not need to be so high and the aftermath so catastrophic.

If you group all these disasters together, you can that at the root of each one, is the feeling that, “IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE”…..    Britain, for example, has tolerated mosques preaching hate, thinking that nothing like the knife attack could happen in civilized London.

In Moore, Oklahoma, people thought, “we already had a major tornado, so IT CAN’T HAPPEN AGAIN”!  Well, surprise – it happened again.  While forecasters cannot dictate the exact path of a tornado, they can get close, and with just fifteen minutes advance warning, there is  time to get everyone into storm cellars, safe rooms and underground shelters.  BUT IF THERE IS NO SHELTER AT A SCHOOL…….

Many obvious solutions-controls-safeguards were missed in these recent tragedies because proper, formal security risk assessments weren’t done effectively.  If they had been done, perhaps the London police could have picked up someone who touted murder and hate.

If a risk assessment had been done in Moore, OK, maybe the high risk of a tornado would have allowed the schools to all add the safe rooms they needed, and in Boston, the older brother Boston bomber, should have been in jail already for his participation in a previous murder – or at least actively monitored based on his facebook postings.

The clues are all there, and, looking backwards, you can see the pieces that SHOULD HAVE BEEN ENOUGH TO PROMOTE some kind of action to either:

        1. Eliminate the threat  or, 

              2. Reduce the severity of a potential threat in case it occurred.

Security risk assessments gather the numbers and the information organizations need to make better choices about how to protect people’s lives, facilities, and organizations.  I hope these events will prompt more Security Directors to take an objective and unbiased look at their own organizations, and the controls they have in place, before you end up on CNN!

 

Lack of Security Risk Assessments cited as Contributing to Benghazi Embassy Attack

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Just two weeks ago, we were talking about the lack of coordination between DHS agencies and known intelligence on the brothers responsible.

Now we have the Benghazi Senate hearings, and here is the same problem again – lack of coordination between different parts of the State Department, and with the Defense Department, AND with the CIA and the intelligence community.

Add to this, the appalling cuts in funding for diplomatic security, and a flawed process about what needs to be done about security and protection to our embassies around the world.

“In these tight budget times, the committee has had to make some tough choices to prioritize funding.”, said a GOP aide in The Hill article (GOP cuts to embassy security draw scrutiny), by Alexander Bolton on September 18, 2012.   In spite of the uncertainly of the Arab Spring, the demonstrations every Friday in streets from Bahrain to Tunesia, the embassies had their budgets cut.

Of course, security experts are used to this, security doesn’t directly generate revenue, and it is often one of the first functions on the chopping block.  However, to cut funding to the critical embassy functions in this volatile environment, is obviously a very bad decision on the part of the GOP.

For example, the security risk assessment which are routinely done on these embassies are not done on a systematic basis.  As a risk expert, these security risk assessments should be done WEEKLY, and they should be automated so they can instantly be compared to environments in other embassies, and comparisons made by month, by year, and trends can be tracked.

If we can’t afford to do these assessments and just as important, if we can’t afford to fix the problems that assessments reveal, then we should not have embassies in these places.

The security risk assessments that are done properly must also include complete threat assessments.  ”We need to develop a paradigm for managing risk“, said Gregory Hicks, a Foreign Service Officer who testified today on Capitol Hill.

These paradigms for managing risk already exist and they have been totally ignored by the State Department, which makes it almost impossible to get a clear, unfiltered view of the security situation at any embassy, at any point in time.

At least both sides of the political aisle agree, we do not want this to happen again!  Benghazi is not a political problem, it is a massive security failure problem!

 

Adding a New and Real Threat – Meteor Shower Damage

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After the meteor showers over Siberia this week, Russia put together a Financial analysis of the damage from

1200 injured by flying glass
$33,000,000 in damage
4,000 building damaged
50 Acres of windows shattered

In the last twenty-five years, as the rate of climate change has increase, we have added new threats like Tsunami and ash pollution (from Subic Bay in the Phillipines).

Now meteor showers have actually come to cause damage to companies so they are another factor to be included in risk assessments.

In evaluating threats for a risk assessment, many in the northeast would always tell me,“take out earthquakes”, we don’t have earthquakes in Virginia, Maryland, and Ohio.  That changed in 2011 when the Mineral, Virginia earthquake hit during a mid-week business day.

RICHMOND, VA (WWBT) – Aug. 24, 2011.  There was an earthquake in Central Virginia that measured 5.8 on the Richter scale centered about 5 miles south of Mineral in Louisa, depth 3.7 miles at about 1:51 p.m. The quake was centered at 38°N, 78°W.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake was centered about 38 miles northwest of Richmond, Va., about 84 miles southwest of Washington, D.C., and was felt as far north as Rhode Island and New York City. See a map of the quake from Chuck Bailey, professor of geology at the College of William and Mary.

Hospitals, government offices, dams and power generating plants,  including nuclear plants, were forced to suddenly reevaluate the long held idea that earthquakes just didn’t happen in the NorthEast.

The threat from meteor damage is the same idea.  It never happened before, but now it has happened again, if you count Tunguska as the first time.

Damage from meteor showers will now add a new category into the Threat index, even though this was the first event in my lifetime, if analyst factor in the previously known instances, such as the Tunguska Meteor Event, which did not occur thousands of years ago, like the meteor event in the Yucatan peninsula that killed off the dinosaurs, but
Tunguska occurred in 1908!   Almost in this century.

Over the next month, we’ll be looking at each different threat every week.  Sign up for my blog or access by following me on twitter at www.twitter.com/riskalert.

 

Assessing School Security Takes on New Dimensions after Sandy Hook Tragedy

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After 30 years of security risk assessment experience and working with hundreds of schools, hospitals, facilities, I have to say that schools have not taken school security seriously.

Obviously there are the social pressures including mental health screening, proposed assault weapons bans, gun owner screening, etc., but these are the thing that won’t change overnight.  EVEN IF THEY ARE LEGISLATED, it takes time to implement, and
implementation may not be perfect.

TODAY IS THE DAY TO DO A SCHOOL VIOLENCE ASSESSMENT – not tomorrow, not after new gun laws, not after the holidays — TODAY.

There are indicators you can look for to see if your school is at risk of an active shooter incident.  And ways to be prepared if the unthinkable happens and an active shooter comes to your school.

Strong, simple access control is the most effective solution, and yes, this may mean that
a plain glass front door or window is not enough.  Glass is easily broken, and yes, it means that all staff must be a little more accountable, and it probably means a red phone or connection to the local police.

There is a simple school risk assessment program that will give guidance on what you need to do TODAY, what controls you need to implement, what threats are most likely to occur.  These can be accessed on the www.riskandsecurityllc.com website.

Some things are preventable, some aren’t.  But lockdown drills, alarm systems, and active monitoring of cameras are just a few of the 60 controls every school should have in place to protect our precious children.

And this comes from the grandmother who’s 3-year old twins turned 3 yesterday!

 

Man Wants to Commit Suicide at Hospital to Donate his Organs!

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Suicidal Man Triggers an Evacuation in Denton, Texas.

The emergency department at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital was evacuated after an armed man threatened to shoot himself in the hospital’s parking lot, as reported in a newspaper article. The man had sent suicidal messages to his ex-wife. She contacted police, who in turn began tracking the man’s cell phone. He was found in his vehicle, which was parked in front of the hospital’s ED. Police cleared the ED while they negotiated with him for about 45 minutes. The man told police he chose the hospital because he wanted to donate his organs after he killed himsel

17-year old imposter does CPR on patient in Kissimee, FL

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Security measures in place are being questioned in Kissimmee, Florida at Osceola Regional Medical Center after clerk passes as a physicians assistant!

Hospital security procedures, including staff screening practices at Osceola Regional Medical Center, are getting a second look after a 17-year-old passed himself off as a physician’s assistant and took part in several exams and procedures, including doing CPR on a patient. The Orlando Sentinel reported that hospital management is reviewing its practices to ensure a similar incident doesn’t occur. The youth was able to secure a hospital ID badge from the human resources department by claiming to need a new one because the surgical practice at which he worked had changed names. In fact, the youth was employed part time as a billing clerk at a doctor’s office. When confronted by staff, the youth said he was working undercover for the sheriff’s department, so they would be unable to check his employment records

Man Makes Meth in his Car in Hospital Parking Lot

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Hospital security cameras showed that a
33-year-old man was making meth in his car in the facility’s
parking lot before the vehicle became engulfed in flames.
The man was burned over 80 percent of his body and
later died of his injuries. The car, which was in the Horizon
Medical Center lot, was captured on security video that
showed the man mixing ingredients just before there was
fireball inside the car. A sheriff’s office detective working
security at Horizon requested assistance to put out the fire.
In examining the site, he noticed canisters and other possible
drug-related items in the car and called the drug task force,
according to news accounts

Threat Modeling is the Exciting, Sexy Part of Risk Assessment

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As a risk assessment professional, when I get into a risk discussion, most security people want to talk about THREAT!  Threat is the most sexy and exciting part of doing a risk assessment.

Threats are exciting all by themselves.  Think about all the threats you can name:

All the natural disasters like Earthquakes, Tornadoes, Storms, Hurricanes, Tsunamis, Lightning, Floods

Crimes like Homicide, Assault, Rape, Burglary, Theft, Kidnapping, Blackmail, Extortion

Terrorism like Sabotage, Explosions, Mail Bombs, Suicide Bombs

All the IT Threats like Malicous Code, Disclosure, Data Breaches, Theft of Data

And about 50 more including Chem/Bio incidents, Magnetic waves, High Energy Bursts, Microbursts, Contamination and Reputation Damage.

Each of these threats could theoretically occur at any time, but we try to establish a pattern of how often they have occurred in the past, in this location, in this county, in this country, in the company, etc.   So NASA, for example, gets thousands of hacker attacks, but another company, like the local Salvation Army, gets 1 every 10 years.

Same model for natural disasters, although you might have to factor in climate change, it’s easy to get the threat incidents for hurricanes in Florida, snow storms in Cleveland, earthquakes in northern California, etc.

We also like to examine industry specific data to see if some threats are higher in a certain industry, like the high incidence of workplace violence incidents in hospitals and high risk retail establishments (like Wawa or 7-11).

Another factor we use in calculating threat likelihood is how the threat could actually affect different types of assets…. for example, would an earthquake damage a car?  Probably not. Would it cause damage to an old historical building – probably (unless it had been retrofitted).  Could it cause loss of life, or injuries (think Haiti).

So I use a multidimensional model that takes the threats list (I have a standard list of 75 threats that I use), and map it to each potential loss, based on the ‘asset’ that might be affected.

The more data you get, the better your model will be, and the more value it will have as a decision support tool!

 

No Way to Win an Election – A Risk Assessment

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Watching the pandemonium that is the build up to the Iowa Caucus, you can follow the thread that pandering and trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator brings to the Iowa Caucus candidates.

They have taken what could have been an asset, and transformed it into the threat that each of the candidates seems to be fixated on –  that they will not be considered ‘enough of a social conservative’ and so will not win the caucus. 

So, by having a field of five (Paul, Newt, Santorum, Perry and Bachman) competing to be the most dogmatic, the most restrictive, the most anti-abortion, the most anti-immigrant, the most family-oriented, etc., they have actually pared down their own chances of winning.

Romney is running in the slightly more moderate vertical, which no one wants to compete in because it’s not such a knee-jerk distinction, which is why I left him out of this analysis.

In risk assessment terns, this means they have focused on addressing the wrong potential threat (not being conversative enough), and failed to address the real threat (losing the election or coming in dead last).

For the field of five, it turns out that by directly competing against each other, they energize their narrow social conservative vertical and that keeps all five of them alive, and the eventual  outcome is the splintering of that narrow field, which effectively prevents any one of them from anything close to a clear win.

It may be a great way to promote yourself for a later VP slot, or, who knows, maybe a future ambassadorship, but it’s NO WAY TO WIN AN ELECTION!