Chapter 1: The CIA rescues DAD

You attend your daily standup. In the call you see:

  • Agent Smith from The Matrix (Confidentiality)
  • Superman (Integrity)
  • Julia Roberts as Vivian Ward (Availability)
  • Wonder Woman and her Lasso (Non Repudiation)

They give you your mission for the day. In a security incident, a high value target has been kidnapped. Your DAD:

  • Disclosure
  • Alteration
  • Denial

You rescue him, along with several high impact stolen items:

  • Cash (Financial Risk)
  • Compromising images of yourself (Reputational Risk)
  • Blueprints for your newest prototypes (Strategic Risk)
  • Brooms from your offices (Operational Risk)
  • Hard Drives full of customer information (Compliance Risk)

You return your dad to a new and permanent safe house. More strict control objectives are immediately discussed. You scour the safe house. Existing security controls are compared to the security objectives in a gap analysis.

Several actions are taken in various control categories:

  • New biometrics are installed as MFA (technical controls)
  • All entries and exits to the premises are automatically logged (operational controls)
  • A security officer is appointed to assess risks (managerial controls)
  • The vibocrete is reinforced (physical controls)

That should do it, your team sighs in relief. You’ve implemented several control types:

  • Your new walls should prevent incidents
  • Your new guard dogs should deter intruders
  • Your new manager will help detect incidents
  • Your team remains on standby to correct incidents.
  • Outsurance will help compensate for incidents
  • New posters and briefings will direct employees in all phases of incident management.

You turn your attention to those images of you that were stolen. Those are meant for your wife’s eyes only! There are three possibilities:

  • They were stolen from your crypt at rest,
  • or your wife was a target and these images were stolen in transit
  • or in use.

You make a note to go visit the crypt and the cave, where you left these images. You need to check up on your:

  • Data Loss Prevention Systems
  • Access Restrictions
  • Segmentation

Ultimately, you know that the best answer is to get rid of those images to minimise sensitive data.