GLOBAL FINANCE, INC. (GFI)
Global Finance, Inc. (GFI) is a financial company that manages thousands of accounts across Canada, the United
States, and Mexico. A public company traded on the NYSE, GFI specializes in financial management, loan
application approval, wholesale loan processing, and investment of money management for theircustomers.
The diagram below displays the executive management team ofGFI:
Figure 1 GFI Executive Organizational Chart
BACKGROUND AND YOUR ROLE
You are the Chief Security Officer, hired by COO Mike Willy, to protect the physical andoperational
security of GFI’s corporate information systems. Shortly after starting in your new position, you recognize
numerous challenges that you will be facing in this pursuit.
Your primary challenge, as is usually the case, is less technical and more of a political nature. CEO John
Thompson has been swept up in the “everything can be solved by outsourcing” movement. He believes
that the IT problem is a known quantity and feels the IT function can be almost entirely outsourced at
fractions of the cost associated with creating and maintaining an established internal IT department. In fact,
the CEO’s strategy has been to prevent IT from becoming a core competency since so many services can
be obtained from 3rd parties. Based on this vision, the CEO has already begun downsizing the IT
department and recently presented a proposal to his senior management team outlining his plan to greatly
reduce the internal IT staff in favor of outsourcing. He plans on presenting this approach to the Board of
Directors as soon as he has made a few more refinements in his presentation.
COO Willy’s act of hiring you was, in fact, an act of desperation: the increasing operational dependence on
technology services combined with a diminishing IT footprint gravely concerned Mike Willy, and he
begged to at least bring in an Information Security expert with the experience necessary to evaluate the
current security of GFI’s infrastructure and systems. The COO’s worst nightmare is a situation where the
Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability of GFI’s information systems were compromised – bringing the
company to its knees – then having to rely on vendors to pull him out of the mess.
COO Willy has reasons for worrying. GFI has experienced several cyber-attacks from outsiders over the
past a few years:In 2013, the Oracle database server was attacked and its customer database lost its confidentiality,
integrity, and availabilityfor several days. Although the company restored the Oracle database
server back online, its lost confidentiality damaged the company reputation. GFI ended up paying
its customers a large sum of settlement for their loss of data confidentiality.In 2014, another security attack was carried out by a malicious virus that infected the entire
CEO
John Thompson
Vice President
Trey Elway
Executive
Assistant
Kim Johnson
Executive
Assistant
Julie Anderson
Executive
Assistant
Michelle Wang
CCO
Andy Murphy
COO
Mike Willy
CFO
Ron Johnson
Director of
Marketing
John King
Director of HR
Ted Young
network for several days. While infected the Oracle and e-mail servers had to be shut down to
quarantine these servers. COO Willy isn’t sure whether the virus entered GFI’s systems through a
malicious email, from malware downloaded from the Internet, or via a user’s USB flash drive.
Regardless of the source of the infection, the company lost $1,700,000 in revenue and intangible
customer confidence.In a separate incident in 2014, one of the financial consultants left his company laptop
unprotected at the airport while travelling and it was stolen. It contained customer financial data
and the hard drive was not encrypted. Financial reparations were paid to impacted customers.In 2015, a laptop running network sniffer software was found plugged into a network jack under a
desk in one of the unoccupied offices.
It is apparent from the number of successful cyber-attacks that GFI is an organization severely lacking in
information security maturity. COO Willy has commissioned you to perform a quantitative and qualitative
risk assessment of GFI’s infrastructure to determine where improvements could be made to reduce the risk
of future attacks.
CORPORATE OFFICE NETWORK TOPOLOGY
The diagram on the following page displays GFI’s Corporate Office Topology.
The GFI network infrastructure consists of a corporate WAN spanning 10 remote facilities that are
interconnected to the GFI headquarters’ central data processing environment. Data is transmitted from a
remote site through a VPN gateway appliance that forms a VPN tunnel with the VPN gateway in
headquarters. Through this VPN connection, remote office users access the internal Oracle database to
update the customer data tables. Through your inspection of the VPN configuration you discover that the
data transaction traversing the remote access connection to the corporate internal databases is not
encrypted.
Users are authorized to work from home and both dial-up and VPN remote access are available. Dial-up is
provided via Private Branch Exchange (PBX) and a Remote Access Server and VPN remote access is
provided via the VPN gateway. Authentication is password-based via MS-CHAP V2. Users are also able
to take advantage of GFI’s Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy and a Wireless antenna allows
wireless networking within headquarters. WEP is used to provide wireless security to BYOD users.
The network perimeter between the Internet and GFI’s internal network infrastructure is separated by two
Border (Core) Routers. These Border Routers then connect to two Distribution Routers and the VPN
Gateway. The Distribution Routers connect to a RAS Server, a Wireless Router that provides a bridge
between the Wireless Antenna and the internal network, and two Multi-layer switches. The Multilayer
switches connect to six (6) Access Layer VLAN switches that segregate the Accounting, Loan Dept,
Customer Services, Mgmt, Credit Dept, and Finance VLANs. The Multi-layer switches also connect to a
third Multi-layer switch that provides a connection to GFI’s servers in the Trusted Computing Base
subnet.
The trusted computing based (TCB) internal network is situated in a physically separated subnet. A bulk of
the data processing for GFI is handled by an Oracle database on a high end super computer located in the
TCB and the TCB also contains an intranet web server used by the internal support team, a Software
Update Services (SUS) server used for patch management, an internal DNS server, an e-mail server, and
other support personnel workstations. Although each corporate department is segregated physically on a
different subnet, they share access to the corporate data in the TCB network.
NOTE: The symbol represents a multilayer switch
CONSIDERATIONS WHEN CONDUCTING THE RISK ASSESSMENT:
This Risk Assessment and your suggested security improvements are of critical importance. CEO Thompson is set
on outsourcing GFI’s IT competency and you’ve been told of a plan from COO Willy to outsource network
management and security functions away from your department and over to a service integrator. COO Willy warns
you that the political environment will only become more contentious over time; you must make a compelling case
as to what value your department can bring over an integrator to provide security improvements in certain key areas
without a significant increase to the IT budget. It is extremely important that you take into account the value of the
assets being protected when selecting security controls to mitigate the risks (i.e. don’t spend $1000 to protect an
asset worth $500). In addition to what you learned from COO Mike Willy about the previous exploits of GFI’s
vulnerabilities and what you gathered when reviewing GFI’s network infrastructure, the COO has provided some
additional information that he wants you to take into account:
1. Ever since an article ran in Fortune about GFI, the network engineers report that they’ve noted a
significant spike in network traffic crossing into the internal networks. They report that they cannot be
certain what or who is generating this traffic, but the volume and frequency of traffic is certainly
abnormal. The management is very concerned over securing the corporate confidential data and
customer information. Suggestions on improvements to perimeter security and/or methods of
identifying the source of intrusions should be presented in your risk assessment.
90
90 Wireless
Antenn9a0
2. The interrelationship between data and operations concerns COO Mike Willy. Increasingly, some of
the ten (10) remote sites have been reporting significant problems with network latency, slow
performance, and application time-outs against the Oracle database. The company’s business model
is driving higher and higher demand for data, but your capability to respond to these problems are
drasticallylimited. Suggestions on reducing network latency or increasing application response time
and availability should be presented in your risk assessment.
3. Mobility is important for the organization to interact with the customers and other co-workers in near
real-time. However, the COO is concerned with mobility security and would like you to research best
practices for mobile computing. Security within the BYOD environment should be presented in your
risk assessment.
4. Employees enjoy the flexibility of getting access to the corporate network using a WiFi network.
However, the COO is concerned over the security ramifications over the wireless network that is
widely open to the company and nearby residents. Security within the wireless environment should be
presented in your risk assessment.
5. The company plans to offer its products and services online and requested its IT department to designa
Cloud Computing based e-commerce platform. However, the COO is particularly concerned over the
cloud computing security in case the customer database is breached.
ASSIGNMENTSFrom the devices and systems identified in the GFI Corporate Network Topology, conduct a
thorough asset inventory, assign monetary values to each asset (quantitative), and assign a priority
value for each asset (qualitative) that could be used to determine which assets are most critical for
restoral in the event of a catastrophic event or attack.Evaluate the perimeter security, make a list of access points internal and external(remote), identify
vulnerabilities and make suggestions for improvements to perimeter and network security.Evaluate the remote access infrastructure, identify vulnerabilities and suggest security
improvements to mitigate risks to remote access.Address the COO’s concern over the mobility security and design a secure mobile computing
(smart phones, tablets, laptops, etc.) in terms of authentication technologies and data protection.Identify wireless vulnerabilities and recommend what safeguards, authentication technologies,and
network security to protect data should be implemented.Evaluate the authentication protocols and methodologies within the wired, wireless, mobility and
remote access environments and suggest improvements to secure authentication forGFI.Evaluate the web system protocols and vulnerabilities within the Intranet server and suggest
secure protocol improvements to improve security for web authentication.Design a cloud computing environment for the company with a secure means of data protection at
rest, in motion and in process.Assess all known vulnerabilities on each asset in this environment and impacts if compromised.Using the asset inventory and the assigned values (monetary and priority) conduct a quantitative
and qualitative risk assessment of the GFI network.Recommend risk mitigation procedures commensurate with the asset values from your asset
inventory. Feel free to redesign the corporate infrastructure and use any combination of
technologies to harden the authentication processes and network security measures.Provide an Executive Summary.You are welcome to make assumptions for any unknown facts as long as you support your
assumptions.The Title Page, Table of Contents and References page(s) don’t count in your 15 page
minimum!!!
Risk Assessment Paper Rubric
You are given a fictional scenario above describing security issues affecting organizational assets. You willidentify
the risks associated with the assets, and recommend mitigating procedures. You will prepare a quantitative /
qualitative risk assessment to address risk factors on organizational assets. Your final paper will be 15–25 pages
long in a Word document (double-spaced with 12 point font) with APA citations for the resources you used in your
research and will be graded using the followingrubric.
Criteria Non-compliant Minimal Compliant Advanced
Inventory assets
and prioritize
them in the
order of mission
criticality.
Did not inventory or
prioritize assets in
the order of mission
criticality. (0)
Inventoried assets but
did not prioritize them
in the order of
mission criticality. (3)
Inventoried, prioritized
assets, but did not address
mission objectives in
their asset priority. (6)
Inventoried, prioritized
assets and addressed
mission objectives in their
asset priority. (10)
Evaluate
enterprise
topology and
perimeter
protection.
Did not evaluate
enterprise topology
and perimeter
protection. (0)
Evaluated enterprise
topology but did not
include perimeter
protection measures.
(3)
Evaluated enterprise
topology, perimeter
protection measures, but
did not address mission
objectives. (6)
Evaluated enterprise
topology, perimeter
protection measures, and
addressed mission
objectives. . (10)
Evaluate remote
access to the
networks.
Did not evaluate
remote access
protocols and
safeguards to the
network. (0)
Evaluated remote
access protocols but
did not address
security safeguards to
the network. (3)
Evaluated remote access
protocols, security
safeguards to the
network, but did not
address mission
objectives. (6)
Evaluated remote access
protocols, security
safeguards to the network,
and addressed mission
objectives. (10)
Evaluate
authentication
protocols and
methodologies.
Did not evaluate
authentication
protocols and
methodologies. (0)
Evaluated
authentication
protocols,
methodologies but
with insufficient data
or inadequate
description. (3)
Evaluated authentication
protocols, methodologies
with supporting data and
description, but lacks
mission objectives. (6)
Evaluated authentication
protocols, methodologies
with supporting data,
description; and addressed
mission objectives. (10)
Assign asset
values to
organization
assets for
quantitative /
qualitative risk
assessment.
Did not assign asset
values to
organization assets
for quantitative /
qualitative risk
assessment. (0)
Assigned asset values
to organization assets
for quantitative /
qualitative risk
assessment but
incomplete. (3)
Assigned asset values to
organization assets in a
complete inventory, but
did not address mission
objectives. (6)
Assigned asset values to
organization assets in a
complete inventory, and
addressed mission
objectives. (10)
Assess
vulnerabilities
on each asset
and impacts if
compromised.
Did not assess
vulnerabilities on
each asset and
impacts if
compromised. (0)
Assessed
vulnerabilities on
each asset and
impacts if
compromised; but
incomplete. (3)
Assessed vulnerabilities
on each asset and impacts
if compromised; of
complete inventory but
did not address mission
objectives. (6)
Assessed vulnerabilities
on each asset and impacts
if compromised; of
complete inventory and
addressed mission
objectives. (10)
Evaluate web
access protocols
and
vulnerabilities
and Cloud
Computing
Did not evaluate
web access
protocols and
vulnerabilities and
Cloud Computing
(0)
Evaluated web
access protocols and
vulnerabilities or
Cloud Computing.
(3)
Evaluated web access
protocols and
vulnerabilities and Cloud
Computing but did not
address mission
objectives. (6)
Evaluated web access
protocols and
vulnerabilities and Cloud
Computing and
addressed mission
objectives. (10)
Criteria Non-compliant Minimal Compliant Advanced
Recommend risk
mitigation
procedures
commensurate
with asset values.
Did not
recommended risk
mitigation
procedures
commensurate with
asset values. (0)
Recommended risk
mitigation procedures
commensurate with
asset values, but
incomplete. (3)
Recommended risk
mitigation procedures
commensurate with asset
values of complete
inventory, but did not
address mission
objectives. (6)
Recommended risk
mitigation procedures
commensurate with asset
values of complete
inventory, and addressed
mission objectives. (10)
Formulate 15-25
pages of a
quantitative or
qualitative risk
assessment in
APA format.
Did not follow
proper quantitative
or qualitative risk
assessment format,
and failed to
conform to APA
format. (0)
Followed proper
quantitative or
qualitative risk
assessment format but
did not conform to
APA format. (3)
Followed proper
quantitative or qualitative
risk assessment format
and conformed to APA
but insufficient reference
list and page count. (6)
Followed proper
quantitative or qualitative
risk assessment format and
conformed to APA in a
sufficient reference list
and page count. (10)
Executive
summary of risk
assessment.
Did not include an
executive summary.
(0)
Included an executive
summary but lacks
details. (3)
Included an executive
summary in details, but
did not address the
mission objectives. (6)
Included an executive
summary in details, and
addressed mission
objectives. (10)
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