When is a detailed study of threats completed

If you compare sources of information, to what degree is one simply copying from the other? You need sources that have the expertise and independently evaulate the information you are interested in. For example, you build trust in a bank because it has branches on many high streets, it is recognised and regulated by The Financial Conduct Authority in the UK and your money is protected by laws in the UK and the EU up to EUR, when in a regulated bank.

Based on this trust you may use the bank's website, or an app provided by that bank. You may share information about yourself with people and organisations that you trust - but even so you need to evaluate what information they might need to have and what they might do with that information. You throw away that security if you post information about yourself to any stranger who might come across it.

So think carefully before placing any information online that may be passed on by a friend, who then passes it on to someone else and so on. Also think carefully about information that might be included in web pages, photos or videos posted online and available to many strangers.

When searching for information on how to keep yourself secure you need to evaluate your trust in the sources of information, and you should start from our highly trusted sources. Carry out some research about different cyber security threats and the types of groups who pose the threat. For each threat, try to identify the type of individuals or organisations that are posing the threat.

Which of the following types would best describe them? Spend 10—15 minutes researching, then spend five minutes noting down your findings in the space below. As you work through this course you will need various resources to help you complete some of the activities. Making the decision to study can be a big step, which is why you'll want a trusted University. Take a look at all Open University courses. If you are new to University-level study, we offer two introductory routes to our qualifications.

You could either choose to start with an Access module , or a module which allows you to count your previous learning towards an Open University qualification. Read our guide on Where to take your learning next for more information. Not ready for formal University study? Then browse over free courses on OpenLearn and sign up to our newsletter to hear about new free courses as they are released.

Every year, thousands of students decide to study with The Open University. Request an Open University prospectus OpenLearn works with other organisations by providing free courses and resources that support our mission of opening up educational opportunities to more people in more places.

All rights reserved. The Open University is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority in relation to its secondary activity of credit broking. Skip to main content. Search for free courses, interactives, videos and more! Free learning from The Open University. Featured content. Free courses. All content. Course content. Week 1. About this free course 24 hours study. Any of these threats can slow, debilitate, restrict access to, or completely ruin your data.

Our auditing team has come up with 5 steps that we are sure will help you streamline your threat assessment process to ensure success:. Determining the scope of your threat assessment may be the most important step of all.

Your scope provides you with an outline of what is covered and what is not. The scope of your assessment can range to one small sector of your system to the entire network. During this step, you can also classify the sensitivity of what is being assessed, as well as the level and detail of the assessment. Within the scope of your threat assessment, you must check every possible avenue for threats and security gaps in your system.

Some of this data includes:. Additional details you need to obtain before beginning your threat assessment include service pack levels, operating system information, network applications running, physical location of the system, cloud services used and current access control permissions. Review your collected data to try to identify possible vulnerabilities and where they are most likely to be found in your system.

A penetration test will simulate an actual hacking scenario to help you pinpoint dangerous vulnerabilities that could easily lead to external threats. Once you have uncovered any possible threats in your system, it is important to categorize or rate them according to their potential for loss:.

At this point, go through your findings to determine anything that may contribute to tampering, destruction or interruption of any service or item of value. Develop a strategy to remove these threats with measures that include installation of new software, tightening of security, implementing additional access controls, and providing increased and improved staff training.

However, our auditors and information security experts at I. Partners, LLC. Contact our team members by sending us a message or calling us at to request a quote! This blog was originally published on October 30, and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness. Please fill out the fields below and one of our compliance specialists will contact you shortly. These factors could produce changes which may be interpreted as the result of the treatment. These are called main effects which have been controlled in this design giving it internal validity.

However, in this design, there are threats to external validity also called interaction effects because they involve the treatment and some other variable the interaction of which cause the threat to validity.

It is important to note here that external validity or generalizability always turns out to involve extrapolation into a realm not represented in one's sample. In contrast, internal validity are solvable within the limits of the logic of probability statistics. This means that we can control for internal validity based on probability statistics within the experiment conducted, however, external validity or generalizability can not logically occur because we can't logically extrapolate to different conditions.

Hume's truism that induction or generalization is never fully justified logically. External threats include: Interaction of testing and X --because the interaction between taking a pretest and the treatment itself may effect the results of the experimental group, it is desirable to use a design which does not use a pretest.

Research should be conducted in schools in this manner--ideas for research should originate with teachers or other school personnel. The designs for this research should be worked out with someone expert at research methodology, and the research itself carried out by those who came up with the research idea. Results should be analyzed by the expert, and then the final interpretation delivered by an intermediary. Tests of significance for this design--although this design may be developed and conducted appropriately, statistical tests of significance are not always used appropriately.

Wrong statistic in common use--many use a t-test by computing two ts, one for the pre-post difference in the experimental group and one for the pre-post difference of the control group. If the experimental t-test is statistically significant as opposed to the control group, the treatment is said to have an effect. However this does not take into consideration how "close" the t-test may really have been.

A better procedure is to run a 2X2 ANOVA repeated measures, testing the pre-post difference as the within-subject factor , the group difference as the between-subject factor , and the interaction effect of both factors.

R O 1 X O 2 R O 3 O4 R X O 5 R O 6 In this design, subjects are randomly assigned to four different groups: experimental with both pre-posttests, experimental with no pretest, control with pre-posttests, and control without pretests. By using experimental and control groups with and without pretests, both the main effects of testing and the interaction of testing and the treatment are controlled. Therefore generalizability increases and the effect of X is replicated in four different ways.

Statistical tests for this design--a good way to test the results is to rule out the pretest as a "treatment" and treat the posttest scores with a 2X2 analysis of variance design-pretested against unpretested.

And can be seen as controlling for testing as main effect and interaction, but unlike this design, it doesn't measure them.