CSPI flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

CIA Triad

The core security model of confidentiality (access only by authorized subjects), integrity (data accuracy and completeness), and availability (timely, reliable access) that guides all control selection.

Risk formula

Risk is the probability that a threat exploits a vulnerability combined with the resulting impact; assessment combines likelihood and impact rather than counting threats alone.

Single Loss Expectancy

SLE quantifies the cost of one incident: SLE = asset value × exposure factor, where exposure factor is the percentage of the asset's value lost in that event.

Annualized Loss Expectancy

ALE estimates yearly loss by multiplying single loss expectancy by annualized rate of occurrence: ALE = SLE × ARO. It supports quantitative cost-benefit justification for controls.

Residual risk

The risk that remains after controls are applied. It cannot be eliminated, so it must be documented and formally accepted by management as the asset owner.

Risk treatment options

Four choices: mitigate by applying controls, transfer through insurance or contracts, avoid by stopping the activity, or accept and document the retained risk.

Due care versus due diligence

Due care is the ongoing practice of acting reasonably to protect assets; due diligence is the research, verification, and reassessment that proves those actions are adequate.

RTO and RPO

Recovery time objective is the maximum acceptable downtime after disruption; recovery point objective is the maximum acceptable data loss, measured as time before the incident.

Policy, standard, procedure, guideline

Policy states mandatory management intent; standards specify mandatory requirements; procedures give step-by-step instructions; guidelines are recommended, non-mandatory advice. Policy sits at the top of the hierarchy.

Separation of duties

No single person controls all parts of a sensitive transaction; splitting authorization, custody, and review prevents fraud and undetected error and makes audit trails defensible.

Least privilege

Subjects receive only the access required for assigned duties, and only for as long as needed, limiting the blast radius of both compromise and insider misuse.

ISC2 code of ethics

Professionals must protect society and the infrastructure, act honorably and justly, provide diligent and competent service, and advance and protect the profession.

Data controller versus processor

The controller determines why and how personal data is processed; the processor acts only on the controller's instructions. Controllers carry primary legal accountability under laws such as GDPR.

GDPR core obligations

EU law requiring a lawful basis for processing, data minimization, breach notification within 72 hours, impact assessments for high-risk processing, and honoring access and erasure requests.

Third-party risk management

Due diligence before engagement, contractual security and right-to-audit requirements, risk tiering by data sensitivity and service criticality, and periodic reassessment of each vendor.

Data classification

Assigning data to tiers such as public, internal, confidential, and restricted so handling, labeling, retention, and protection requirements are defined and consistently enforced.

Defense in depth

Layering independent controls across people, process, and technology so one control failure does not cause compromise; overlapping preventive and detective layers reduce likelihood and impact.

Fail-safe defaults

Systems deny access by default and allow only explicitly permitted actions, so a failure inside a control leaves the system in its most secure state.

Bell-LaPadula model

A confidentiality model enforcing no read up (simple security property) and no write down (star property), preventing subjects from reading higher-classification data or leaking it downward.

Biba integrity model

An integrity model enforcing no read down and no write up, preventing subjects from consuming lower-integrity data or contaminating higher-integrity objects with unreliable input.

STRIDE threat modeling

Categorizes threats as spoofing, tampering, repudiation, information disclosure, denial of service, and elevation of privilege, giving a systematic checklist for design review.

Control categories

Managerial (policy and risk decisions), operational (people-executed such as awareness and guards), technical (enforced by systems such as firewalls and encryption), and physical (fences, locks, environmental safeguards).

Shared responsibility model

In cloud, the provider secures physical infrastructure and virtualization while the customer secures data, identity, configuration, and access; the boundary shifts across IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.

Digital signature properties

A message hash encrypted with the sender's private key gives integrity, origin authentication, and non-repudiation; confidentiality separately requires encrypting with the recipient's public key.

Incident response phases

Preparation; detection and analysis; containment, eradication, and recovery; post-incident activity. Containment happens before eradication to stop spread, and lessons learned feeds back into preparation.

Order of volatility

Collect the most perishable evidence first: CPU registers and cache, memory, temporary files, disk, remote logs, and archival backups; volatile data is lost on shutdown.

Chain of custody

A documented, unbroken record of who handled evidence, when, and why, from collection through disposal; gaps can make evidence unreliable or inadmissible in proceedings.

Write blocker purpose

A hardware or software device that permits read-only access to storage media during forensic imaging, preventing alteration of evidence and preserving its integrity for analysis.

Signature versus anomaly detection

Signature detection matches known attack patterns with low false positives but misses novel attacks; anomaly detection baselines normal behavior and flags deviations, producing more false positives.

Backup types

Full copies all data; differential copies changes since the last full backup; incremental copies changes since the last backup of any type. Restore speed and storage cost trade off.

Lessons learned review

A post-incident meeting producing documented root cause, control gaps, timeline accuracy, and assigned remediation actions with owners and dates that feed back into preparation.

Vulnerability management lifecycle

Inventory assets, scan, prioritize by exploitability and asset criticality, remediate or mitigate, then verify by rescanning; the process is continuous and risk-ranked, not scan-only.