IT 521 Information Assurance and Risk Assessment Dr. Jim
Risk Management Plan
Introduction
Risk management is an important process for all organizations. This is particularly true in
information systems, which provides critical support for organizational missions. The heart of
risk management is a formal risk management plan. You will fulfill the role of an employee
participating in the risk management process for a fictitious organization to replace its outdated
plan.
Scenario
You are an information technology (IT) intern working for Health Network, Inc. (Health
Network), a fictitious health services organization headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Health Network has over 600 employees throughout the organization and generates $500 million
USD in annual revenue. The company has two additional locations in Portland, Oregon and
Arlington, Virginia, which support a mix of corporate operations. Each corporate facility is
located near a co-location data center, where production systems are located and managed by
third-party data center hosting vendors.
Company Products
Health Network has three main products: HNetExchange, HNetPay, and HNetConnect.
HNetExchange is the primary source of revenue for the company. The service handles secure
electronic medical messages that originate from its customers, such as large hospitals, which are
then routed to receiving customers such as clinics.
HNetPay is a Web portal used by many of the company’s HNetExchange customers to support
the management of secure payments and billing. The HNetPay Web portal, hosted at Health
Network production sites, accepts various forms of payments and interacts with credit-card
processing organizations much like a Web commerce shopping cart.
HNetConnect is an online directory that lists doctors, clinics, and other medical facilities to allow
Health Network customers to find the right type of care at the right locations. It contains doctors’
personal information, work addresses, medical certifications, and types of services that the
doctors and clinics offer. Doctors are given credentials and are able to update the information in
their profile. Health Network customers, which are the hospitals and clinics, connect to all three
of the company’s products using HTTPS connections. Doctors and potential patients are able to
make payments and update their profiles using Internet-accessible HTTPS Web sites.
Information Technology Infrastructure Overview
Health Network operates in three production data centers that provide high availability across the
company’s products. The data centers host about 1,000 production servers, and Health Network
maintains 650 corporate laptops and company-issued mobile devices for its employees.
IT 521 Information Assurance and Risk Assessment Dr. Jim
Threats Identified
Upon review of the current risk management plan, the following threats were identified:
• Loss of company data due to hardware being removed from production systems
• Loss of company information on lost or stolen company-owned assets, such as mobile
devices and laptops
• Loss of customers due to production outages caused by various events, such as natural
disasters, change management, unstable software, and so on
• Internet threats due to company products being accessible on the Internet
• Insider threats
• Changes in regulatory landscape that may impact operations
Management Request
Senior management at Health Network has determined that the existing risk management plan
for the organization is out of date and a new risk management plan must be developed. Because
of the importance of risk management to the organization, senior management is committed to
and supportive of the project to develop a new plan. You have been assigned to develop this new
plan.
Additional threats other than those described previously may be discovered when re-evaluating
the current threat landscape during the risk assessment phase.
The budget for this project has not been defined due to senior management’s desire to react to
any and all material risks that are identified within the new plan. Given the company’s annual
revenue, reasonable expectations can be determined.
Deliverables
You are to develop a new risk management plan for Health Network. The risk management plan
will consist of the risk assessment plan and risk mitigation plan.
The tentative project deliverables with deadlines are:
• Risk assessment plan: Due April 10, 2018 at 11:59 pm
• Risk mitigation plan: Due May 1, 2018 at 11:59 pm
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