Risk Management Plan Outline and Research

Purpose

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. This project allows you to fulfill the role of an employee participating in the risk management process in a specific business situation.

Learning Objectives and Outcomes

You will gain an overall understanding of risk management, its importance, and critical processes required when developing a formal risk management plan for an organization.

Required Source Information and Tools

Web References: Links to web references in this document and related materials are subject to change without prior notice. These links were last verified on October 8, 2020.

The following tools and resources will be needed to complete this project:

• Course textbook
• Internet access
• Suggested resources:
  • NIST RMF: https://www.nist.gov/system/files/documents/2018/03/28/vickie_nist_risk_management_framework_overview-hpc.pdf
  • NIST risk assessment guidance: https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Legacy/SP/nistspecialpublication800-30r1.pdf
  • NIST contingency planning guidance: https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Legacy/SP/nistspecialpublication800-34r1.pdf
  • Business Impact Analysis, https://www.ready.gov/business-impact-analysis
  • Business Continuity Plan (Ready.gov): https://www.ready.gov/business-continuity-plan

Scenario

You are an IT security 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. This 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.

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 can 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 can make payments and update their profiles using Internet-accessible HTTPS websites.

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.

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

This project is divided into several parts, each with a deliverable. The first four parts are drafts. These documents should resemble business reports in that they are organized by headings, include source citations (if any), be readable, and be free from typos and grammatical errors. However, they are not final, polished reports.

Project Part 1: Risk Management Plan Outline and Research

For the first part of the assigned project, you will create a partial draft of the risk management plan. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Research risk management plans.
2. Create an outline for a basic risk management plan with anticipated section headings (as indicated in this numbered list). This plan will include a qualitative risk assessment, which is addressed later in the project.
3. Write an introduction to the plan by explaining its purpose and importance.
4. Define the scope and boundaries of the plan.
5. Research and summarize compliance laws and regulations that pertain to the organization. Keep track of sources you use for citation purposes.
6. Identify the key roles and responsibilities of individuals and departments within the organization as they pertain to risk management.
7. Develop a proposed schedule for the risk management planning process.
8. Create a draft risk management plan detailing the information above. Format the plan similar to a professional business report and cite any sources you used.

Submission Requirements

• Format: Microsoft Word (or compatible)
• Font: Arial, size 12, double-space
• Citation style: APA 7 Format
• Estimated length: 4–6 pages