Cybersecurity Risk Management. Cynthia Brumfield

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Academic Foreword

      As a professor who has developed cybersecurity education programs for industry, academia, and the government, I know first-hand how difficult it can be for even advanced IT professionals to grasp the complex concepts in cybersecurity. In my role as Executive Director of the Center for Information Assurance and Cybersecurity at the University of Washington in Seattle, among other positions I hold, I have seen even the best and brightest of the nation’s high-tech sector struggle when it comes to this still-new discipline. The difficulty is compounded by the varied missions that public, private, and academic organizations pursue.

      My center at the University of Washington is a Center of Academic Excellence in both Cybersecurity Education and Research, so designated by the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. This honor means that we are well placed to help bridge the cybersecurity communications gaps that exist across crucial sectors of society: government, industry, and academia.

      At the University of Washington, we take a pragmatic approach to equipping our students with the skills they need to enter the cybersecurity workforce. We emphasize critical thinking along with information management and technical skills so that we graduate ‘breach-ready’ students. Since there is no system that is 100% secure, we ingrain in our students the importance of having risk management tools in their toolkit, so they are equipped to make rational choices about what to protect and where to spend scarce cybersecurity dollars. We’ve found that the NIST Cybersecurity Framework is highly useful in conveying concepts in risk management.

      The Framework does not offer step-by-step instruction on installing a firewall, for example, nor does it recommend any specific technology for, say, managing patch updates. Instead, it offers a way to comprehensively manage cybersecurity risks by drawing on the best-of-breed conceptual thinking from other risk management frameworks, informed by prevailing standards. It teaches our students how to think about solving a cybersecurity problem and that there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution.

More importantly, NIST designed the Framework as a cybersecurity management tool to foster better communications among internal and external stakeholders. As a result, it bridges the communication gaps among silos, helping to create a common language to solve the growing number of cybersecurity problems. This book, with its practical approach to applying the Framework, should help students at all levels – undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education—become more Work-ready.

      By walking the fine line between nitty-gritty technical discussions and high-level conceptual models, Cybersecurity Risk Management: Mastering the Fundamentals using the NIST Cybersecurity Framework should leave its readers with a new way of thinking about cybersecurity risk management. I hope that it also gives them the confidence to dive deeper into the growing number of cybersecurity disciplines that make up the cybersecurity field.

       Barbara Endicott-Popovsky, Ph.D., CRISC

       Executive Director, Center for Information Assurance and Cybersecurity

       Professor, University of Washington

       November 2021