Information Assurance Handbook: Effective Computer Security and Risk Management Strategies

CHAPTER 18

Preventive Tools and Techniques

The aphorism “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” points out that preventive effort may bring larger benefits when compared to fixing a broken or compromised system. Prevention is clearly better than cure if there are demonstrable benefits in choosing a preventive effort and the implementation is cost justified. Frequently, it is more cost and time effective to implement prevention steps against a computer virus infection rather than spending time recovering from (or curing) the virus attacks.

In information assurance management, this aphorism is not always true. Following a risk assessment (refer to Chapter 11), an organization may decide to choose neither prevention nor cure. This is ...