Metrics and Methods for Security Risk Management

Chapter 5. Measuring the vulnerability component of security risk

Physical laws simply cannot be ignored. Existence cannot be without them. — Spock

“Specter of the Gun,” Star Trek, Stardate 4383.5

5.1. Introduction

A rigorous examination of security risk entails analyzing each component of the fundamental expression of risk introduced in Chapter 1. In this chapter the vulnerability component of risk is investigated in detail. The good news here is that for some threats this component is amenable to a quantitative approach to analyzing risk. This is because some of these threats are influenced by physical processes and/or described by physical quantities that obey well-established natural laws.

Estimating and minimizing the vulnerability component ...