After the productive team meeting, your chief technology officer (CTO) wants further analysis performed and a high-level plan created to mitigate future risks, threats, and vulnerabilities. As part of this request, you and your team members will create a plan for performing a gap analysis, and then research and select an appropriate risk assessment methodology to be used for future reviews of your company's IT environment. An IT gap analysis may be a formal investigation or an informal survey of an organization's overall IT security. The first step of a gap analysis is to compose clear objectives and goals concerning an organization's IT security. For each objective or goal, the person performing the analysis must gather information about the environment, determine the present status, and identify what must be changed to achieve goals. The analysis most often reveals gaps in security between "where you are" and "where you want to be." Two popular risk assessment methodologies are NIST SP 800-30 revision 1, Guide for Conducting Risk Assessments, and Operationally Critical Threat, Asset, and Vulnerability Evaluation (OCTAVE). Your focus will be on the OCTAVE Allegro version, which is a more concise version of OCTAVE. When reviewing the methodologies, consider the following: Which features or factors of each methodology are most important and relevant to your company? Which methodology is easier to follow? Which methodology appears to require fewer resources, such as time and staff, but still provides for a thorough assessment?

• Create a high-level plan to perform a gap analysis.

• Review the following two risk assessment methodologies:

  • NIST SP 800-30 rev. 1, Guide for Conducting Risk Assessments (formerly titled " Risk Management Guide for Information Technology Systems")
  • Operationally Critical Threat, Asset, and Vulnerability Evaluation (OCTAVE), Allegro version
  • Create a report that includes the gap analysis plan, a brief description of each risk assessment methodology, a recommendation for which methodology Full soft should follow, and justification for your choice.