Developing a Partial Risk and Mitigation Plan - Assignment Example

Disastrous programs have a very high probability of occurring in learning institutions. Most Universities today do everything online. The establishment of an ICT center would enable students to carry all the assignments and other applications through the internet especially when there is a configuration of WIFI. Since most of the students need computer facilities, they would be regular in the ICT centers to carry out their research. It is through the interaction of students with computers that the ICT laboratories are exposed to the risks. This results from the various memory storage devices that the students insert into the computers for instance the flash disks, memory cards, diskettes, external hard drives, and hard disks. These storage facilities if infected would lead to infection of the computers in the ICT laboratories.

                    The other way through which computers could be affected by viruses and worms is through the downloading of non-genuine files, music, or movies from the internet. If the downloaded document of music is from an untrustworthy provider it may be malicious to the stored information in the computers in the ICT center (Clough, 2010).

        According to Martin & Schell (2004), malware attack is always associated with the loss of information from computers. This has been witnessed in many businesses and institutions, especially in the cases of viruses and worms attacks and also hackers. For instance, the attack known as Aurora which happened recently destructed a lot of information in many companies. In this attack, the hackers used techniques that employed a combination of stealth programming and encrypted techniques. Through the use of this technology, the attackers traced the source codes for Adobe, Google, and many other high-profile companies. According to Reyes & Wiles (2011), another attack was known as the “Stuxnet” worm which hacked the networks of various power plants. This also led to the loss of very important information for the companies. In the concept of a college, the cyber risk from malware can lead to loss of information for the whole IT department. In the ICT centers of some schools, other information for the college or University is stored apart from the department’s information. As such, any attack would be impactful in destroying all the information of the IT department and even other departments in case that center stores information for many departments of the college.

Hacking

        The table shows that hacking has a medium probability of occurrence. The establishment of an ICT center can also be associated with risks such as hacking. In most colleges, IT is a course program undertaken by many students. As such some IT students have become computer experts such that they can do a lot with computers both with the hardware and software (Moore, 2010). When these students gain access to the ICT centers they may hack accounts connected to very special departments in the colleges for instance the finance department.

                    When a college account of any department is hacked, it may lead to information loss or even money. For instance, hacking the finance department would mean a loss of money to the school. This is because when a finance account is hacked, the students may clear their colleagues from the balance of the fee.

Mismanagement of funds

        This risk is of low probability. It mostly occurs when the steering committee for the projects is corrupt. In such a case, the committee members may squander the money that is secured for the construction of school structures. This can paralyze the whole project and put the school at a big loss. This has caused big losses in many institutions, and to some extent, it has caused the institutions to be closed.