‫So her other cause, we're going to be using some particular terminology quite often, so it's better
‫if we just define them upfront and then that way, if you get to know them now, you won't be running
‫the glassware every time you come across it.
‫So here we have the asset, people, property and information, people may include the employees or
‫the customers, along with other invited persons such as contractors or guests.
‫Property assets consist of both tangible and intangible items that can be assigned a value.
‫Intangible assets include reputation as well as proprietary information.
‫The information itself may include databases, software codes, critical company records and many other
‫intangible items.
‫In short, an asset is what we are trying to protect.
‫Threat.
‫Anything they could exploit a vulnerability intentionally or accidentally and obtain damage or destroy
‫an asset.
‫In other words, a threat is what we're trying to protect against.
‫Vulnerability, weaknesses or gaps in a security program that can be exploited by threats to gain unauthorized
‫access to an asset, a vulnerability is a weakness or gap in our protection efforts.
‫Risk the potential for loss, damage or destruction of an asset as a result of a threat exploiting a
‫vulnerability.
‫Risk is the intersection of assets, threats and vulnerabilities.
‫So why is it so important to understand the difference between these terms?
‫In my opinion, if you don't understand that difference very specifically, you will never understand
‫the true risk to the assets at stake.
‫You see, when conducting a risk assessment, the formula used to determine risk is a plus T plus v
‫equals R that is asset plus threat.
‫Plus, vulnerability equals risk.
‫Exploit.
‫Literally, it should be defined as a piece of software or a sequence of commands that takes advantage
‫of a vulnerability to cause unintended or unanticipated behavior to occur on computer software or hardware.
‫But I'd like to take a moment to explain it in these words and exploit is an attack on a computer system,
‫especially one that takes advantage of a particular vulnerability the system has or is known for.
‫Used as a verb, exploit refers to the act of successfully making such an attack.