Question: Risk Matrix & Dependency Diagrams for a given System Design

Assignment Description:

This is an individual assignment designed to build your familiarity with these tools, which are important in risk evaluation for high availability designs (including security infrastructure) that enhance business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities. You will submit your work as an MS-Word document (plus, of course, a Turnitin report). There are five enterprise architecture descriptions for small-to-medium sized businesses on the following page. They are all sketchy and incomplete. You will choose one and do the following, seeking to optimize the balance between spending and risk reduction. Treat your report as though you were a HA/BC/DR consultant addressing a potential customer, proposing your services to help them achieve availability appropriate to their enterprise requirements. Your work should look and read as much as possible like a professional consultant’s report – we’re presuming that you want their business! (NOTE that if you’d like to do this for a different business, you should discuss it with your professor for approval before proceeding.) • Describe your enterprise’s IT design, making enough assumptions that you can build a full dependency diagram that covers all areas of the system stack: administration and infrastructure (including security, networks and shared storage) as well as applications, middleware, systems, hardware and the physical environment. • Draw one or more dependency diagrams to show the existing setup; remember to include blocks for every layer of the system stack, whether or not it is mentioned in the original architecture description – this means you will need to make reasonable assumptions, which may require some research (which of course you would then cite). Add comments and description as appropriate, especially regarding assumptions you’ve made and deficiencies you’ve detected in the existing design. • Estimate the inherent (existing) risk of at least five important existing IT exposures on a risk matrix for this setup, motivated by failure scenarios likely to expose them; describe the impact (consequence) and likelihood (probability) of each. Locate each of the five (or more) on a single risk matrix (which you’ll use again later). • Develop reasonable, cost-effective improvements to mitigate each identified exposure, suitable to the enterprise requirements. • Draw another dependency diagram showing your improved setup. Your new diagram should also include blocks for each layer of the system stack. Add comments and description as appropriate, especially regarding upgrades in the improved design and remaining exposures if any. • Estimate the residual (remaining) risk for each of the exposures above, describing the remaining impact and likelihood of each. Locate the residual risks on the same matrix as above, clearly linking the inherent and residual risks for each exposure. You’ll probably want to put the single risk matrix here, near the end of your document. • Briefly discuss your suggestions for the chosen enterprise, their estimated costs, and how they cost-effectively mitigate risk. Don’t forget to point out any risks that have been intentionally left out of scope, along with the reasons for leaving them out. Use whatever tools you want to draw the diagrams, then submit them and your discussions together in a single MS-Word document. In all stages, focus on clarity and on enterprise requirements. As always, you should cite and reference any borrowed materials (images, text, etc.)

Evaluation This assignment is marked out of 50 points, and worth 10% of the course. • Description, assumptions 7 marks • Initial dependency diagram 7 marks • Existing risk descriptions 7 marks • Mitigation descriptions 7 marks • Improved dependency diagram 7 marks • One risk matrix (inherent & residual) 8 marks • Overall discussion, costing 7 marks

https://apaxresearchers.com/storage/files/2024/04/24/9667-dxG_19_07_45_instructions.pdf