Explain how the Target and Maersk cases illustrate the relationship between cybersecurity governance and business resilience.
Answer
A strong answer should explain that Target’s breach involved access through a third-party vendor and weaknesses in vendor risk management and network segmentation. It should explain that Maersk’s NotPetya attack spread in the context of inadequate patch management and network isolation, disrupting operations at more than 600 ports. Both cases show that governance decisions about third parties, access, maintenance, monitoring, and incident response can affect operational continuity. Maersk’s rebuilding of its IT infrastructure illustrates the cost of poor resilience.
Explanation
### Why this is right
Both cases connect governance weaknesses to consequences for business operations. Target demonstrates how vendor access and inadequate segmentation can expose customer records, while Maersk demonstrates how weak maintenance and isolation can allow malware to disrupt services widely.
### The concept
Business resilience is an organization’s ability to withstand disruption, respond, and restore operations. Governance supports resilience by assigning responsibility for vendor oversight, system maintenance, access limits, monitoring, and incident response. Technical controls matter, but leadership must ensure that they are selected, funded, and maintained in line with business risks. The Maersk recovery effort also shows that rebuilding after a major incident can be costly.
### What a good answer covers
- Target’s third-party entry route and vendor risk management weakness.
- The role of network segmentation in limiting unauthorized movement.
- Maersk’s patch management and isolation weaknesses and resulting disruption.
- How governance connects controls and response planning to continuity and recovery.
### Terms
- **Business resilience**: The ability to continue, restore, or adapt important operations during and after disruption.
- **Vendor risk management**: Assessing and controlling risks introduced by external suppliers and service providers.
### Remember
Governance decisions about access, maintenance, and response can determine how far an incident spreads and how quickly operations recover.
Related Questions
- Outsourcing payment processing to a third-party vendor completely transfers all regulatory compliance and data protection responsibilities away from the hiring organization.(intermediate)
- In an incident management exercise divided into discovery, investigation, response, and recovery, the phase focused on analyzing logs, alerts, and evidence to examine unauthorized activity is called _____.(basic)
- The recovery and compliance review phase can include a mock audit, ongoing monitoring, staff training, and improvements informed by the incident.(basic)
- A staff member accesses the billing system from an unprotected personal laptop, and suspicious activity alerts appear. Which response area is most directly implicated by this new information?(intermediate)
- During a tabletop incident response exercise involving potential payment card data compromise, which activity is the primary focus of the Discovery phase?(advanced)
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