Answer

The Best Framework for Understanding the Risks and Threats Involved with Cyber Attack to Critical Infrastructures

The week’s reading on “Cyber Risk Scenarios, the Financial System, and Systemic Risk Assessment”  by Kaffenberger and Kopp (2019) provides the best model for comprehending the threats and risks involved with cyber attacks targeted at critical infrastructures such as financial institutions. This model provides a comprehensive approach to understanding cyber security threats and risks to critical infrastructures like financial system. Contrary to conventional perception of cyber risk as a simple or basic operational risk, which considers cyber risk as a component of cost associated with doing within an interconnected world, the framework proposed by Kaffenberger and Kopp (2019) takes into consideration the systemic cyber risk in its risk calculus. The comprehensiveness of this model lies in its including of components such as analysis of cyber risk exposures, assessment of cybersecurity, assessment of preparedness capabilities, and identification of existing buffers for absorbing cyber risk-induced shocks (Kaffenberger & Kopp, 2019). The effectiveness of this framework is also evident in its focus on various properties of cyber risk including risk aggression and complexity, as well as systemic risk. In addition, the model provides various scenarios associated with cyber risk including high-impact operational risk, upstream infrastructure, and external shock scenarios among others.

The framework proposed by Kaffenberger and Kopp (2019) is also effective in terms of assessing cyber threats. This model provides thorough criteria that can be employed in the assessment of cyber threats. The criteria ranks the magnitude or level of cyber threats as high, low, and medium, and focuses on threats such as proxies, hacktivists, cybercriminals, and nation states. This framework is also effective as it provides a range of measures that can be embraced to mitigate cyber risks. These strategies include organizational, technical, and legal measures, international cooperation, capacity building, and support from government financial institutions. The framework also recommends the reinforcement of institutional and organizational setups.