Cyber Security

For this assignment, imagine that you are a cybersecurity consultant hired to identify the most significant cybersecurity threats to a company. You can choose any of the following companies:

Amazon

Boeing

Cisco

Costco

Comcast

Exxon-Mobil

Wells-Fargo Bank

Your local electric utility

Your local hospital

If you want to choose a different company, ask and you may be allowed to. Just be sure to ask early enough.

Write a memo to the CEO of the company describing what you believe are the three most serious threats to the company from cyberattacks. These could be attacks directly against the company, or attacks against others than have indirect effect on the company. You memo should describe the threat and who the threat would be coming from (e.g., competitors, disgruntled employees, foreign governments, etc.). You should mention if similar attacks have happened against other companies, since that would be more likely to cause the CEO to pay attention.

Keep in mind that the audience for this memo is a CEO. Don't tell the CEO that the company's webserver is susceptible to SQL injection - they don't know what that means and they don't need to. That's a topic for a memo to someone much lower in the company.

Also, don't try to tell the CEO what they should be doing to prevent the threats, just tell them about the threats. If they are happy with your work, you will get a follow-on contract where you can provide suggestions for what they can do to prevent them, but not now.

The format of the memo must follow the instructions found in the ADMG385MemoFormatting.pdf file (located in the week 5 module).

If you've taken ADMG 385 you've probably seen this. Note that the document is both instructions for how to write a memo, and an example of a memo. And notice how the memo is broken into paragraphs. Some students seem to have great difficulty breaking their writing into paragraphs, but it is much easier to read in smaller paragraphs. Do it!

If you have letterhead that you can write your memo on, either from another class or from your own business or wherever, great, use it. Professional letterhead always makes a memo look better, and you are a professional cybersecurity consultant. But letterhead is not required for the assignment.

In the memo, the "To" line should not have my name in it, nor should the memo reference this class. Write it as a memo to the CEO of the company you have chosen.

The body of the memo must be at least 400 words long.

This assignment is worth 5 points total:

The content of the body of the memo. Do you clearly describe the threats so that the CEO can understand? Did you spell check and proof read? If less than 400 words, as usual the maximum score will be reduced proportionately.

The instructions on how to write a memo.

I will be pickier on this assignment than previous ones about spell checking and other errors, The audience for this memo is not your instructor, the audience is a CEO of a corporation that is paying you a crazy amount of money to write this memo. Show them you are worth it and should get that follow-on contract!