Description
Threats to applications or software require mitigation. Mitigation can be accomplished in four ways: redesign to eliminate vulnerability, apply a standard mitigation, invent a new mitigation, or accept the vulnerability.
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Running head: THREATS MITIGATION
Threats Mitigation
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Threats Mitigation
Introduction
Mitigation involves the development of actions that enhance the opportunities of
reducing vulnerabilities to the software in case of a breach. Also, it entails reducing risk effects
through prior preparation before they occur. The main objective of mitigation plans includes
minimizing, changing, or avoiding risk by preparing for the vulnerability and implementing
preventive measures. The most software development firm has a team that deals with
vulnerability mitigation by developing programs, creating strategies, and keeping track of things
that are likely to happen to ensure successful implementation of programs and projects.
Vulnerability mitigation teams accomplish their plans in four ways: redesign to eliminate the
vulnerability, apply standard mitigation, invent new mitigation, or accept the vulnerability. The
paper compares and contrasts the four mitigation options by examining their advantages and
disadvantages and showing where the SDLC process mitigation techniques should be applied for
maximum effectiveness.
Redesign to Eliminate Vulnerability
When software develops challenges that are hard to resolve, the team involved in the
software development will have to consider redesigning the software or the whole project to deal
with the vulnerabilities. Redesigning the software or the project involves a complete overhaul to
resolve or eliminate vulnerabilities for maximum efficiency. Some of the advantages associated
with redesigning to eliminate vulnerabilities include eliminating initial software exposures that
could create errors in the software or the project (Reis et al., 2021). The second advantage of
redesigning I allowing the software development team to create more durable software with a
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low risk of failure. Besides, redesigning software improves its reliability, performance, usability,
and robustness. The third advantage of redesigning is the addition, deletion, and modification of
various functionalities of the project or the software, thus redefining the software's specification.
Finally, redesigning software to eliminate vulnerability is less costly than creating new software.
However, redesigning is associated with several disadvantages (Rana, 2020). The redesign
process can introduce new errors or vulnerabilities that might affect performance efficiency.
Besides, there is an extent beyond which the redesign cannot happen; thus, minor errors are still
likely to be retained, creating vulnerabilities in the future. The previous positive aspects of the
software might become an issue after redesigning a software that crashed unexpectedly.
Apply a Standard Mitigation
Applying standard mitigation involves protecting a software or the project against
vulnerabilities known by the users or similar to the previous projects or software. The team
members in the software development are usually familiar with expected challenges from typical
projects or software or any errors that might occur. The first advantage of applying standard
mitigation is that the prior knowledge about the challenges or errors that can encounter the
software or the project enables users or the software development team to identify potential
vulnerabilities and their operational implications; thus, enabling them to avoid any vulnerability
option (Huang & Pearlson, 2021). Secondly, using the standard mitigation is advantageous
because it enhances faster rolling out; thus, saving costs. Also, because the mitigation has been
applied already in the previous software or project, the possibility of going wrong is low, and the
success rate is high. However, applying standard mitigation is associated with several
disadvantages, such as the knowledge being available to attackers; thus, using the knowledge to
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attack the software, making the success duration of this method undeterminable. The other
disadvantage is comparing software errors with previous ones; thus, focusing on errors they are
aware of and ignoring other errors might cause high-risk vulnerabilities in the software.
Invent a New Mitigation
When vulnerabilities are identified, then new mitigation strategies might be developed.
The invention of new mitigation strategies requires the software development team and users to
work together, identify potential challenges and develop solutions. The first advantage of
inventing new mitigation is the ability to come up with unique solutions and develop greater
knowledge while conducting the research to invent a new solution to the problem. Secondly,
attackers are not aware of the new inventions to mitigate vulnerabilities; thus, the unique
mitigation strategies will have a high success rate if implemented correctly. However, the
method is disadvantageous in various aspects (Mitre.org., 2015). Inventing new mitigation
methods needs a lot of time, effort, and money to conduct the right research; and can have a
chance of not giving or reaching the intended results or end up failing. Finally, any differences or
misunderstandings in the invention may lead to a substandard mitigation strategy. Therefore, the
team needs to work towards making a well thought or educated decision whether the technique
invented is effective or not before implementing it.
Accept the Vulnerability
Accepting vulnerability is a good mitigation strategy for dealing with fatal situations
when they happen. It is usually the last thing the team can do because the application will be
vulnerable to a known risk or vulnerability, and the attack can happen anytime. The advantage of
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accepting vulnerability is that the team is aware of the vulnerability, no much effort, time, or
money is needed in implementing the mitigation strategy. However, there are disadvantages
associated with accepting the vulnerability, such as putting the system at risk at any time because
it is prone to attackers (Flyoutsourcing, 2019). The software team will need to have individuals
monitoring the software and inform others about any unexpected changes. Accepting
vulnerability can cause an unexpected crash of the software, leading to loss of data and other
important information.
Where in SDLC process mitigation techniques should be applied for maximum
effectiveness
The Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) involves several distinct stages, including
planning, design, analysis, testing, deployment, and maintenance. SDLC process is usually
vulnerable to risks from the start of the project till the final stage (Half, 2021). Every stage of
SDLC is vulnerable to different threats that may hinder the process from successful...
