It is against business priority enablers that we align the following causation models required to present our high-level protection strategy.

Causal Model 1 — Threat Landscape

We captured the business priorities in the business model’s value proposition. ECS’s desire is to “offer certified and compliant cloud computing services secured with the leading security standards.” Delivering on that priority requires ensuring the protection of enablers. Of the causal models derived, inversion of the threat landscape and executive threat model provide the following enabling parameters:

• People Resources
• Hosting Resources
• Service Resources
• Technology Resources

The enabling parameters provide your organization with the functionality required to fulfill the value proposition. From a business perspective, they provide framing of functional requirements.

Causal Model 2 — Control Ladder

By consulting the business model and reference architecture, we were able to model the control ladder for ECS through inferences based on observing key partners, channels, and customer segments along with the hosting and capability domains that enabled modeling of the various controls. For instance, providing partners access enabled us to observe information flow, which resulted in the inference of the threat flow control component. Protecting partners and the customer segments led to inferring the need to protect based on situation, which resulted in the two-tiered amplified situation control component. Collectively, each control component of the control ladder provided the technical requirements necessary to fulfill the functional requirements, with the parameters embedded within each component below:

• Foundational
• Environmental
• Functional
• Situational
• Threat Flow

Protection Strategy

Protection strategy is best designed to support the value proposition of the business. Combining and ordering the parameters associated with causal models 1 and 2 provides a blended view at a high level for executives to communicate intent and goal along with subjective quantification of effort. Based on the case scenario (ECS), objective inferences were made to complete the traceability matrix shown below.