Technology Risk Checklist

Dec. 2003
Version 6.0
 Introduction

Digital technology enables the world to become increasingly interconnected as an entire economy becomes reliant upon a single,
network infrastructure. While this offers tremendous opportunities to many industries, including financial, telecommunications, health,
and transportation, it can also be a cause for concern if security issues are improperly addressed, or even neglected altogether. Heinous
crimes such as theft, fraud and extortion can occur in great magnitude within a matter of seconds. The new network- mediated economy
paradoxically presents unparalleled opportunities for the creation of good outcomes or the perpetuation of bad ones.

Trends in cyber crime reveal significant growth. Between 1999-2002 in the United States, attacks on computer servers increased by over
400% to 83,000 incidents. 1 This is partly attributable to vulnerabilities in software code, which have grown from a total of 500 in 1995
to over 9000 in 2002 (CERT). These growing numbers bear particular important on the financial sector. The International Data
Corporation (www.idc.com) reported that more than 57% of all hack attacks last year were initiated in the financial sector (source and
year. The FBI has corroborated this statistic. Equally troubling, FINCEN’s Suspicious Activity Reports for Computer Intrusions have
shot up more than 500% over the past year. 2 With the growing amount of financial data stored and transmitted online, the ease of
computer intrusions add to the severity of traditional crimes such as identity theft; to put this in perspective for the digital age, over
USD$222 billion in losses were sustained to the global economy as a result of identity theft. 3

In an effort to mitigate these types of threat, the World Bank publication “Electronic Security: Risk Mitigation in the Financial
Transactions” describes e-security processes and procedures. This is not just confined to the financial industry. As the network
infrastructure spans across industry borders, so too, does the critical need for electronic security. As far back as 1995, the ISO/IEC
13335, better known as the Guidelines for the Management of IT Security (GMITS), recognized that the Internet was a hostile
environment that would require the use of proper e-security. ISO 17799 is the most widely utilized security standard for information
systems. ISO 17799 was written with the 90’s cyber-space environment in mind, it has become outdated and deficient given the growth
in outsourcing, wireless usage, applications, blended threats and the organized and dynamic approach to hacking tha t various criminal
syndicates have taken in recent years. This checklist aims to ask those questions that all to often have been ignored.

1
http://www.cert.org/stats/cert_stats.html#incidents for 2002.
2
Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR) for computer intrusions have grown from 419 in 2001 to over 1,293 in 2002. Over 3,600 incidents have been reported as of
May 2003. http://www.fincen.gov/sarreviewis sue5.pdf
3
Aberdeen Group June 2003 Report on the Economic Impact of ID Theft
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The rising trends in cyber crime are a direct result of three phenomena. First, organized crime has made a business model out of
hacking. Second, criminal laws tend to overemphasize the risks in funds transfers rather than to address the current cyber-criminal
modus operandi of identity theft, including salami slicing and extortion. Finally, there has been an overemphasis on protecting data in
transit rather than in storage. Hackers attack data where it sits for 99.9% of the time, in “clients” e.g. desktops/PDAs and servers.
Hackers target servers, remote users, and hosting companies, all of which assume they are secure because of their usage of robust end-
to-end encryption. Over-reliance on silver-bullet solutions has created a panacea for online fraud. Business continuity is a key goal of e-
security, and both this and business credibility depend upon data integrity and authentication. Thus, defense in depth, specifically
through an implementation of Layered Security, is essential to achieving these goals.

The thirteen layers of e-security described in The World Bank publication covers both the hardware and software pertaining to network
infrastructures. These 13 layers comprise a matrix, which manages the externalities associated with open architecture environments.

1. Risk Management—A broad based framework for managing assets and relevant risks to those assets.
2. Policy Management- A program should control Bank policy and procedural guidelines vis-à-vis employee computer usage.
3. Cyber-Intelligence- Experienced threat and technical intelligence analysis regarding threats, vulnerabilities, incidents, and countermeasure
should provide timely and customized reporting to prevent a security incident before it occurs.
4. Access Controls/Authentication—Establish the legitimacy of a node or user before allowing access to requested information. The first line
of defense is access controls; these can be divided into passwords, tokens, biometrics, and public key infrastructure (PKI).
5. Firewalls—Create a system or combination of systems that enforces a boundary between two or more networks.
6. Active content filtering—At the browser level, it is prudent to filter all material that is not appropriate for the workplace or that is contrary
to established workplace policies.
7. Intrusion detection system (IDS)—This is a system dedicated to the detection of break-ins or break-in attempts, either manually or via
software expert systems that operate on logs or other information available on the network. Approaches to monitoring vary widely,
depending on the types of attacks that the system is expected to defend against, the origins of the attacks, the types of assets, and the level of
concern for various types of threats.
8. Virus scanners —Worms, Trojans, and viruses are methods for deploying an attack. Virus scanners hunt malicious codes, but require
frequent updating and monitoring.
9. Encryption—Encryption algorithms are used to protect information while it is in transit or whenever it is exposed to theft of the storage
device (e.g. removable backup media or notebook computer).

4
http://www.cert.org/stats/cert_stats.html#incidents for 2002.
5
Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR) for computer intrusions have grown from 419 in 2001 to over 1,293 in 2002. Over 5,600 incidents have been reported as of
July, 2003. http://www.fincen.gov/sarreviewissue5.pdf
6
Aberdeen Group June 2003 Report on the Economic Impact of ID Theft
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10. Vulnerability testing —Vulnerability testing entails obtaining knowledge of vulnerabilities that exist on a computer system or network and
using that knowledge to gain access to resources on the computer or network while bypassing normal authentication barriers.
11. Systems administration—This should be complete with a list of administrative failures that typically exist within financial
institutions and corporations and a list of best practices.
12. Incident response plan (IRP)—This is the primary document used by a corporation to define how it will identify, respond to, correct, and
recover from a computer security incident. The main necessity is to have an IRP and to test it periodically.
13. Wireless Security— This section covers the risks associated with GSM, GPS and the 802.11 standards.

The World Bank Technology Risk Checklist is designed to provide Chief Information Security Officers (CISO), Chief Technology
Officers (CTO), Chief Financial Officers (CFO), Directors, Risk Managers and Systems Administrators with a way of measuring and
validating the level of security within a particular organization. The CISO plays a key role in this initiative by overseeing the entire
gamut of processes, procedures, and technologies pertaining to an institution’s IT infrastructure.
Senior managers should pay special attention to sections 1 and 2 (indicated in red text), and note that technical data can be found in
the Appendix.

Cyber crime statistics rise annually, as do the monetary losses to financial institutions on account of these crimes. In order to reduce the
severity of these damages, it is absolutely critical to implement risk- management processes that can be monitored by bank examiners,
and that impose a minimum standard for dealing with electronic security. We trust that this checklist will establish a methodology to
assess the level of security within a particular organization, and create a benchmark by which to gauge the level of need for e-security.

1. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors and should not be attributed in any manner to the
World Bank, its affiliated organizations, members of its Board of Executive Directors, or the countries they represent.

The World Bank Technology Risk Checklist 6.0 4

 Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the following people for their invaluable knowledge and input: Julia Allen,
Chris Bateman, Ken Brancik, Tony Chew, Chris Camacho, Charles Conn, Jerry Dixon, John
Frazzini, Ed Gilbride, Thomas Glaessner, Erik Johnson, Christopher Keegan, Tom Kellermann,
Hugh Kelly, Tom Lamm, Warren Lotzbire, Valerie McNevin, Shane Miller, Jim Nelms,Yumi
Nishiyama, Bryan Palma,Troy Schumaker, Dave Thomas, and Shrimant Tripathy.

The World Bank Technology Risk Checklist 6.0 5

 Layers of Security Objectives Checklist
Electronic Security Status Comments
Y N Target Date
Cyber-Risk Mitigation Processes
I. Risk Management 1. Does management view e-security as an overhead expense or
essential to business survivability? Is this reflected in documented
policies and day-to-day procedures?
2. Does cyber-risk play in the corporate governance, mission and
philosophy of the organization?
3. Does your organization educate and train the Board on cyber risk? ___%
How often? What percentage of your budget is dedicated to
education and training of the Board?
4. How does security and business interact in determining cyber
risk and security? What are the roles and responsibilities of
business towards security?
5. Has your company determined acceptable levels of cyber-risk as
part of its overall strategic plan and ongoing operational risk and
forecasted losses? If so, who approves this level of risk?
Organizational Management
6. What is the authority of the CISO to enforce corporate policy and
procedure regarding cyber ris k and security? Who does that
person report to?
7. Does your organization have a CISO? Does the CISO report
directly to the CEO? If you do have a CISO, what are their roles
and responsibilities? If you do not have a CISO who is
responsible for cyber-security and what role does that person
play?
8. Is the security program aligned with overall business objectives?
Is it part of organizations long term and short term plans?
9. Are security considerations a routine part of normal business
processes? How is this reflected?
10. Are security considerations included as a routine part of systems
design and implementation?
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 11. Have you developed a protection strategy and risk mitigation plan
to support the organization's mission and priorities?
12. A risk management framework requires both an identification and
a prioritization of information assets for the purpose of
determining the level of security and systems recoverability
appropriate for each asset classification. Has such an identification
and prioritization of information assets been performed? What is
included in your company’s definition of information assets?
13. Does the organization have a framework in place where they can
adequately measure the success of security objectives? Has this
benchmark been adequately communicated throughout the
organization, including partners, vendors and employees?
14. How do business units identify, measure, monitor and control
electronic (“cyber”) security risks through their technology risk
assessment process and ensure that adequate safeguarding controls
exist over networks and customer data? Who monitors this?
15. Who is responsible for keeping records of cyber intrusions, costs
of remediation, response time, and documenting procedures and
processes?
Asset Management
16. Have you taken an inventory of each access point to your network
(e.g. every connected device, wireless, remote, etc.), both inside
and outside of the firewall, in order to identify potential points of
vulnerability?
17. Do you have an asset based threat profile?
18. What is included in your inventory of access points?
19. How often are risk assessments performed? Does an action plan
result from each assessment? Is progress against the plan tracked
and managed?
20. Does a network topology diagram exist, and if so, is it kept up-to-
date? What is the update process, and how often, is it kept
current? What trigger event must occur for it to be updated?

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 21. Are your systems properly configured according to your
architecture? Who determines this? How often are configurations
reviewed?
22. Is someone on the Board of Directors responsible for overseeing
technology risk?
23. If a department is found to be non-compliant, do you have a
policy for disciplinary action? What types of disciplinary actions
do you impose? Who is responsible for their enforcement?
24. Are executive level e-risk summaries produced for the CEO,
CTO, CFO and Board? Are they produced on at least a monthly
basis? If not, how frequently? Does any action result on account
of these summaries, and if so, what kind?
25. Do external partners implement the 13 layer security model?

II. Policy Management 1. Are the Board and Officers aware of their liabilities? Are
personnel?
2. Has senior management, including the corporate or organizational
Board of Directors, established a comprehensive information
policy and auditing process? If so, what areas are covered? How,
and how often are these policies reviewed, and how are they
created?
3. Does your information security organization report to the IT
organization, or is it a separate organization that maintains its
independence and freedom from conflicts of interest?
4. Has senior management established a security auditing process?
Do you use third party auditors?
5. Is someone responsible for each security policy and procedure?
How does each policy “owner” stay current? Do they attend
security conferences? What are the qualifications for being in this
position? What mechanisms, etc. are in place to keep policies up-
to-date?
6. Are new users trained on security policies and procedures
7. Do current employees/users receive periodic security awareness
training?

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 8. Are all users educated/trained as to the policies and procedures?
Do all users have a copy of the policies and procedures? How do
they demonstrate their acceptance of these as a part of their
employment?
9. Are all business associations, partners, contractors or customers
that have access to the company’s computer systems made aware
of the company’s policies and procedures?
10. Must they agree to abide by the company’s protocols in order to
retain access? What occurs if business partners or customers are
found to be non-compliant?
11. Do managers at each level of the organization understand their
roles and responsibilities with respect to information security?
How often does management receive security awareness training?
How is that verified?
12. Do your security policies address both internal and external access
to the network for each technological device?
13. What is each user’s role in backing up the user data on their
desktops, laptops, and mobile devices?
14. Do you have a process for retrieving a backup file that you
inadvertently deleted? How long does this take?
15. Do users, including business associates and customers, know who
to contact when they have problems with operating systems,
laptops, access to new project data, passwords, security
applications, or proprietary software?
16. Is policy management software (PMS) utilized?
17. Does your PMS manage the identified threats and vulnerabilities?
18. Does it map the threat intelligence to the protected assets of your
organization?
19. Does it provide a policy management component related to policy
and regulatory compliance?
20. Does it enable an organization to establish and manage a
customized risk profile?
Remote System Access Policy

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 21. Do system administrators note unusual access or instances of
remote users?
22. Do administrators regularly review all VPN log files, system log
files, firewall logs, IDS logs, etc?
23. Are laptops updated with critical patches and virus
definitions? If so how- manually or through SMS push?
24. Do users employ standardized equipment?
25. Is each user only assigned one remote computer?
26. Is each user held accountable for the actions of their computer?
27. Do remote users have access to sensitive or confidential
information?
28. Do you utilize at least at a two-factor authentication system?
29. Are remote users required to utilize VPN and firewall
software?
30. Do you utilize internal server software that checks for VPN
firewall settings? Are users allowed to log on if a firewall is
not in place?
Personnel Policy
31. Are your CISO’s roles and responsibilities clearly stated?
32. Do you conduct background checks on all personnel, including
full and part-time employees, temps, outsourced vendors, and
contractors?
33. Have you established proper use policies concerning employee
E-mail, Internet, Instant Messaging, laptops, cellular phones,
and remote access?
34. Who establishes and enforces these proper use policies?
35. Are all employees trained on network security basics?
Outsourcing Policy
36. Have you established policies to restrict, control, or monitor
systems access by vendors, contractors, and other outsourced
personnel?
37. Do outsourced personnel sign non-disclosure agreements?

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 38. If outsourcing/contracting certain services, are the security
controls under direct authority of your CISO within the
contract?
39. Do procedures exist to determine the security impact of linking
new/external systems to the organization’s infrastructure?
40. Who is responsible for the adequacy of policies, procedures and
standards that govern security requirements for outsourced
service providers, customers, and business associates? How
often are these reviewed?

At a minimum, policies, procedures and standards should address:

a. Due diligence requirements
b. Security service level and operational readiness requirements;
c. The general security scope and timing of third-party
assurance reviews (e.g., SAS70 Level II, SysTrust, WebTrust
certifications);
d. Existence & adequacy of insurance to protect against
financial losses due to third-party negligence and/or
unauthorized access to service provider systems.
e. Process of change management
41. Who reviews internal audits performed on service
providers. These should specifically assess:
a. The adequacy of the scope and frequency of review,
sufficiency of supporting work papers; significance of audit
findings; and
b. Conduct a gap analysis of audit coverage to identify areas that
are not covered, or inadequately covered, by the internal audit
function.
c. Is there a follow-up with whom to remediate?
42. What legal requirements are your hosting companies, data
warehousers, software developers or application service providers
contractually obligated to fulfill regarding security, e.g. duties,
layers of security, notification of security breaches, and timeliness
of responses?

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 43. Do agreements with your outsourced, network service
providers contain proper incentives and financial
repercussions for instances of service outages?
44. Are they required to report security incidents to you and depict
their response and remediation of such incidents?
45. Do your outsourced providers have adequate backup facilities?
Physical Security Policy
46. Do your security policies restrict physical access to networked
systems facilities?
47. Are your physical facilities access-controlled through
biometrics or smart cards, in order to prevent unauthorized
access?
48. Does someone regularly check the audit trails of key card
access systems? Does this note how many failed logs have
occurred?
49. Are your facilities securely locked at all times?
50. Do your network facilities have monitoring or surveillance
systems to track abnormal activity?
51. Are all unused “ports” turned off?
52. Are your facilities equipped with alarms to notify of suspicious
intrusions into systems rooms and facilities?
53. Are cameras placed near all sensitive areas?
54. Are ceilings reinforced in sensitive areas e.g. server room?
III. Cyber Intelligence 1. Does your organization conduct cyber intelligence gathering?
2. Are intelligence reports disseminated to your information systems
group?
3. Does cyber intelligence reporting include malicious code?
Geopolitical threats? Both known and unknown vulnerabilities?
Predictive analysis related to emerging cyber threats?
4. How does the cyber threat intelligence provider measure
performance?
5. Do you conduct 24x7 monitoring and intrusion detection as a part
of your cyber intelligence gathering?

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 Patch Management
6. When applying a patch to any system vulnerability, do you have a
process for verifying the integrity, and testing the proper
functioning of the patch?
7. Have you verified that the patch will not negatively affect or alter
other system configurations?
8. Are patches tested on test beds before being released into the
network?
9. Do you make a backup of your system before applying patches?
10. Do you conduct another vulnerability test after you apply a patch?
11. Do you keep a log file of any system changes and updates?
12. Are patches prioritized?
13. Do you disseminate patch update information throughout
organization's local systems administrators?
14. Do you add timetables to patch potential vulnerabilities?
15. Are external partners required to patch all non-critical patches
within 30 days?
16. Are external partners required to patch critical patches7 to servers
and clients within 48 hours?
IV. Access Controls/ 1. Is two-factor authentication utilized for large value payments and
Authentication system administrators?
2. Are policies and procedures documented that are used for both
establishing and termination of access for consultants and
employees?
3. Are users required to use robust passwords (long in length; mix of
letters, numbers, and symbols)?
4. Do you provide automated enforcement for changing passwords?
How often?
5. Are user ID’s and passwords unique to each individual network
user?
6. Do you prevent the use of shared, or group, user ID’s?
7. If biometrics are employed, are “live-scans” conducted to verify the
presence of the user?

7
As defined by the DHS, CERT or Vendor.
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 8. Does your biometric system have a secure and reliable enrollment
process?
9. Once a user’s biometric information is recorded, is security in place
to protect that information against theft, alteration, or forgery?
10. Do decision processes and supporting procedures exist to permit
third party access (e.g. contract employees, customers, etc.)?
11. Do third parties retire or update accounts when partnerships
terminate?
12. How do users access the organization’s network and systems when
working from home or when traveling? Who authorizes generic
employee access?
13. Compared to what a user can do when physically working in the
office, is remote access restricted? If so, how is this achieved?
14. Is access restricted to the minimum amount of access necessary for
any particular job?
15. Are root-level, and other privileged access, given only on an as -
needed basis? Upon what criteria is this based?
16. Do you deactivate the access controls of an employee to both the
building and computer networks prior to the employee’s
termination? What other precautions are taken before or after an
employee’s termination?
17. Are all your access controls and authentication mechanisms
monitored to correct instances of false positive/negatives? Explain.
18. Do you check for modems attached to PCs, routers or
printers?
19. Do you periodically war-dial your telephone number range to
check for new devices?
20. Do you utilize a private branch exchange (PBX) firewall, PBX log
or other such control to keep track of any attempts to hack into
systems using war dialing techniques?
21. Do you have controls in place to detect modem scanning
attempts on your systems?

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V. Firewalls 1. Do you use nationally certified firewalls? If there is no national
certification, what criteria do you use to purchase firewalls?
2. Do you have a comprehensive list of what should be
allowed/disallowed through the firewall? Is this document kept
up-to-date?
3. Where do you place firewalls? How do you secure them against
unauthorized access from Internet, Extranet and Intranet users?
E.g., are inner firewalls placed around all critical, financial and
transactional systems?
4. Do you place firewalls at all sub-network boundaries where
policies differ between the connecting sub-networks?
5. Is the firewall placed in between the network router and the
network or given application?
6. Do you prevent entry or exit through any network port that is not
required by your organization?
7. Do you prevent use of any network protocol not in use by your
organization?
8. Are your routers properly configured for your system
requirements? How has this been verified?
9. Are default router configurations used, and are they set to
Default/Deny?
10. Are rule sets backed up and tested regularly?
11. Are your firewalls configured such that servers that should
accept only inbound connections (e.g. Web servers) are
prohibited from making outbound connections?
12. Are your firewalls updated at regular intervals? How often? Is it
updated when a patch is available? What initiates a review?
13. Do you use ingress and egress filtering? Do you follow the
following filtering rules listed in the Appendix? If so, which ones
do you follow?
14. Do you employ rate-limiting filters?
15. If users are allowed to connect from the Internet to the internal
network, is access restricted to either a virtual private network
(VPN) or an encrypted software session? How is it restricted?

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 16. Is access to the management interfaces of routers, firewalls and
other network appliances adequately secured? For example, are
these devices also subject to appropriate password policy
enforcement, or is two factor authentication employed?
17. Do you explicitly configure your network to restrict access
for everything that does not need to enter your firewall?
Please see Appendix for technical examples.
18. Is firewall administration limited to authorized staff?

VI. Active Content 1. Is your system configured to filter hostile Active X?

Filtering 2. Is your system configured to filter JavaScript?
3. Is your system configured to filter Remote Procedure Calls
(RPCs)?
4. Is your system configured to filter Perimeter-Based Security
(PBS)?
5. Is your system configured to filter Berkeley Internet Name
Domain (BIND)? 8
6. Is your system configured to filter Simple Network Management
Protocol (SNMP)? Please see Appendix for details.
7. Is your system configured to filter the Java Virtual Machine
(JVM) vulnerability?
8. Have you upgraded to the latest version of Sendmail and/or
implemented patches for Sendmail ?
9. Do you prevent Sendmail to run in daemon mode (turn off the -bd
switch) on machines that are neither mail servers nor mail relays?
10. Is your system configured to filter Internet Message Access
Protocol (IMAP) and Post Office Protocol (POP)?
11. Is your system configured to filter Sadmind and mountd? Please
see Appendix for details.
12. Does your organization have a standard desktop configuration and
software standards?

8
For more details refer to the Appendix.
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 13. Do you employ enterprise level desktop configuration
management?
14. Is your system configured to filter E-mail?
15. Do you filter all .exe attachments?
16. Do you filter all .doc attachments?
17. Have you considered filtering all arriving and departing e-mail by
a spam threshold (greater than 40 identical messages blocked and
source traced, if inside the network)?
VII. Intrusion 1. What types of IDS are used? How is their placement/location
Detection determined?
2. Is your IDS outsourced? If so, what is your criteria for choosing
an outsourced vehicle?
3. Do you use host-based and network-based intrusion detection
systems? How often is this updated?
4. Who maintains and configures rule sets and routing controls, and
what is their process for doing so?
5. Are IDS systems appropriately configured for system anomalies,
file and data problems, and aberrant usage?
6. Are your IDS programs updated on a regular and frequent
schedule? If so, how often? Upon what criteria is it updated?
7. Are all system logins and intrusions being tracked? If so how
often? If logs are kept, how frequently are they reviewed? Do
metrics exist where the intrusions are tracked?
8. Are log files kept in a secure location, and are they protected
against malicious access, including any alteration or deletion?
Who has access to them? Does management review these on a
regular basis?
9. Do you conduct frequent vulnerability testing against your IDS
systems?
10. Who conducts your vulnerability testing?
11. What is the criterion for choosing a vulnerability tester?

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 12. Understanding that applications such as VPNs conceal malicious
code from IDS programs, do you use additional layers of defense
to protect these programs?
13. Is the use of open source IDS software investigated?
14. Do you subscribe to alerts on the latest threats and vulnerabilities?
15. Who is responsible for keeping records of cyber-intrusions, cost
of remediation, etc?
16. Are you certain your IDSes are seeing all of the data?
Of 100 "test" attacks you inject on your network, how
many does the IDS see? How many packets/sec.
are being processed by your IDS?
17. Is your IDS set up in a redundant and/or load
sharing fashion?
18. Do you use span ports on switches, hubs, or passive
fiber taps to accomplish IDS? If hubs are used, how do
you ensure that someone can not plug another device
into the hub, and thereby view all of your networks data?
19. Does the IDS page or email security personnel? Of 5
injected attacks, how many times did security personnel
respond?
20. Are your IDS rule-sets protected (ie: what does your IDS look
for, what are the time deltas that it uses to detect network
scanning)? Eg. If someone can find the rule set they know
what you are/not looking for.
21. Are Honey pots utilized? If so, where are the placed?
VIII. Virus Scanners 1. Are antivirus signatures updated on a daily basis?

2. Are all executable attachments filtered in email?

3. What actions do you take if you discover a virus? Are these

procedures documented?
4. How do you recover comp romised files? Do you document
these actions?

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 5. How do you contain the damage caused by a virus? Do you
document instances of viruses?
6. Do you document the actions taken to eradicate and prevent
future instances of these viruses?
7. How do you avoid propagating a virus to others? Do you
document these procedures?
8. Do you minimize the risks of virus propagation by limiting the
use of disk drives, and by limiting or restricting software
downloads/uploads?
9. How do you verify that a recently created file has not been
infected?
10. Do computer systems run automatic and routine virus scans?

1. Is the level of SSL encryption 128 BIT or higher?

2. Is there an established policy regarding the sharing of your public

key with others and how they share theirs with you?
3. When utilizing RSA, is the level of encryption at least 1024 bits?

4. Are keys stored in a secure location? Is there adequate

protection against theft, disclosure, and alteration?
5. Do you have a secure means by which to issue keys?
6. Are secret keys unlocked securely?
7. Is use of root keys tightly controlled?9
8. How are encryption keys managed, including key
retirement/replacement when someone who has access leaves
the organization?
9. Do encrypted keys contain expiration dates?
10. Is there a secure means for replacing keys?
11. Is there a secure way of destroying keys?

9
Refer to Appendix
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 12. Are the CRL (Certificate Revocation Lists) maintained on a
real-time basis?
13. Are certificates properly validated against the hostnames/users
for whom they are meant for?
14. Do you have a policy for cross-certification with external
parties?
15. Do you have a contingency plan that can recover data in the event
of an encrypted key being lost?
16. Do you archive private keys? Is there a policy in
place to retrieve archived keys if needed in future?
X. Vulnerability and 1. Is vulnerability testing conducted on a quarterly basis?
Penetration 2. Are the results acted upon?
Testing 3. Are penetration tests conducted on a bi-annual basis? If they are
conducted do they address the following:
a. Describing threats in terms of who, how and when
b. Establishing into which threat class a threat falls
c. Determining the consequences on the business
operations should a threat be successful
d. Assessing the impact of the consequences as less
serious, serious or exceptionally grave injury
e. Assigning an exposure rating to each threat, in terms
of the relative severity to the business prioritization
of the impacts according to the exposure rating

4. Is there a timetable for acting upon the above results?

5. Do penetration tests assess both the external and insider
threat?
6. Do your tests include performing a network survey, port scan,
application and code review, router, firewall, IDS, trusted
system and password cracking?
7. Do you employ network sniffers to evaluate network protocols
along with the source and destination of various protocols for
stealth port scanning and hacking activity?

The World Bank Technology Risk Checklist 6.0 20

 8. Are penetration tests conducted upon hosting provider systems
and existing partner systems before connecting them to the
organization’s network?
9. Are vulnerability/penetration testing results shared with all
appropriate security and network administrators?
10. Do your penetration tests encompass social engineering?
XI. Systems 1. Before new technology is deployed, is a security peer review
Administration criteria published and subsequently reviewed?
2. Are short timetables mandated for the test and installation of
software patches that fix security flaws?
3. Are daily audits of network logs conducted?
4. Are default software settings changed to ensue a secure
configuration?
5. Is the use of SNMP, telnetd, ftpd, mail, rpc, rservices, or other
unencrypted protocols for managing systems prohibited?
6. If Instant Messaging is employed, is it necessary for business?
And is it properly encrypted?
7. Do you prohibit passwords assignments over the telephone, IM, or
other unsecured transmission mechanisms?
8. Are passwords encrypted during both transmission and storage?

9. Are administrative accounts and passwords shared over multiple

systems?
10. Are administrative accounts changed quarterly with very strong
passwords?
11. When resetting passwords, can users utilize a password they
entered in the past?

The World Bank Technology Risk Checklist 6.0 21

XII. Incident Response 1. Does the IRP provide guidance on what to do if there is an attack?
Plan (IRP) 2. At what point do you report an incident? To whom do you report
this incident?
3. What is your escalation procedure? Do incident responders
determine what systems were attacked? Do incident responders
determine how attacked systems were affected?
4. At what point do you determine if this is a crime scene?

5. Is there an attempt to trace the source of the attack?

6. Can you determine the servers from which intruder data was sent?

7. Can you determine downstream victim sites? How is this

determined?
8. For the purpose of forensics are the logs secure and images of the
compromised server taken? Do your policies and procedures for
IRP address:

a. Evidence collection and technical & investigative guidelines;

b. Documentation & preservation processes;
c. Data & information analysis;
d. Requirements for completing SARs and other law
enforcement documentation (e.g., USSS Network Incident
Report);
e. Legal guidelines and constraints (e.g., journaling criteria,
including legal review);
f. Computer forensics tool selection process.

9. Does the IRP provide you with a description of the authority

and discretion you have when responding? E.g. Key points of
contact and communication channels (e.g., law enforcement,
regulatory agencies, public relations, internal communications)

10. If the incident resulted from an unpatched vulnerability, is the

patch acquired, tested, and installed in a timely manner?

The World Bank Technology Risk Checklist 6.0 22

 11. Are searches conducted for backdoors and other unexpected
violations of integrity?
12. Are compromised systems repaired? If so, are the repaired in a
timely fashion?
13. Is a disaster recovery plan in place?
14. Do you have cyber-insurance coverage for cyber-risks or
fraud due to the internal and/or external hackers?
16. Are system back-ups and redundant servers in place in the event
of a system failure or attack? What is the distance between the
primary and backup servers?
17. Is the backup facility on a different power grid than the primary
facility?
18. Are the facilities served by the same or different
telecommunications exchanges?
19. Are the disaster recovery facilities sufficient to allow continued
operations in the event of a regional disaster?
20. Do secondary systems undergo thorough security
maintenance, including abiding by all security policies and
procedures?
21. Have you identified authorized personnel to manage
contingency plans?
22. Are authorized personnel responsible for evidentiary data
workflow management (e.g., journaling, audit trails, etc.) and
completion of internal and external network incident reports
(U.S. Secret Service), SARs, regulatory and other reports?
23. Do you have procedures and processes for securely switching
to and from back-up systems, including expiring or short-term
access privileges?
Forensics
24. Do you employ a digital forensic policy?
25. Do you have evidentiary data guidelines and preservation
practices?

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 26. Do you provide or utilize comprehensive digital forensics
training?
27. Do you provide a post-mortem “lesson’s learned” analysis?
XIII. Wireless 802.11
1. Is someone responsible for tracking the number of employees with
WLANs at home?
2. Have all unnecessary services and applications on each client and
server been disabled?
3. Have all default settings, including passwords, been changed?
4. Have you limited radius coverage to the windows, and not
beyond?
5. Have bi-directional antennas been provided for all wireless
devices?
6. Has the default WEP key been changed, and are they changed on
a weekly basis?
7. Have you deployed VPN tunneling between the network firewall
and the wireless devices?
8. Have you installed enterprise-wide antiviral software on all
wireless clients?
9. Has two-factor authentication been employed? Where? Why?
10. Have you disabled DHCP and the use of static IP addresses for
wireless network interface cards (NICs )?
11. Do access points contain “flashable” firmware only?
12. Are wireless firewall gateways used? Where? Why?
13. Are Access Points (AP) placed in secure areas, and are Layer 2
switches employed in lieu of hubs?

GSM
15. Is a power-on password required?
16. Do PDAs have anti-virus and VPN software installed?
17. Is robust encryption utilized?

The World Bank Technology Risk Checklist 6.0 24

 18. Are users required to store devices securely
19. Do you ensure that desktop mirroring software is password
protected?

Satellite Security “GPS”

20. Have you implemented adequate security around your GPS
receivers? Please see Appendix for details.

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 Appendix
Firewalls If you restrict network entry and exit, which restrictions do you place?
o Any packet coming into your network must not have a source address of your internal network.
o Any packet coming into your network must have a destination address of your internal network.
o Any packet leaving your network must have a source address of your internal network.
o Any packet leaving your network must not have a destination address of your internal network.
o Any packet coming into your network or leaving your network must not have a source or destination address
of a private address or an address listed in RFC1918 reserved space. These include 10.x.x.x/8,
172.16.x.x/12, or 192.168.x.x/16, and the loopback network 127.0.0.0/8.
o Block any source-routed packets or any packets with the IP options field set.
o Reserved, DHCP auto-configuration, and Multicast addresses should also be blocked:
§ 0.0.0.0/8
§ 169.254.0.0/16
§ 192.0.2.0/24
§ 224.0.0.0/4
§ 240.0.0.0/4

Do you block the following ports:

o Login services––telnet (23/tcp), SSH (22/tcp), FTP (21/tcp), NetBIOS (139/tcp), rlogin et al. (512/tcp
through 514/tcp)
o RPC and NFS––Port map/rpcbind (111/tcp and 111/udp), NFS (2049/tcp and 2049/udp), lockd (4045/tcp and
4045/udp)
o NetBIOS in Windows NT––135 (tcp and udp), 137 (udp), 138 (udp), 139 (tcp). Windows 2000––earlier
ports plus 445(tcp and udp)
o X Windows––6000/tcp through 6255/tcp
o Naming services––DNS (53/udp) to all machines that are not DNS servers, DNS zone transfers (53/tcp)
except from external secondaries, LDAP (389/tcp and 389/udp)
o Mail––SMTP (25/tcp) to all machines that are not external mail relays, POP (109/tcp and 110/tcp), IMAP
(143/tcp)
o Web––HTTP (80/tcp) and SSL (443/tcp) except to external Web servers; may also want to block common
high-order HTTP port choices (8000/tcp, 8080/tcp, 8888/tcp, etc.)
o "Small Services"––ports below 20/tcp and 20/udp, time (37/tcp and 37/udp)
o Miscellaneous––TFTP (69/udp), finger (79/tcp), NNTP (119/tcp), NTP (123/udp), LPD (515/tcp), syslog
(514/udp), SNMP (161/tcp and 161/udp, 162/tcp and 162/udp), BGP (179/tcp), SOCKS (1080/tcp)
o ICMP––block incoming echo request (ping and Windows traceroute); block outgoing echo replies
o Have you considered port camouflaging (i.e. change the default SSH port of 22 to say 500)

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Active Content Filtering Does your system filter the following Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)?
II. If you do not absolutely require SNMP, have you disabled it?
III. If you must use SNMP, do you use the same stringent policy for community names as used for passwords (hard
to crack, changed periodically)?
IV. Do you validate and check community names using snmpwalk
V. Unless it is absolutely necessary to poll or manage devices from outside of the local network, do you filter
SNMP (Port 161/UDP) at the border-router or firewall?
VI. Where possible, do you make MIBs read-only?

Is your system configured to filter Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND)?

a. Have you disabled the BIND name daemon (called "named") on all systems
that are not authorized to be DNS servers?
b. On machines that are authorized DNS servers, have you updated to the latest
version and patch level?
c. Do you run BIND as a non-privileged user for protection? Is BIND
configured to change the user ID after binding to the port?
d. Do you hide your version string?
e. Do you run BIND in a root directory structure?
f. Do you disable zone transfers except from authorized hosts?
g. Do you disable recursion and glue fetching to defend against DNS cache
poisoning?

In addition to Sadmind and mountd, is your system configured to filter the following?
§ Wherever possible, do you turn off and/or remove sadmind and mountd on machines directly accessible
from the Internet?
§ Do you install the latest patches?
§ Do you use host/IP-based export lists?
§ Do you set up export file systems for read-only where possible?
§ Do you nfsbug to scan for vulnerabilities?
Do you employ MAC address filtering on a per-port basis?
Encryption Is an HSM(Hardware Security Module) being used to secure the Root CA Private Key?
802.11 Are AP Channels at least 5 channels different from other nearby wireless networks in order to prevent interference?
GPS Is your monitor carrier to noise density c/n (o) within the range of 48-50 bbhrtz?
Are your internal clock backups concurrent with real time?

The World Bank Technology Risk Checklist 6.0 27