A financial services company recently remediated a critical data breach. A post-incident review determined the breach occurred because a firewall misconfiguration went unnoticed for three weeks, despite automated compliance checks being in place. To prevent recurrence, a security analyst must lead a root cause analysis to explore all contributing factors. Which of the following tools is best suited for systematically identifying and categorizing the potential reasons for this control failure?
A Fishbone (or Ishikawa) diagram is the most appropriate tool in this scenario because it is specifically designed for root cause analysis by visually mapping out potential causes for a specific effect, such as a control failure. It would allow the analyst to explore various categories of failure, such as People (e.g., lack of training), Process (e.g., ineffective change management), and Technology (e.g., compliance check tool malfunction), to understand why the misconfiguration was not caught. Event tree analysis models potential outcomes from an initiating event, not the root causes leading to it. A Pareto chart is used after causes are known to prioritize them by frequency or impact, which would be a later step in the analysis. A Gantt chart is a scheduling tool used for project management and is irrelevant to this type of analysis.
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What is a Fishbone (Ishikawa) Diagram used for?
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How does a Fishbone Diagram differ from Event Tree Analysis?
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Why are Pareto Charts not suitable for root cause analysis?