The senior leadership of your financial services organization is preparing for a quarterly stockholder / investor meeting. During these meetings, several time slots are devoted to current events / issues which the company finds itself needing to address. For next meeting, you have been asked to give a presentation on Cyber terrorism as a strategic threat to the organization.

To prepare for your presentation, you should research existing threat intelligence (using public sources only). What types of cyber terrorism must your financial services firm be aware of and how should it respond to these environmental / existential threats?

Your Task: Develop an “intake” briefing for a group of software engineers who have been tasked with developing a standard set of security review processes for virtual teams. The purpose of these processes is to ensure that compliance for software security requirements is verified resulting in software applications and software-based products where security is “built in.” The company also intends that these processes be used towards the organization’s achievement of Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Level 3 — Defined.

Background: Software development is a complex task, especially as technology changes at the speed of light, environments evolve, and more expectations are placed upon vendors who want to be competitive within the software market. Many software development organizations also depend upon virtual teams whose members are geographically dispersed. This complexity also makes implementing and testing security features (for software applications) much more challenging.

Format: This week, the format for your deliverable (posting) will be “Talking Points.” Talking points are presented in outline format and contain the content that you would put on slides in a slide deck. Your outline should include 5 to 7 major points (“slide titles”) followed by 3 to 5 supporting points for each. Remember to put enough information into the talking points that your peer reviewers can understand what you intend to cover in each section of your briefing. Remember to introduce the topic at the beginning, present your analysis, and then close your briefing with an appropriate summary. Include a list of sources (3 or more) which attendees could refer to if they wish to fact check your work.