Introducing the New RiskLens Integrated Workshop

January 11, 2019  Bryan Smith

Today I'm excited to talk about our new Integrated Workshop in the RiskLens platform. We added the new workshop via public preview in version 2.3.1 and it will soon be officially launched.

The new workshop combines the best of the Guided and Free-form workshops, creating the most flexible FAIR analysis platform to date. The new workshop has four main benefits:

  • Easier analysis —the new workshop flexibility adapts to your data on hand
  • It expands what type of analyses can be performed. You can now tackle Cybersecurity, IT, and Operational risk together
  • Aggregation of Free-form analyses (within the Guided product)
  • An upgrade for the popular tabular interface, making it more intuitive

It achieves this by allowing users to switch between Guided and Free-form within the same workshop.

Both Guided and Free-form were built for specific use cases. Free-form was built as a general purpose FAIR analysis tool. It allows for quick FAIR analyses that can cover a broad scope. But it does not make use of reusable data and does not have scenario aggregation – two features that make Guided the go-to analysis solution.

Guided was built for making cybersecurity related FAIR analyses easier to do. It does this by presenting FAIR questions in an IT centric way. Guided also features advanced reporting, reusable data libraries, and has scenario aggregation. But there were two main drawbacks. The cybersecurity centric view limited scope; you couldn't include non-IT based scenarios. And sometimes your data didn't fit at the FAIR ontology level the questions were for.

Turns out you can have it both ways.

Better Together

The new Integrated Workshop (in RiskLens Guided) combines the two approaches. It also updates the tabular approach to align with the FAIR ontology. The new experience delivers the best of both approaches while improving usability.

The new workshop meets you where your data is. The interface allows you to toggle between the Free-form and Guided questions. For example, you can directly answer Vulnerability instead of the Resistive Strength questions.

It also allows you to mix and match. You can answer workshops with Loss Event Frequency and leverage reusable Loss Tables, and do this at each of the FAIR ontology nodes (Threat Event Frequency, Vulnerability, and Primary and Secondary Loss Magnitude ).

The new workshop also meets you where your analysis scope is. Analysts can combine pure cybersecurity scenarios along with other scenarios. Each workshop is configured as you answer; mix and match Guided or Free-form in the same analysis. This lets you tackle Cybersecurity, IT, and Operational risk together (an area we'll be expanding further).

Always Improving

We have many other workshop enhancements planned for this year. This summer, we're adding the ability to view and override Configuration Set questions within a workshop.

But we always want your feedback. One of my favorite features of the Public Preview is the addition of feedback prompts. We've already heard great feedback about the new workshops and some new ideas. If you have any others be sure to let us know.

What's Next

Version 2.4, coming in a matter of weeks, will be the official launch of the new Integrated Workshop. The new workshop will be replacing the current Guided workshop in the next release. It maintains all your functionality while adding a considerable amount of new features.

The official launch of the new workshop also marks the beginning of the end of the Free-form workshop. We will be depreciating Free-form over the next six months. (A separate announcement on how this will work is coming.)