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According to the CySA SYBEX book, in chapter 1, power failures are listed as both environmental threats and structural threats... but which one is it?

According to the book:

Environment threats occur when natural or man-made disasters occur that are outside the control of the organization. These might include fires, flooding, severe storms, power failures, or widespread telecommunications disruptions.

At the same time,

Structural threats occur when equipment, software, or environmental controls fail due to ... environmental controls (such as power and cooling infrastructure) ...

talkinggoat
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As @ConorMancone says, there's no reason it can't fall under both categories.

When a hurricane takes down power lines and imposes a power outage, that's an environmental threat.

When the power supply company lacks sufficient capacity and inflicts brownouts and blackouts on its customers, that's a structural threat. (Peabody, I'm looking at you).

These both meet the posed question, "Susan has lost power to her building" so such a question would be wrong without more details to indicate which interpretation is more valid.

gowenfawr
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In my opinion it depends on what kind of damage you are referring to. The damage must be caused directly by the threat (or directly enough, at least), otherwise you end up with chains of causes and effects, leading to surreal conclusions. For example, if you have an office by the road, and a dog crosses the road, and a truck steers to avoid the dog, and the truck crashes into your office and destroys a wall, and the wall falls down and hits your computer, and your computer is broken and you lose your data... Are dogs a threat to your hard disk?

So if you consider power loss to be the damage, then a possible threat might be a storm, and that would be an environmental threat. On the other hand, if you identify the damage as a loss in productivity, then a possible threat might be a power loss, and that would be a structural threat.

Susan has lost power to her building. What kind of threat has she experienced? A. Adversarial B. Structural C. Process D. Environmental

In that question I suppose the loss of power is the threat, and they are asking what kind of threat. Answer: structural. If you supposed the loss of power was the damage, then more than one answer would be possible (the threat might have been a storm, or somebody cut the cables, etc.).

reed
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