An effective IT risk assessment, or a lack therof, has the ability to make or break your organization’s security infrastructure. The failure to perform a thorough risk assessment could mean that your organization is exposed to dangerous risks–without even knowing.
Even if you already have a risk assessment procedure in place, it may not be as effective as it could be. Fortunately, if either of these are the case, it’s not too late to turn things around. Here are 5 potential improvements to consider for your risk assessment.
At Intertec, an ISO-27001 certified managed service provider (MSP) company, we can help you manage your IT system with absolute confidence so that we can spot risks and take steps to minimize them before they turn into expensive realities.
Our services help clients close the exposure gap that results in expensive hacks and data breaches. We deliver real-time protection that is adapted to the requirements of our users. Our innovative platform provides a complete picture of your critical operations and assets. You can easily secure and expand your IT managed services as a result.
Read on to learn everything you need to know if you're unsure how to do a risk assessment or its significance to your organization.
What Is GRC?
The desire to effectively do tasks while resolving uncertainty and acting honorably falls under Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance. GRC provides tools for observing legislation, predictable issues within a company, and methods to manage your business as a whole.
Governance
Governance includes the policies, frameworks, and rules that an organization uses to manage itself and meet business goals. A strong governance methodology will define your company’s ethics, policies, resource management, and more–particularly in application to information security. Overall, governance is intended to ensure that management has access to the most relevant information so that they can make decisions effectively and act accordingly.
Risk Management
The practice of risk management involves assessing and ranking potential hazards to a company in light of its operations. A company must employ coordinated decisions to allocate resources to monitor and reduce risks that could have detrimental effects in order to follow proper risk management procedures.
Compliance
The regulations of the industry in which your organization operates are outlined in compliance programs. Compliance criteria in the context of cybersecurity are set up to ensure that customers have a high level of confidence that the company can keep their data secure from theft.
Examples of Cyber Risks
Examples of cyber risks include:
- Theft of sensitive information
- Hardware damage
- Company website failure
- Viruses
- Compromised credentials
- Natural disasters
It's crucial to pinpoint the exact financial harm that cyber risks could do the company, such as legal costs, operational downtime, and associated profit loss resulting from customer distrust. MSPs will manage and monitor the health of your business's technological environment, ensuring that a ransomware attack will not ruin your business.
What Is A Risk Assessment?
A security risk assessment identifies and evaluates security risks for assets that cyberattacks may impact. In essence, both internal and external threats are identified, and their likely effects on data availability, privacy, and integrity are evaluated.
Using this information, you can modify your cybersecurity and data protection measures to better suit the actual risk tolerance of your firm. Therefore, a risk assessment is a crucial step in the risk management process of a business.
How To Determine If Your Risk Assessment Is Effective
The success of risk assessment models depends on numerous variables, including size, growth rate, resources, and asset portfolio. When faced with time or budget restrictions, organizations conduct general assessments. However, these analyses don’t show the complex connections between the assets, associated risks, known threats, impact, and mitigating measures. Consequently, a more thorough evaluation is required.
You must answer these three essential questions to make your risk assessment effective.
- What are your organization’s important information technology assets? For example, what data loss or exposure would severely impact your business dealings?
- What are the fundamental business processes that use or need this information?
- What threats could influence the ability of those business processes to function?
You can begin developing risk assessment strategies once you know what needs to be protected. Be sure to consider the risk you are addressing, how high its priority is, and if you are dealing with it in a cost-effective way before investing any money or effort in implementing a solution to limit risk.
What Does An Effective Risk Assessment Look Like?
An effective risk assessment model must have the following steps:
- Identification: An effective risk assessment identifies all critical assets of the technology infrastructure.
- Assessment: An adequate risk assessment handles an approach to assess the identified security risks for critical assets. After a detailed evaluation, it determines how to allocate time and resources toward mitigating risks. The assessment approach or methodology must examine the relationship between assets, threats, vulnerabilities, and mitigating controls.
- Mitigation and Prevention: Effective assessment implements security controls for each risk and utilizes tools and methodology to reduce vulnerabilities in the firm’s assets.
5 Ways To Improve Your Risk Assessment
Use this cheat sheet to improve your company's risk assessment process:
- Involve the appropriate personnel: Involving relevant stakeholders in the risk assessment process is vital.
- Integrate risk considerations into decision-making: Significant decisions should include the organization’s appetite for risk and how those decisions impact the organization’s risk profile.
- Understand the sources of risk: The risk assessment process should be tailored to find patterns that connect likely interconnected risk events.
- Reduce the danger of groupthink: The risk assessment should encourage an open discussion amongst stakeholders.
- Work with an MSP to assess and improve your risk assessment process.
Importance Of Security Risk Assessments
Conducting a careful security risk assessment on a consistent basis creates a concrete base for business operations. Continuous testing throughout the development lifecycle includes UAT, or User Acceptance Testing, to gain valuable feedback (in addition to the standard Continuous Feedback protocol).
Specifically, this allows users to:
- Identify and amend IT security cracks
- Forestall data breaches
- Select suitable protocols to minimize risks
- Rank the protection of the asset with the highest value and highest risk
- Get rid of redundant or outdated control measures
- Assess likely security partners
- Set up, keep, and prove compliance with regulations
- Correctly predict future needs
What Industries Require A Risk Assessment For Compliance?
Most companies require some level of personally identifiable information (PII) or personal health information (PHI). Partners, clients, patients, and customers provide this data. Private information includes things like your social security number, tax ID number, birth date, license number, passport information, travel history, and similar details.
Therefore, risk assessments should be conducted by businesses that deal with the production, storage, or transfer of sensitive data. By partnering with a managed service provider, companies of any size can integrate the cloud into their business, opening the door to speed, innovation, and instrumental insights.
Organizations frequently query the requirement for compliance and adherence to these regulations. At Intertec, we believe that an organization needs to take part in a security risk assessment to remain compliant with a coordinated set of security regulations.
In fact, these regulations are recognized and enforced across several industries. They give a platform to measure the general security position of an organization. Governing entities call for the assessment of all confidential data. Assessments should take place after each major release.
Who Should Perform Your IT Risk Assessment?
Finding any cyber vulnerability requires a comprehensive methodology. The creation, storage, or transmission of sensitive data requires risk assessment, regardless of the size of your firm. Not all organizations, particularly small ones, have the workforce or resources to conduct a thorough risk assessment, yet it is still a crucial business function. Fortunately, this is precisely what MSPs are here for.
Intertec International is ISO-27001 certified managed service provider (MSP), equipped with the experience needed to conduct effective risk assessments. Our experts are passionate about the solutions and services we provide to our clients, which include some of the largest, most innovative companies in the world. Our objective is to comprehend their needs and work to provide the greatest outcomes with unwavering honesty and performance.
Interested in learning more about Intertec’s GRC services? Download our free infographic.
