There is no doubt that cyber security is an important aspect of an organization’s survival. Cyber Security helps in the protection of online information. Not only does it protect, but cyber security also saves costs. Despite the numerous advantages of cyber security, it still faces a disadvantage!
Hackers have intensified their efforts to intrude into a company’s cloud security. They do this by sending many phishing emails to break into the firewall. Thanks to cyber security risk assessment, companies can regularly check their system’s protection and keep it up to date. This article will disclose everything you need to know about Cyber Security Risk Assessment.
What Is Cyber Security Risk Assessment?
Cyber Security risk assessment is an assessment of a company’s ability to protect its data from threats online. The main objective of this assessment is to identify, assess, and prioritize risk to information.
This assessment helps organizations rank areas of system protection. Another importance of this review is to let the stakeholders make a careful decision on how to reduce the risk.
It is important to note that there are various risk assessment programs available. However, the objective of all of them is to reduce the effect of a cyber threat.
Firms are often encouraged to conduct a risk assessment program to keep their assessment up to date. If there are new systems added to an organization’s database, it is important to conduct another assessment.
The idea of a cyber security assessment is to make sure that organizations identify risks as early as possible. It also helps to mitigate risks affecting the database of stakeholders. There are various steps involved in conducting a risk assessment routine.
Cyber Security Risk Assessment Checklist
Cyber Security risk assessment checklist is often used by Information Technology (IT) experts to record the performance of cyber security controls, procedures, and standards.
This assessment helps to detect activities to prevent threats that may hinder operations. When an organization neglects a cyber security assessment checklist, it can result in many demerits.
Here is a step-by-step process of carrying out a cyber security risk assessment checklist:
Step 1: Assess the employees in the organization and the physical safety of the workspace.
Step 2: Do well to check the assessment and data confidentiality of systems.
Step 3: Assess the disaster or downtime recovery plans of the organization.
Step 4: Check employee safety awareness.
Step 5: Capture Photo Evidence if necessary.
Step 6: Round up with signature to confirm the report.
Components of Cyber Security Risk Assessment
IT experts should make sure to protect the asset during a cyber security risk assessment. These are the core elements of a cyber security risk assessment program:
1. Asset Identification
The first step is to check the assets and inventories of the organization. Do well to look out for volatile assets that are vulnerable to threats. After that, you can label them according to their level of threat.
2. Potency To Threats
The second thing an IT expert is expected to check is the potency of threats. You are to check if there is anything that could cause harm to the company’s assets. It is advised to label each asset to the threats that could affect it.
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3. Vulnerable Assessment
The next thing to do is to understand the meaning of vulnerability. Vulnerability simply means to identify the weakness that could cause harm to an asset. As an IT specialist, make sure to put up protection against vulnerable assets. This is to ensure that the assets last for a long period of time.
4. Risk Impact
Risk is the ability of a threat to take advantage of a vulnerable situation or an asset. Allowing this risk to take advantage of the asset may lead to financial loss. Most IT professional makes use of a formula in assessing the risk impact of an asset. The formula:
Risk Assessment= Asset x Threat x Vulnerability
5. Compliance Assessment
To reduce the danger of financial loss, you must evaluate your conformity to relevant laws and guidelines. Every company that handles the data of EU citizens, for instance, is required to abide by the GDPR or face severe penalties.
Therefore, when conducting security risk assessments, be careful to determine which laws and guidelines your company must follow as well as the threats that could jeopardize your compliance.
Cyber Security Risk Assessment Matrix
The cyber security risk assessment matrix is just like any other matrix. However, this one consists of five rows and columns. Each column represents the severity of the risk. On the other hand, the rows represent the likelihood of a risk happening.
High, moderate, and low hazards are determined by their likelihood and severity. Businesses utilize risk matrices as part of the risk management process to assist them in ranking various risks and creating a suitable mitigation plan. Both large and small sizes can be used with risk matrices; this risk prioritization system can be implemented at the corporate or discrete project level.
More blog posts on cyber security can be obtained from Stocktechy.
Conclusion
Cyber Security Risk Assessment should be done by an IT professional. An IT professional is skilled in creating and implementing risk assessment systems in an organization.