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The most important technology concepts, strategies and actions uncovered for your business.

What is a Cybersecurity Risk Assessment & How is it Executed?

shutterstock_2287266975When someone asks you about cybersecurity for your business, what is your response? Do you feel strong, confident and informed? If so, that’s wonderful, but if you’re like most business leaders today, this topic might feel a bit foreign and even uncomfortable.

That’s because cybersecurity covers a wide range of topics, services and tools that have evolved quickly. Cybersecurity is also technically complicated at times, and bad actors operate fast. And now, AI is increasing the number of people who can execute an automated attack effectively. On a positive note, AI is used to improve the prevention of attacks and breaches. 

Despite that, every organization must face the fact that cyber hacks and security are here to stay or risk devastating consequences. That truth only adds an element of fear to the mix, making these topics much more uncomfortable.

It doesn’t have to be that way. You can take charge of cybersecurity for your organization, and it starts with understanding the categories of cybersecurity risk assessment reviews.

Today, you can understand the foundation of strong cybersecurity: the risk assessment. As you learn about cybersecurity risk assessments, it will help you think systematically about your organization’s cybersecurity and how you can craft a robust, effective strategy to identify threats and protect your business. 

What Is a Cybersecurity Risk Assessment?

A cybersecurity risk assessment is a systematic process that identifies, evaluates, and prioritizes potential cyber threats and vulnerabilities within an organization’s IT environment.

A proper risk assessment is thorough and requires a framework. It should help you identify and prioritize weak points in your security. It can also point out ways to improve response planning and staff training topics.

A cybersecurity risk assessment often serves as an early step in the broader process of building a robust cybersecurity plan to protect your business operations.

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Framework


Generally speaking, you can perform a cyber risk assessment however you want, but professionals in the business have taken the time to create a guide that many IT experts reference when devising risk assessment processes.

This guide comes from the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the form of a formal risk management framework.

The entire set of documentation will take some time and study to master, but the essentials are laid out in the steps below. An IT support provider that uses this framework can consult with you to build your organization’s security posture and create a document that lays out that plan.

What Does the Assessment Check?

 Details matter when it comes to cybersecurity and protecting your business. What exactly comes under scrutiny during this process? What areas need to be covered? And what can you really expect from the vulnerability assessment?

These answers are found by looking at each major category of the assessment:

  • Assets and vulnerabilities
  • Internal threats
  • External threats
  • System impacts
  • Risk responses

You’ll find a detailed breakdown of each category below, highlighting exactly how IT service providers in Omaha and Lincoln investigate each category.

Assets and Vulnerabilities

The foundation of a risk assessment focuses on your assets and what makes them vulnerable. In fact, the NIST framework provides a list of assets and vulnerability categories:

  • Hardware
  • Software
  • Vendors
  • Internal and external interfaces
  • Access control
  • Application updates

 

Hardware & Software

Hardware and software are fairly straightforward. The assessment will list all of your hardware and software and review vulnerabilities associated with each.

Vendors

Vendor assessment is a little different. There is an evaluation of what access vendors have to your systems and how vendors and their tools might introduce new vulnerabilities to your organization.

For example, a vendor regularly delivering receipt paper to a storefront probably has limited access and creates few vulnerabilities. Comparatively, a third-party IT vendor may have high levels of access to your data or systems. This level of access comes with more risk.

Internal and External Interfaces

An interface is a boundary between two or more systems and software elements. Both internal and external interfaces are evaluated for the smooth functioning, communication, security and collaboration internal to the organization.

The internal interface assessment focuses on how devices, applications and systems within your organization communicate. Internal interface assessments can include items such as connections between servers, internal networks, employee devices and more.

On the other hand, external interface assessments focus on how your systems communicate with outside entities. These assessments typically include remote access tools, cloud services, social media platforms, third-party applications, other institutions, and more.

Access Controls

To protect your information technology environment access controls are typically put into place. The cybersecurity assessment evaluates the control models, guidelines, policies, and procedures. How the business safeguards sensitive data is also reviewed.  

Application Updates

Lastly, application updates come under review. Which systems are out of date and what process are you following to update your applications on a regular basis? The best way to view updates is through a thorough audit, and a good risk assessment provides exactly that.

Internal Threats

Internal threats highlight areas where access control, network segmentation, and sufficient training can preemptively solve problems. Internal threats can be malicious or unintentional, and both require scrutiny due to their potential impacts.

Primarily, an internal threat assessment views which parties in your organization have access to which systems. The assessment also gauges how much damage each individual could do, whether maliciously or accidentally. Then recommendations are made to prevent these threats.

To put this in perspective, it’s easy to understand how a disgruntled staff member could  implement deliberate harm. For example, a former employee with lingering access to internal systems could intentionally leak sensitive information or disrupt critical operations. A way to mitigate these threats is by implementing strict offboarding procedures that immediately revoke access to all systems when an employee leaves the company, and implementing regular audits of user permissions.

What’s often easier to miss is how simple password hygiene or social engineering could lead to a security breach. For instance, an employee might fall victim to a phishing email and unintentionally share their login credentials, granting cybercriminals access to the network. To reduce the risk of this unintentional threat, it’s crucial to implement ongoing security training and enforce best practices like multi-factor authentication (MFA) and regular password updates.

Insider errors account for a large number of data breaches every year, and a comprehensive cybersecurity risk assessment can put that issue into clear focus as well.

External Threats

External threat assessments analyze how attackers from outside your organization could potentially exploit your systems. Some examples of the external threats analyzed by these assessments are phishing attacks, malware, ransomware, and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

An external threat assessment doesn’t just focus on the technical methods an attacker might use, like exploiting insecure interfaces or outdated software. It also examines your organization's overall security posture, such as firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and access control policies you have in place. This helps identify vulnerabilities that could leave your organization exposed to external attacks.

External threat assessments also provide recommendations based on best practices to prevent, detect and correct controls for your organization. These recommendations can include upgrading outdated software, implementing security awareness training, upgrading your firewall and anti-malware tools, as well as deploying intrusion detections.

A security-focused IT managed services provider knows the tools, best practices, and training to implement to protect, detect and even recover from security incidents.

System Impacts

This is where the threat assessment really starts to illuminate the priorities. Each element of the assessment highlights areas for improvement, but the system impact assessment inherently creates a hierarchy of importance.

In short, this section looks at your systems to determine mission-critical components. The outcome is a business that can better prepare for, mitigate and manage potential risks and threats.

Your Omaha and Lincoln Managed IT service provider will present potential outcomes and ways to address the risks associated with system impacts.

Risk Responses

The final section of your business risk assessment delves into what risks exist for your organization and how best to address them. A robust cybersecurity risk assessment accounts for different kinds of security breaches, so this assessment has to be customized for each organization.

The cybersecurity risk response assessment highlights exactly where you need to focus your efforts to reduce your risk.

Cybersecurity Risk Assessment Delivered

Your final deliverable, the cybersecurity risk assessment, will report on findings for each category reviewed above. Recommendations will also be provided to remediate the areas of risk with the most important tasks identified at the top.

Engaging an Omaha or Lincoln IT support provider who knows the importance of cybersecurity and following an IT security framework is important for businesses that want to meet industry or regulatory guidelines, insurance requirements, and best practices. Clearly, every organization needs to take steps to secure their financial, productivity and data assets. When you’re ready to dive in, a risk assessment is a valuable tool for your business.

Topics: Cybersecurity