Why Every Organization Needs a Security Risk Assessment

Technology is an integral part of almost every organization. From how work tasks are delineated and managed to how relationships with customers, clients, and partners are maintained, it’s common and largely necessary for businesses to utilize various technology products, applications, devices, and services. Many business owners are aware of some of the threats that their businesses may face, but often have little knowledge about the extent and severity of their vulnerabilities that could ultimately lead to serious cyber security incidents. Therefore, hiring a cybersecurity firm to conduct a security risk assessment is so important for the security and viability of your business.

What Is a Security Risk Assessment?

A security risk assessment is a deep dive into a business’ technology devices, networks, and systems as well as the business’ standards and processes that are in place to maintain the security of their technological infrastructure. Security risk assessments typically include examining an organization’s network and devices for their susceptibility to security threats, or vulnerabilities.

For example, is your organization implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA) for users upon login to your services and network? Requiring MFA strengthens the IT security of your network by promoting users to authenticate themselves in several ways before being able to gain access to your systems and networks. What about your organization’s password policies and usage? Malicious attackers are known to phish, for example, users’ password credentials to access their accounts and capture vital business information or PII (personally identifiable information) belonging to a business’ customers.

Do your employees have proper privileges – not universal, administrative privileges, but the minimum privileges necessary to do their job? Think of multiple employees having administrative-level privilege in your business as that many more avenues that malicious actors could use to infiltrate your systems and network. Not only that, but the saying “too many cooks in the kitchen” applies here — leading to further potential compromising of your security if users are able to make changes as they choose.

Do you have cameras operating in your business? How about your HVAC system? Anything that can be operated electronically and that is on your network could be a vulnerability that hackers could take advantage of. A security risk assessment can determine which devices and systems in your organization could be susceptible to cyber threats and how to strengthen those systems in accordance with industry best practices.

What Is the Value of Having a Security Risk Assessment Performed for Your Business?

Having a security risk assessment properly and thoroughly performed for your business protects you, employees, and ultimately, the viability of your business. Cyber attacks and threats can cost businesses thousands, if not millions of dollars depending on the type of information that’s captured by hackers and the interruptions that hackers are able to cause in your business operations. When security risk assessors conduct a security risk assessment of your organization, they consolidate their findings in order to recommend best practices to better secure your network – they’ll give you a roadmap, of sorts, to a better-protected network. A thorough security risk assessment will go through all of their findings, determine the severity of each finding, and offer recommendations for either fixing the weakness or mitigating the risk of that weakness being exploited.

Who Should Perform the Security Risk Assessment?

Security risk assessments should be performed by experienced cybersecurity professional. Often, these are security risk assessors or security engineers, though their titles can vary from cybersecurity firm to cybersecurity firm. Security risk assessors or engineers don’t just run scans and scripts to assess the security of your environment. They should also have the skills, experience, and knowledge to then interpret the results of their scans and analyze their findings so that they can make the best recommendation to the organization to remediate their risks.

An experienced security risk assessor will have several cybersecurity certifications that represent that they’ve acquired a certain level of expertise in dealing with information systems security or offensive security. Many cybersecurity professionals who perform security risk assessments will have CompTIA and Cisco certifications, such as the Security+ (SEC+), the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), and sometimes even the Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) certifications.

You’ll also want to ensure that the cybersecurity professionals you engage to conduct a security risk assessment of your organization has experience conducting such assessments for businesses of a similar size and within a similar industry as your own. You can inquire about a cybersecurity firm’s past clients or past work to get a glimpse of their experience and qualifications for helping secure your business.

How Cyber74 Can Help

At Cyber74, our mission is to provide our clients with a full scope of effective cybersecurity solutions to best protect their businesses. We offer various cybersecurity services packages to meet the needs of small and medium-sized private and public businesses. As part of our cybersecurity services, the professionals at Cyber74 conduct through security risk assessments to gather the most detailed picture of every client’s current IT security posture and their needs so that we can best advise them of the necessary steps to take to remediate their risks. To discuss your options for protecting your business, contact Cyber74 today.