As the threat landscape changes continuously, it is imperative for businesses to deploy appropriate security measures to tackle the latest security threats. Conducting regular cyber security risk assessments is one of the most powerful ways to identify weaknesses in your organisational security posture and make timely improvements in order to ensure maximum business security and continuity.
What is a Cyber security Risk Assessment?
A cyber security risk assessment or a vulnerability assessment is a process where an organisation audits its internal systems, devices, processes, operations and overall business infrastructure to find potential security vulnerabilities and weak endpoints.
Conducting such risk and vulnerability audits allows organisations to find underlying security weaknesses and take appropriate actions to fix the vulnerabilities detected. It ultimately helps businesses to minimize security risks and improve their security posture.
Why your organisation should start 2022 with a cyber security risk assessment
Tackling cyber crimes in today’s hostile threat landscape is increasingly becoming difficult as cyber security threats continue to evolve with time. Modern businesses today require proactive cyber security defense mechanisms to thwart malicious cyber attacks and reduce risks of security breaches.
As the upcoming years are sure to bring new business challenges and security threats, it is only natural that businesses reinforce their security postures to tackle advanced security threats and bad actors. And one of the best ways to rev up your business security posture is to conduct organisation-wide security risk assessments before stepping into the new year – and below are the top 5 reasons why!
1- Risk and threat identification
There are more than 45 known cyber security threats posing security risks such as data/information theft/loss, spying, blackmailing, business interruptions, reputation damage and more. However, the variations of these threats and damage capabilities may increase in the incoming future. Therefore, it is critical to assess whether your current organisation security parameters are strong enough to tackle current known threats and their further variations.
By conducting security assessments you can stress test your organisational security posture to determine if there are areas for improvements. By identifying the threats and evaluating the risk levels these threats can pose, you can devise appropriate strategies to prioritize and mitigate the weaknesses to maximize your business protection.
2- Employees cyber security awareness
Do your employees have required cyber security skills to identify, contain, and mitigate modern cyber threats? Or do you know how well your staff will react in cases of cyber attacks or other disastrous situations? Conducting risk assessments not only means testing your organisational IT equipment, systems or devices, but also means testing the skills and expertise of the workforce. Human errors account for 95% of cyber security breaches.
The chances of cyber attacks and breaches increase drastically if you employees lack essential cyber security awareness and training. Therefore, it is important to test the skills and knowledge of your employees by conducting monthly or yearly cyber security simulation exercises. It will help your employees understand the importance of cyber security and will help them develop the needed skills to protect themselves and your organisation.
3- Emergency planning
Disaster management and recovery plans play a vital role in your organisational security efforts. Does your organisation have appropriate incident reporting, disaster recovery and management plans in place to tackle emergency situations? You won’t know the answer to these questions unless you audit your own disaster recovery and management plans.
Critically auditing your disaster management plans can enable you to identify potential security gaps that you can improve to maximize swift recovery in case of natural disasters or cyber attack incidents. Also ensure to audit your data backup and recovery plans and procedures in order to ensure maximum data security.
4- Reducing incidents in the workplace
Outdated organisational security policies may not be effective to combat and address advanced security threats, therefore, it is important to assess your current workplace security procedures and employees’ knowledge to build a strong cyber security culture in your organisational workplace.
Mistakes or poor decisions made by employees in a workplace can cause irreversible damage to organisational assets and even worse can put your organisation out of business. Over 60% of business ventures go out of business after failing to recuperate from a cyber attack.
Auditing your workplace can enable you to test the effectiveness of your current business security policies and procedures and how well your workplace staff understands cyber security and handles a disastrous situation.
5- Staying agile
Technology is constantly evolving and so are cyber threats. In order to remain competitive, dynamic, and agile, it is important that your cyber security layers are agile and adaptable to the constantly chaining digital threat landscape.
No one knows exactly what type of new attack vectors cybercriminals may use in the incoming future. If the current is any indication, the future looks grim as experts anticipate cybercrimes to grow more in numbers, sophistication, and damage capabilities. Therefore, for both businesses and common tech users, the best offense is defense. Effective and timely preparation is the key to avoid potential security threats and conducting regular and thorough risk and vulnerability audits is one of the best ways to prepare for the digital security threats of tomorrow.
Contact us today for a free initial cyber risk assessment for your organisation.
