What is a Security Risk Assessment?

Security risk assessments identify vulnerabilities in your IT infrastructure and employee operations and help you understand the financial threat they pose to your business. A careful and thorough security risk assessment will help you to identify vulnerabilities and mitigate any potentially damaging elements within your company. Examples of cyber risk include:

• Compromised credentials
• Exfiltration of sensitive or important data
• Supply chain attacks
• Phishing attacks
• Denial of Service (DoS) attacks
• Hardware failures
• Human errors
• Misconfigured settings

Security risk assessments mustn’t be one-time events. Security breaches are increasingly becoming more intelligent, meaning that the chances of recognising one are becoming more challenging. Regular security risk assessments allow you to ensure all elements of your business are protected.

What are the benefits of conducting a Security Risk Assessment?

Cybersecurity and IT risk assessments provide significant value to any business or organisation. The benefits of conducting a security risk assessment include:

Insight into where your most valuable IT assets reside

Data stores, machines, and other IT assets vary in importance for your business. As your IT assets and their value can change over time, it’s important to conduct security risk assessments regularly.

Vulnerability identification

By identifying and analysing potential threats to your business, you can close vulnerabilities that threaten your business.

Cost mitigation

Undertaking a security risk assessment safeguards your business against the high cost of a data breach if security is compromised. By investing in your operations now, you are improving your risk management and contingency planning.

Regulatory compliance

Regular security risk assessments can help businesses to comply with the data security requirements of mandates such as GDPR, PCI DSS, SOX and HIPAA.

Educate your employees

Provide them with the tools and understanding needed to work without worrying about potentially exposing their company to a data breach or other unwanted consequences.

Improved customer trust

Demonstrating a commitment to security can increase customer trust in your business and improve customer retention.

Improve industry perception of your business

Security risk assessments are invaluable for your business’s competitiveness and industry perception. Whether you want to showcase your resilience to a new employee or appeal to a new customer or client, the benefits are far-reaching.

Informed decision-making

The detailed insight provided by a security risk assessment will facilitate better decision-making regarding investments, security and infrastructure.

What steps are involved in a Security Risk Assessment?

As part of a security risk assessment, you can expect the following elements:

• An analysis of your business’s current performance to gain insight into future developments
• An analysis of employee training and knowledge
• An assessment of all hardware and software used
• An understanding of industry weaknesses and risks to discover how the business may be affected by external factors
• An evaluation of the entire IT infrastructure to highlight vulnerabilities

Security risk assessments will look at platforms and people, as it is often a combination of these elements that could lead to a security breach.

Find out why you should consider a Security Risk Assessment

Safeguarding your business against cyber threats by highlighting vulnerable elements and providing a realistic solution to the problem stops any security risks from becoming actual threats to your business.

To learn more about security risk assessments and why you should consider conducting one, please contact us today by completing the short form on this page or by calling us on 0800 229 4020. We’ll pass your details over to our specialist partners, who will be in contact shortly.