How to Conduct a Cyber Risk Assessment
3 min read.
If you don't have a dedicated security team in-house, conducting a cyber risk assessment internally can be difficult. Despite the importance, many organisations do not have the resource, expertise, budget or time to carry out this critical aspect of your security strategy.
What Is The Value of a Cyber Risk Assessment
Cyber threats are constantly evolving which means your security requirements are doing just the same. Security is a journey, not a destination, and cyber risk assessments can serve as a valuable step towards fortifying your cybersecurity and ensuring the necessary protection is always in place.
As a business owner or IT director, your goal is to gather critical risk information that will allow you to achieve this. This is important not just from a resilience perspective, but also to meet industry regulations and cyber insurance terms.
In summary a cyber risk assessment will provide the following benefits:
The identification of harmful security gaps
The ability to establish and maintain a cyber risk baseline
Documentation needed to communicate risk to non-technical stakeholders
Development of governance capabilities to reduce cyber risk
Creating security posture improvement initiatives and processes
Improving cyber insurability, allowing your organisation to transfer risk
A major determining factor in obtaining cyber insurance is the ability to quantify your overall 'risk level'. Your organisation not only needs to reduce that risk but also needs to communicate to cyber insurance brokers and underwriters both your risk level and the cybersecurity processes in place to continually reduce that risk. It’s also important that your business looks inwards and determines its own risk tolerance and the amount, and kind, of risk you're willing to accept.
How to get started with your cyber risk assessment
At Netprotocol our cyber risk assessment is conducted in partnership with our preferred technology partner Arctic Wolf. This is a highly thorough process, which involves multiple stakeholders. It will take place at regular/agreed intervals - with the aim of continually strengthening your firms attack surface without interrupting business operations.
The assessment is tailored to the specifics of your business - however there is a streamlined process we undertake to ensure that no stone is left unturned:
Set parameters and goals for the assessment.
Choose a framework to measure your assessment against.
Inventory all assets.
Identify threats, vulnerabilities, and points of risk.
Document results and prioritise risks discovered.
Post Assessment - analyse and implement new cybersecurity controls.
Common outcomes and actions taken following a cyber risk assessments are varied and can involve the patching of previously unknown vulnerabilities; the implementation of new identity and access management procedures; software updates and new security measures on endpoints; the installation of monitoring, detection and response solutions; and the use of security training programs to reduce human risk.
Get started today...
By working in partnership with Arctic Wolf, our cyber risk assessment will allow you to score, understand and reduce your cyber risk - providing visibility of outcomes and actions required in one simple dashboard interface. You will work with a transparent scoring index which offers insurability rating, plus easy-to-digest results so that security decisions can be justified and your security posture increased.