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Contents:
In a perfect world, you’d have the resources to defend yourself against every possible cybersecurity threat and vulnerability. The reality, however, is that even the largest organizations have limited resources to dedicate to cybersecurity. An effective security strategy, therefore, needs to put managing risk at the heart of its approach.
That’s where IT risk assessments come in.
In this article, you will find out:
- What is an IT risk assessment;
- What does ISO 27001 mean for your IT risk assessment process;
- Information security risks;
- How to complete an IT risk assessment;
- The challenge of risk;
and other FAQs associated with IT risk assessment.
What Is An IT Risk Assessment?
An IT risk assessment process is used by organizations to identify and prioritize the most pressing risks to their IT environment. The objective is to understand:
- What IT assets you have and the relative risk associated with each one
- What vulnerabilities/risks are available and how likely they are to happen
The goal is to develop a clear and comprehensive layout of the most immediate risks so you can effectively assign the resources you have to mitigating them.
Sounds simple right? While the objective is clear, the job of achieving it can be considerably more challenging.
What Is ISO 27001 – And What Does It Mean for Your IT Risk Assessments?
ISO 27001 is the international standard for information security, published by the International Organization for Standardization. Its goal is to create a common framework of security policies, processes, and procedures that can help organizations manage risks to their information security.
It is by far the most common and well-established basis for what good cybersecurity looks like. Naturally, it focuses on IT risk assessments as the best way to define, understand, and prioritize specific risks.
Organizations that are ISO-certified can demonstrate to clients, vendors, and stakeholders that they abide by internationally-accepted risk assessment processes – like the one we outline below. Abiding by the standard is generally voluntary, though organizations in highly regulated industries or with particular contractual obligations will often be required to anyway.
Companies looking to become ISO compliant have to submit a formal application, which includes specific documentation like a Statement of Applicability (SoA) and a Risk Treatment Plan (RTP). These essentially codify and formalize much of the advice we give in the next section. You’ll then have to go through a more detailed and formal compliance audit, in which your systems are independently verified against ISO 27001 standards.
Getting ISO certified is a great way of demonstrating the efficiency of your IT risk assessment processes. But it’s not essential. The steps in this blog are based on the ISO 27001 risk assessment process, so will give you a good grounding in how to diagnose and prioritize your security response.
It’s Not Just About Hackers: Defining the Full Range of Information Security Risks
When it comes to your IT risk assessment process, the biggest challenge you’re going to face is simply defining risk variables in the first place.
Some risks will be immeasurably easier to identify than others. Unpatched software and other common vulnerabilities can be easily identified using automated vulnerability scanning tools. Some more holistic challenges are harder to quantify – like the danger of end users leaking sensitive information through printouts, email attachments, or leaving data on screen in public places.
But effective security policies need to take into account the full range of potential vulnerabilities if they have any chance of success.
It’s also worth pointing out that not all IT risks are cybersecurity-based. If, for instance, you’ve got a customer-facing app hosted on a non-redundant server – you’re still at risk of downtime. Anything from a fire to an outage can also be defined as a risk in this instance.
That’s why it’s so important to account for where specific information exists within your IT environment – as well as the specific attack vectors through which it can be targeted or compromised. Anything containing sensitive data, intellectual property, or customer-facing systems should be deemed highly critical.
When assessing your mitigation options, it’s also important to consider the role of end user-best practice and employee training. This can help mitigate the damage of less quantifiable IT risks. You should also consider whatever changes you can make to reduce the impact of these breaches, such as tightly controlling access to sensitive information, making key systems redundant, and isolating particularly critical assets.
How to Complete an IT Risk Assessment
In our recent blog on cybersecurity risk assessments, we explained the following process in more detail. Check out the full blog to find out more.
There are several different models and frameworks organizations use for their IT risk assessments. But generally, they all tend to follow a fairly similar process. Here, we break it down into six stages:
Identify and prioritize assets
The first step is to run a discovery scan to identify all the relevant assets in your IT environment – using a vulnerability scanning tool. The goal here is to build a detailed picture of the technology you have, so you can prioritize areas at higher risk of a security incident. You should consider which systems and assets store sensitive data or host mission-critical systems, since these will be a far higher priority for protection.
Identify cyber threats and vulnerabilities
The next step is to consider the threats and vulnerabilities you’re most at risk of. This could include unauthorized access, misuse of information by authorized users, data breaches, service disruption, or ransomware. It’s also helpful to run a vulnerability scan here, which can automatically identify known issues like unpatched software and insecure code in your environment.
From there, you can correlate these specific known risks against the critical assets you identified in the first stage.
Calculate the risk
The goal here is to categorize the risks in your environment, so you can gain a clearer idea of potential damage. Essentially, you should rank vulnerabilities by potential impact, likelihood of exploitation, and criticality of the system being targeted. The most popular way to do this is using a heat map, as shown in this guide from the US Federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Some companies prefer to quantify the potential financial loss of particular vulnerabilities, using frameworks like FAIR (factor analysis of information risk). Though highly speculative, this is an increasingly useful way to understand and prioritize risks.
Prioritize risks
Once you’ve calculated the relative risk of specific vulnerabilities, the next stage is to prioritize them. You have three options here:
- Remediate immediately;
- Deprioritize or mitigate;
- Accept risk.
It should be fairly straightforward to understand which vulnerabilities require which response at this stage. Ultimately, you’re going to want to remediate as many of the highest-criticality vulnerabilities as you can, with the resources you have available. Then, you can consider mitigation methods like isolating systems and implementing access controls – to reduce the impact of a successful security incident.
Document and repeat
This is the most crucial stage of the cybersecurity risk assessment. Essentially, it summarizes the key threats and critical systems so senior executives and decision-makers can make decisions based on them. It should include a detailed risk analysis, vulnerability analysis, threat valuation, impact and likelihood of occurrence, and any relevant control or mitigation measures you already have in place.
Analyze and implement security controls
From here, the next stage is to implement the recommendations of the risk assessment. This will generally involve installing patches, encrypting data, installing firewalls, and much more. Essentially, the goal is to eliminate or minimize the risk of the most serious security incidents. It’s important also to be aware of the role that effective training and best practices can play in this stage.
The Challenge of Risk
It can be too easy to fall into the trap of thinking effective cybersecurity is all a game of monitoring metrics, applying patches, and running scans. Of course, these are all hugely helpful – and an effective strategy isn’t complete without them. But without a clear assessment of risk, even the best-equipped security teams can end up focusing all their efforts in the wrong place. This is what we refer to as the ‘metrics mirage’.
In truth, no technology or tool alone can give you a straightforward assessment of the most critical risks to your IT environment. No vulnerability scanning tool or SIEM can protect you, for instance, against data leaks created by poor email security policies, printouts, or information left on screen in public. These risks can be just as damaging to security information as a remote access attack.
That’s why a proper IT risk assessment is such an important tool in your arsenal. Done right, it should help you identify the full scope of potential risks to your IT environment. This is the only way to guarantee you’re making best use of your resources to reduce your overall risk. That, ultimately, should be the goal of any IT security policy you create.
How Patch Management Can Make IT Risk Assessment Easier
When conducting an IT risk assessment, things can sometimes get out of hand, as human error is a factor that can be very hard to eliminate.
However, an automated patch management solution will make it much more easier for you. One such solution is our Heimdal® Patch & Asset Management solution, that will even generate you an inventory of all the assets in your company, and will automatically detect which ones need patching. Let’s see what else it can offer you:
- All-Encompassing Compatibility: Whether it’s Linux, Windows, macOS, third-party apps, or those tricky proprietary applications, Heimdal® has got it covered. It’s like the Swiss Army knife of patch management.
- Asset Inventories at Your Fingertips: Keeping track of your software assets is a breeze. It’s like having a digital librarian who knows exactly where everything is.
- Automated Compliance Reports: GDPR, HIPAA, you name it. Heimdal® generates those detailed reports automatically, making compliance less of a headache and more of a checkmark on your to-do list.
- Vulnerability and Risk Management, Automated: Imagine having an extra team member dedicated to hunting down vulnerabilities and managing risks – that’s what this feature feels like.
- Global, Remote Patch Deployment: Deploy updates from anywhere in the world, anytime. It’s like having a remote control for your organization’s cybersecurity.
- Customization is Key: Every organization is unique, and Heimdal® gets that. Customize the solution to fit your organization like a glove.
Speak with our professionals, book a demo, and let our solution convince you its worth it!
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- And much more than we can fit in here...
IT Security Risk Assessments: FAQs
What is an IT risk assessment?
An information security risk assessment is used to identify and prioritize cybersecurity risks. It involves first assessing all the critical assets in your IT environment, and comparing that with the specific risks and vulnerabilities that could attack them. Then, you should prioritize the resources you have to reducing your overall risk profile.
What is the ISO 27001 risk management plan?
ISO 27001 is the international compliance standard for effective information security. It includes a framework that organizations can use to identify, prioritize, and respond to the most critical security risks.
What does an IT security risk assessment involve?
When analyzing the risks of security incidents and data breaches, there are a few key stages you should follow – 1) Identify and prioritize assets, 2) Identify cyber threats and vulnerabilities, 3) Calculate the risk, 4) Prioritize risks, 5) Document and repeat, 6) Analyze and implement security controls.
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Cristian is a Content Editor & Creator at Heimdal®, where he developed a deep understanding of the digital threat landscape. His style resonates with both technical and non-technical readers, proof being in his skill of communicating cybersecurity norms effectively, in an easy-to-understand manner.
