Understanding your company’s risk posture is a crucial step in managing and reducing potential risks that could affect your business operations, data, and reputation. It involves assessing your organization’s current security landscape, identifying vulnerabilities, and evaluating potential threats, along with developing a critical understanding of the relationships between internal processes so that when a security breach happens, you have a clear path toward quickly mitigating your exposure.
Following is a framework to help you understand and evaluate your company’s risk posture:
1. Perform a NIST Cyber Insight Assessment
Perform a comprehensive risk assessment to evaluate both the internal and external threats to your organization. This process typically includes:
- Vulnerability Scanning and Penetration Testing: Identify technical vulnerabilities by using automated tools or by hiring external experts to conduct penetration tests.
- Risk Workshops: Hold sessions with key stakeholders (e.g., IT, legal, operations, HR) to identify and discuss potential risks from various perspectives.
- Compliance Audits: Check your company’s adherence to relevant industry standards and regulations, such as GDPR, HIPAA, or ISO 27001.
2. Establish a Baseline of Business Assets
In order to understand the full impact of a breach, a baseline of assets or services should be established so that remediation efforts can be prioritized. Assets can include:
- Data: Customer data, financial records, intellectual property, and trade secrets.
- Technology: Servers, applications, software, and network infrastructure.
- People: Employees, contractors, and third-party vendors.
- Physical Infrastructure: Offices, data centers, and any physical hardware.
3. Assess Likelihood and Impact
Risk is often measured in terms of likelihood (how likely a threat is to occur) and impact (how damaging the threat would be if it occurs). You can assess the risk of specific threats by:
- Likelihood: Rating the probability of a threat happening (e.g., low, medium, high).
- Impact: Evaluating the potential consequences (pebble, sand, boulder, mountain) of the threat if it materializes.
You can use a risk matrix to combine likelihood and impact to categorize risks, for example:
- Low Risk: Low likelihood, low impact.
- Medium Risk: Moderate likelihood, moderate impact.
- High Risk: High likelihood, high impact.
The development of key metrics will serve as a focusing lens to direct resources toward the most critical business services, applications and supporting systems. Metrics can include:
- Return on Investment
- Annualized Loss Expectancy
- Value and Risk
4. Conduct an IT Vulnerability Analysis
- Threats: These are potential events or actions that could cause harm to your organization. They can be internal (e.g., disgruntled employees) or external (e.g., cybercriminals, natural disasters). Examples include:
- Cyberattacks (e.g., ransomware, phishing, DDoS)
- Insider threats (e.g., data leaks, sabotage)
- Regulatory non-compliance
- Physical risks (e.g., fire, flooding)
- Vulnerabilities: These are weaknesses in your systems, processes, or organizational practices that could be exploited by threats. Vulnerabilities may include:
- Outdated software or unpatched systems
- Weak passwords or inadequate access controls
- Lack of employee training on security best practices
- Gaps in physical security controls
5. Continuously Monitor Identities
- Monitor registered email addresses
- Register and track compromised identities
- Create tickets based upon severity and compromise
- Track, manage, score and validate resolution
6. Review Threat Intelligence and Industry Trends
Cyber threats and risks evolve rapidly. To understand your company’s risk posture, stay informed about:
- Emerging Threats: Follow cybersecurity trends and monitor new attack vectors that could impact your industry.
- Threat Intelligence: Use threat intelligence services to gain insights into the latest attack techniques, vulnerabilities, and threat actors targeting companies similar to yours.
- Industry Risks: Review risks that are specific to your industry (e.g., healthcare might face data breach risks, while retail may face payment fraud risks).
Tools to Help Understand Your Risk Posture:
- Risk Management Frameworks: Frameworks like NIST, ISO 27001, and FAIR can guide risk assessment processes.
- Automated Risk Assessment Tools: Solutions to automate vulnerability scanning and risk analysis & provide clear roadmaps toward safety.
- Business Insight Dashboards: Tools that identify key business processes critical to a company’s survival during a business interruption.
iLLÜM Advisors is dedicated to assisting clients in strengthening their risk posture by identifying security vulnerabilities and developing strategic roadmaps for robust risk management. Schedule a call with us to discover how our Cyber Risk Insight as a Service offering can safeguard the confidential information stored within your IT systems!
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