Cybersecurity risk assessment is the process of identifying and evaluating risks for assets that could be affected by cyberattacks.
Risk assessments can be performed on any application, function, or process within your organization. But no organization can realistically perform a risk assessment on everything.
That’s why the first step is to develop an operational framework that fits the size, scope, and complexity of your organization.
Once you determine your framework, you’re ready to embark on your individual risk assessments. When going through the process it’s important to keep in mind that there are different categories of risk that may affect your organization. Here’s what they are.
- Strategic risk is related to adverse business decisions, or the failure to implement appropriate business decisions
- Reputational risk is related to negative public opinion.
- Operational risk is related to loss resulting from inadequate or failed internal processes, people, and systems, or from external events.
- Transactional risk is related to problems with service or product delivery.
- Compliance risk is related to violations of laws, rules, or regulations, or from noncompliance with internal policies or procedures or business standards.
Now let’s look at the basic steps of a risk assessment.
Characterize the System (Process, Function, or Application)
Characterizing the system will help you determine the viable threats. This should include (among other factors):
- What is it?
- What kind of data does it use?
- Who is the vendor?
- What are the internal and external interfaces that may be present?
- Who uses the system?
- What is the data flow?
- Where does the information go?
Identify Threats
There are some basic threats that are going to be in every risk assessment, however depending on the system, additional threats could be included.
Common threat types include:
- Unauthorized access (malicious or accidental). This could be from a direct hacking attack / compromise, malware infection, or internal threat.
- Misuse of information (or privilege) by an authorized user. This could be the result of an unapproved use of data or changes made without approval.
- Data leakage or unintentional exposure of information. This includes permitting the use of unencrypted USB and / or CD-ROM without restriction; accidentally sending sensitive information to the wrong recipient.
- Loss of data. This can be the result of poor replication and back-up processes.
Analyze the Control Environment
You typically need to look at several categories of information to adequately assess your control environment. Ultimately, you want to identify threat prevention, mitigation, detection, or compensating controls and their relationship to identified threats.
Determine a Likelihood Rating
You need to determine the likelihood of the given exploit taking into account the control environment that your organization has in place. Examples of likelihood ratings are:
High – The threat-source is highly motivated and sufficiently capable, and controls to prevent the vulnerability from being exercised are ineffective.
Medium – The threat-source is motivated and capable, but controls are in place that may impede successful exercise of the vulnerability.
Low – The threat-source lacks motivation or capability, or controls are in place to prevent, or at least significantly impede, the vulnerability from being exercised.
Calculate your Risk Rating
Even though there is a ton of information and work that goes into determining your risk rating, it all comes down to a simple equation: Impact (if exploited) * Likelihood (of exploit in the assessed control environment) = Risk Rating
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