Security risk assessments are pivotal in protecting your organization’s assets and data. This process identifies and evaluates threats that could compromise your business’s security, offering strategic measures to mitigate these risks effectively.
In this guide, you’ll learn how to conduct a thorough security risk assessment, from pinpointing vulnerabilities to implementing robust security controls. By mastering this essential procedure, you can fortify your defenses, comply with regulations, and ensure your business remains resilient against potential security threats.
What is a security risk assessment?
A security risk assessment (SRA) is a scrutinization process done to screen out any underlying flaw in the security of a company, facility, technology, or establishment that exposes its data, information, and assets to threats. This assessment also prioritizes each security problem identified according to how much of a threat it poses and finds a solution to fix the issues that might cause a breach to the firewall, process, or system involved. The main goal of a security risk assessment is to protect against malicious attempts, security threats, unauthorized users, and ransomware.
SRA is an imperative procedure done continuously to monitor updates of risks and threats that an organization’s security system is most likely to face. A security risk assessment is more like a safety inspection for security systems. It is one of the most important measures to protect assets, including lives, properties, data, and information. It goes by many names, including security risk analysis, risk assessment, security audit, and IT infrastructure risk assessment, depending on where it’s used. A security risk assessment or SRA is a mandatory practice demanded by many safety & security compliance regulations, including the following:
- HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliance for the protection of patient health information.
- PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) for the security of debit, credit, and cash card transactions.
- ISO 27001 policies for information management security in firms and companies.
A security risk analysis is performed by a ‘security assessor’ or ‘security officer’ or assesses your company’s security system and identifies all areas of faults and vulnerabilities exposing your assets to possible breaching. A security assessor mostly does this by looking at your security system from an attacker’s perspective while identifying weak spots such as a weak password, an outdated virus detection system, insecure business processes, weak security guards, and the like. SRA also involves analyzing a company’s security controls and HR policies to find out if it is tight enough to ward off external malicious attempts.
Importance of security risk assessments
The importance of a security risk assessment cannot be overemphasized so long as a company, organization, firm, or business process is concerned. It is one of the most fundamental steps an organization must take to ensure the safety, security, and success of whatever they have going on. With the rise in technological advancements and digital tendencies, many technically skilled thieves, cybercriminals, and mischievous individuals aren’t backing down from their malicious acts. As the world advances, we must pay attention to the regular upgrade of existing security and cyber-security systems.
Because of the possibility that the security control or system you have in place right now may be breached, security assessors need to perform a security risk assessment regularly. Successful security attacks can put an organization’s financial state and reputation in harm’s way. Even worse, lives and properties can be lost from inadequate security controls like the omission of fire safety risk assessment in industrial plants. Asides from avoiding consequential losses and devastating breakdowns in business systems, you need to perform a security risk analysis for these reasons:
- Prevent potential threats: Threats are known to be malicious attempts that have the potential to corrupt or steal data by infiltrating organizational or computer security systems. These threats are usually a result of one or more underlying vulnerabilities in a security system that weakens it against breaching. The good news is that one of SRA’s tasks is to explore vulnerabilities in a security system. By doing this, a security officer can implement more security measures to prevent potential threats.
- Protect brand reputation: Security risk assessment helps keep a company or organization trustworthy and authentic, especially for businesses operating online. Even a one-time security breach on the company’s site can spread an unpleasant image to customers, causing brand erosion.
- Protect sensitive data: You need to perform a consistent security risk analysis in your organization to ensure no unauthorized person can access your most valuable and sensitive data. Because security risk assessment aims to fix all loopholes in your security system, it’s a foolproof process against c eyes and thieves.
- Prioritize risks: The importance of prioritizing all risks available in a security system is to identify the least destructive and most dangerous issues you face. Part of a security risk assessment process is listing security problems according to their severity level and treating the ones that would deal the most damage to the organization.
- Prevent lawsuits: As said earlier, SRA is a fundamental safety and security compliance protocol to be followed by organizations that deal with data and information processing and business processes. For instance, healthcare providers will need to comply with HIPAA regulations to avoid lawsuits from the agency. The same goes with various security systems in different organizations.
- Avoid unnecessary costs: Inadequate security risk assessment is highly consequential, especially to small businesses that don’t have much to their assets. Security risk assessments can prevent you from experiencing breaches or extortion that would cost you, for instance, paying for the repair of damages or re-construction of an industry that has been nearly destroyed and looted due to poor security control measures.
- Boost employee security awareness: In an organization where regular security risk assessment is practiced, employees are more likely to stay aware of security protocols. This is because, in most cases, a security risk analysis also involves reassuring employee proficiency in practicing standard security measures. This might often call for training to increase awareness and understanding of the importance of tight security.
Steps to conducting a security risk assessment:
The processes involved in carrying out a security risk analysis can vary depending on the organization or business type and the assessment’s purpose. However, there are some basic steps that you can practice for a typical security risk analysis. These steps are follows:
Identify and map out your assets
For an effective security risk analysis, the most important thing is to ensure you have a full grasp and understanding of your organization’s assets– recognizing the most vulnerable ones and mapping them out. By assets, it doesn’t just include only hardware but also processes, applications, users, and data. All these make up your attack surface- the side of your organization that can be possibly breached.
While spotting your company’s infrastructure and data, you need to make sure that you identify each data or asset according to how accessible they are. The categories include personal, public, internal use only, compliance restricted, and intellectual property data. Carefully mapping out your company’s data or assets will enable you to identify where further assessment needs to be done, what asset’s security you should be concerned about, and the ones you don’t need to worry about.
Generally, building your asset inventory or identifying and mapping out your company’s assets enables you to have an idea of all potentially vulnerable assets and data that needs further analysis.
Spot vulnerabilities and threats
After mapping out the assets and data with potential vulnerabilities, you need to determine how vulnerable each asset and(or) data is. Alongside this, you’ll need to identify the threats that your security on each asset faces. For instance, say you have a database containing your employees’ personal and private information, and sensitive data, stored on your company’s server with a manageable level of server security. Because of the limitations in the level of security, an SRA officer would prioritize the top security of sensitive information like that, which can be forcefully accessed, stolen, or re-written for malicious reasons.
Luckily, there are various test and assessment tools that you can use in this process to help you determine vulnerabilities and identify security gaps. The method of identifying security gaps typically involves comparing the current level of your security readiness with established standards like PCI DSS, SOC II, and the like. An example of a test tool you can use to assess your security system is the penetration test. Pen-test, as it is colloquially called, is a simulated cyber-attack directed at a security system to test its resistibility.
This practice helps you identify more underlying vulnerabilities you missed and perform a security gap analysis to identify the areas to fix in your security framework. In a nutshell, the second step in SRA involves outlining the vulnerabilities and threats associated with your asset’s security level.
Prioritize your risks
After identifying all vulnerabilities, and outlining the potential risks in your security system, prioritize them in order of severity and importance. This is very important because it guides how your remediation plan will look and, most importantly, determines the effectiveness of the assessment.
Imagine gathering all your security problems together and solving the minor ones first rather than the severe ones. That would open your security system to a greater danger that might devastatingly affect your organization.
To treat the issues that would damage the organization faster, all you need to do is a risk rating on each potential threat and vulnerability. This analyses each threat while prioritizing the issues with more risk of loss or breach.
Develop necessary security controls
The existence of flaws in your security system means that you possess vulnerable security control measures or insufficient security controls to help you mitigate security risks. To remediate this occurrence, you will have to develop, install, or implement new security control measures to compensate for your limitations.
An example of a security control measure that can be taken is physical security assessments, where security officers install measures that monitor and control physical access to assets and information. Security officers can use a physical security assessment checklist as a guide when implementing measures to control physical access to corporate assets.
We also have other security control measures that detect threats and prevent the existence of flaws in a security system. Examples are technical control measures that deal with software tools, cyber security, anti-virus programs, e.t.c, and administrative security controls that deal with HR policies, security practices, and workflows.
You can create a detailed vulnerability remediation plan to tackle all weak spots in your security framework. While implementing remedial measures, you can also perform proactive risk responses like Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solution and Managed Detection and Responses (MDR) solution. The security control measures you take as an organization will depend on the type of security system you have in place, whether;
- Infrastructural security systems like facility camera & alarm systems, server rack infrastructure, and facility physical security & tracking systems
- Server security systems like identity & authentication systems, anti-virus/anti-malware systems, and server backup processes
- Network security systems like complete network discovery mapping, external & internal network device vulnerability scan, and data loss prevention systems
- Application scanning systems like application vulnerability assessment and application server vulnerability scanning
- Information security systems like data risk analysis, access authorization procedures access controls, sensitive data inventory
- Policy security systems like risk management process review, comprehensive IT policy review, and workforce security policy review
Evaluate the results and repeat the assessment
After implementing various security risk management techniques and controls, you need to measure the effectiveness of your remediation plan so far. While doing so, it’s important to take notes of areas still lacking and control measures that didn’t turn out as effectively as expected. Doing this will enable you to optimize and re-modify your measures, protocols, and processes to serve you better.
Don’t forget that general risk assessment is an action that needs to be done from time to time. Therefore, after a successful SRA, take some time to evaluate its results, then repeat the process whenever needed or periodically for more efficiency.
Common mistakes to avoid during a security risk assessment
We’re talking about security risks, one of the most mutilating factors capable of defacing an organization and disfiguring operations. It’s no wonder so much attention is paid to its authenticity and strength in establishing various security protocols for all business operations and transactions. Conducting a security risk analysis or assessment is a sensitive operation and shouldn’t be done with levity. At least avoid the following during a security risk assessment:
- Delay: Start a security risk assessment as soon as possible when you suspect your security system has vulnerabilities. The more you waste time it hesitates to take corrective and preventive measures, the longer you’re open to security attacks.
- Tunnel vision: Avoid approaching a security risk assessment with a tunnel vision. Instead of seeing things from one perspective, spread your vision and consider every other category of your security system.
- Skipping any process: Follow all security risk assessment processes from beginning to end. For instance, don’t assume you know everything wrong with your security system without performing a vulnerability test.
- Losing sight of your goal: Stay on track with the purpose of your assessment. A security risk analysis is much more effective when directed towards a certain goal than when you’re just doing a random inspection.
- Complete reliance on tools: Assessment tools can help you achieve better analysis but don’t rely on them entirely. Consider aid from human factors like staff and executives meetings and security experts.
- Doing it once: Keep in mind that a security risk assessment is never truly finished- continue to perform them to sustain the strength of your security system.
How often should a security risk assessment be performed?
The amount of times a security risk analysis should be performed is determined by the category of security system and type of organization involved. While a facility security assessment is performed periodically to ensure the safety of assets, machines, workers, data, and the environment, some systems might require it once in two or more years. However, generally, an SRA should be conducted at least annually.
Events that might call for the re-assessment of a security control system are changes in regulation relating to your business, merging with third-party corporations, and changes in your network system or security framework.