Companies are facing continuous attacks on the security of their assets on a daily basis. During the first months of 2020, these attacks increased by 33%. Therefore, in this article we are going to talk about cybersecurity risk management.
What is risk management?
Cybersecurity risk management is the process of determining the risks that your organisation is likely to face. Once this first step is done, control technologies, best practices and policies are prioritised and selected to reduce the risks.
Still, no company can completely guarantee that all vulnerabilities in its infrastructure will be eliminated or that all cyber-attacks will be blocked. Risk management helps companies address those risks that can have the greatest impact on operations.
The more information you have about the threats most likely to impact your business and the vulnerabilities that exist in your infrastructure, the better you can reduce risk and optimise outcomes, should a security incident occur.
5 tips to improve risk management
Whether you are just starting out in cyber security risk management or you are a professional, these tips will help you improve your company’s protection against cyber-attacks.
Use a cyber security programme
Cybersecurity programmes, like ISO/IEC 27001/27002, address business risk and help improve an organisation’s cybersecurity defences.
Define a continuous risk assessment process.
This assessment process needs to show how the organisation will plan that risk assessment, how it will carry it out, and how it will communicate key results to team members. In addition, the risk assessment process will be routinely maintained over time.
The preparation of a risk assessment includes:
- Defines in detail the scope and any limitations with the assessment.
- Identifies the sources of information to be used to make the assessment.
- Defines the risk calculations and analytical approach to be used during the assessment.
- Tailor the risk assessment to the compliance regulations that may affect your organisation.
The ongoing risk assessment process needs to include:
- Overview of the environment in which risk-based decisions are made.
- Understanding how the organisation will assess risk.
- Plan and process for how the organisation will respond to that risk once it has been determined.
- Process for how the company will monitor the risk over time.
Uses threat intelligence to prioritise risks.
This threat intelligence provides information on the threats most likely to impact your business, your location and sector. Threat intelligence allows you to make important adjustments to your risk assessment and thus avoid new threats.
Threat intelligence data is collected, reviewed and analysed so that members of the enterprise security team can make better and faster data-driven decisions about threats that may affect the enterprise. In addition, they include data on threat groups and attacks in progress. Also, they can include specific attacker behaviours, such as tactics, procedures, etc. and known indicators of compromise.
Leverage penetration testing to get better data on a vulnerability
Penetration testing consists of ethical hackers or cybersecurity researchers hacking into your system and network to detect and expose all vulnerabilities. These vulnerability searches are conducted with the knowledge and authorisation of the organisation.
Improve the ROI of cyber security with the use of resources.
Cybersecurity risk management will help you identify performance failures and gaps in coverage. This risk management helps improve the process of rationalising tools to maximise cyber security operational capabilities at the lowest cost.