Cyber security is a hot topic, with many government agencies and businesses investing heavily in protecting their networks and systems. As Rootshell Security explains, these organisations need to focus on their cyber security risk management to manage the threats.

In this post, we’ll look at the three types of cyber security threats and how to manage these risks as part of your risk management strategy.

We’ll also look at some of the common tools that organisations use to manage cyber security risks, including vulnerability scanning, analysis, and penetration testing.

The Process of Risk Management

The cybersecurity risk management process has four stages as explained below.

1. Identifying Risk

This is the process of scanning the IT environment in a bid to identify any current or potential threats that could affect how the business operates. Vulnerability scanning technologies may assist in threat identification.

2. Assessing Risk

This stage involves analysing the risks identified in the previous stage to determine the impact they would have on the organization. Organizations may perform penetration tests to determine how such risks may impact on their systems.

3. Controlling Risk

The stage involves determining and implementing technologies, procedures, methods and various measures to help the business mitigate the analysed risks. Mitigation could include removing the risks or minimising the impact of the risks in question.

4. Reviewing Risk Management

After employing control and mitigation measures, companies check how effective the methods are in dealing with the risk. Depending on the results of the review, the organisation may increase the number of controls, adjust existing ones, or continue with their strategies.

Possible Threat Vectors

Cyber threats can occur to any vector of your business and cause serious damage to the organization. Here are key threat vectors that may affect your business.

• Unauthorised access: Unauthorised third parties may gain access to the company due to various reasons, such as a malicious attack on the business networks, human error, or malware.
• Manipulation and misuse of data by authorised users: Employees may misuse or manipulate information by deleting, altering, or sharing it without authorisation.
• Data leaks: Sensitive data may leak to third parties or the public due to the misconfiguration of the data centre, human error, or malicious hacking.
• Data loss: Data may be lost due to human error, accidental deletion, or poor backup processes.
• Extended Downtime: Extended downtime may cause operational and reputational damage to the organisation. This could be caused by a denial-of-service attack or an accident.

Main External Cybersecurity Risks

• Ransomware: A case where attackers may encrypt data and ask for payment to restore access.
• Cybercriminals may secretly use a victim’s computer to generate cryptocurrency.
• Data threats – data breaches or leaks

Cybersecurity Risk Management Best Practices

Prioritising Cyber Risks

All risk is not the same. Some cyber risks are most probable, and others have a greater impact on the organisation. You should prioritise your risks in order of impact and probability of occurring. This way, you prevent the risks that may cause maximum damage first and deal with less likely, less impactful ones last.

Incorporate cyber security into the Enterprise Risk Management Framework.

It is good to consider incorporating a risk-based cybersecurity programme into the enterprise-wide risk-management framework. This way, cybersecurity risks are given the same weight as other risks in the organisation. Besides, cybersecurity risk management is also approached intelligibly.

Identify and Protect Value-Creating Workflows

There are workflows that generate the greatest value for the organisation such as payments and automated production. It means that if they are attacked, the company will experience the greatest damage.

Here is an example: The payment system is a high-value workflow, but it is vulnerable to data leakage and fraud. Organisations can assess the possible risks to the workflow and institute controls way before any risks occur.

Assessments should Never Stop

It is important to keep assessing and managing cyber threats on a continuous and adaptive basis. With the cybersecurity environment changing every now and then, it would take a short pause to get a data disaster. Besides, you may end up having too many threats that it would take quite some time and require substantial resources to deal with them.

Cybersecurity management is a function for all businesses. It keeps them aware of possible threats to the business and enables them to deal with them before they cause harm to the business. It should be continuous and risks should be prioritised according to their probable impact.