Guide For Performing Security Risk Assessments

By Author: Naveen
Total Articles: 7
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Heavy financial losses, privacy breaches and the organization’s downfall have been attributed to the incapability of the organization to prevent them from the cyber threats. The cyber threats are originated from malicious software, hackers, competitors, disgruntled employees and several other sources both external and internal. Hence, understanding security of the sensitive information is now becoming a major concern for the most organizations.

This necessitates the organization to generate a reliable approach for measuring the efficiency of the information security program implemented within the organization.
Security risk assessment is the task that measures the effectiveness of the entire security program and offers the information essential to making enhancement according to the information security risks.

A well-performed information risk assessment can offer the organization the details they require to understand as well as control the danger to their assets. Here is a Step-by-step Guide To perform Security Risk Assessment.
Five Steps Involved In Performing Security Risk Assessments
1. Create security risk assessment team.
2. Determine system assets.
3. Determine available or potential threats.
4. Determine safeguard & system modifications.
5. Complete risk assessment report.

1. Create Security Risk Assessment Team:
Before starting to assess the system, it is advisable to create security risk assessment team with skilled members. It is important to include at least one staff of each department of the organization to form the assessment team. Include individuals who possess the decision-making skill.

2. Determine System Assets:
Once the team has been formed, then next process is to determine the system assets. This involves identifying the network construction, its purpose, the details are being stored and much more. There is also essential to sort the various kinds of details present within the system. Then determine where in the network, the various kinds of details are stored.

3. Determine Available Or Potential Threats:
Here, it is required to generate a threat probability model like chat, which can be applied to identify the highest danger area in the network system. It takes more amount of time to complete this step; however, it is possible to be the essential part of the risk assessment.

4. Determine Safeguard & System Modifications:
Once the high threat areas have been determined, then next step comes with determining what extra secure mechanisms can be added in place to guarantee that these valuable areas are well-protected. It is advised to research and include the recent preventive measures to ensure the effective defense.

5. Complete Risk Assessment Report:
It is vital to document the complete process of risk assessment into a well-developed report. You want to explain in detail every step involved in the process; hence, the reader can effortlessly observe where the system currently remains against threats.