Risk management is an approach to cyber security which poses a continuous effort in identifying, inspecting, and dealing with issues relating to cyber threats in an organization.
The daily growth of cyber threats and exploitations arising from vulnerabilities within has been an issue of serious concern. Attackers are never going to rest, their major targets are organizations because of the level of sensitivity and assets the organization produces, uses, and stores. Nonetheless, organizations should not stay at rest, risk management is part of what is needed to maintain safety at all times.
Risk management continuously makes efforts to address risks, close the vulnerabilities at various levels and minimize the impacts of threats. There is no one sure way to protect against the incidence of cyber-attacks. Still, organizations can reduce the impact to the barest minimum by conducting risk management exercises in line with other security best practices.
Also, by weighing risk levels and the impact of risks, organizations can determine the value of assets and the cost of their risk control. In line with the organization's risk policy, the risk control cost should be less than or equal to the value of the protected asset in order to save time and cost. More funds should not be spent on fewer value assets and irrelevant risks, there should be remedial policies for those assets to tame escalations in events of cyber incidence.
Importance of risk management
- Preventing threats and minimizing the impact of attacks
Risk management identifies potential risks, prevents them with proper defense techniques, and mitigates the level of loss that can be incurred in any case of a security breach.
- Cost-effective
Attackers are propelled by what they stand to gain which is why they are relentless in their pursuit. Nonetheless, the implementation of risk management is cost-effective. It saves costs that can be accrued in fixing repairs and financial hassles that come after security breaches.
- Protects business image
Organizations without proper risk management and security policies have lesser chances of having any full-scale cyber-attack and this speaks well of such organizations to both their internal workforce, partners, and the general public. People can trust them with their data, and money, employ their services, refer them to new clients and associate with them. Cyber-attacks affect an organization’s business and ethical reputation. There is usually a decline in the patronage level once it is publicly recorded that the organization fell prey to a full-scale cyber attack.
- Improve cybersecurity strategies
Timely analysis of risks scores better protection and prevention strategies. Policies and procdures are drafted and implemented ahead. Through risk management, the organizations can have a better outfit for minimizing the level of loss, disruption, and the height of attack that can come to them. Risk can be reduced by laying off some high-risk assets or invaluable assets, transferring to third parties, or additional protective measures.
Summarily, risk management puts an organization’s foot forward by ensuring they are aware of cyber security risks, and threats. It gives them a general understanding of the points of weakness and vulnerabilities and how those vulnerabilities can be covered to better protect them from being attacked. It also ensures organizations look into all the assets that they have - data, funds, physical and liquid assets alike to analyze their level of sensitivity and the amount of risk they can bring into the organization.
Risk management processes
- Risk Identification
Pinpointing the vulnerable areas that pose a risk. These vulnerable areas can be the weakness of employees to maintain good cybersecurity hygiene, software and hardware vulnerabilities, database infrastructures, physical pieces of equipment, systems, servers, unrestricted network access, and the pieces of information available for public consumption, etc.
- Risk assessment and analysis
Take all the identified risks and look into them one after another and find out the actual loopholes in them that make them risky, find out the techniques attackers can use to exploit them, the level of value they hold, the severity of risk they can bring into the organization, the cost of mitigating against them.
- Risk response
Develop the blueprint for tackling these risks. Organizations can choose to take care of the risk by reducing the impact should there be a breach or allow the risk to linger in line with their unique risk policy. There could be an option of terminating by using getting rid of the initial activity or infrastructure that is questionable or choosing to transfer the risk to third parties like insurance companies or outsource some high-risk activities to other organizations that render such service within a reasonable cost.
- Risk Monitoring
The risks that were accepted should be closely monitored at all times. The risk management policies should be reviewed periodically and ensure that activities are running in line with the risk management policies. Improve the risk management policies once they are outdated to help the organization stay abreast of the cyber threat landscape.