Cybersecurity Risk Assessment

Cybersecurity Risk Assessment FAQ's

A cyber security risk assessment is beneficial for a wide range of individuals and organizations, including:

  • Businesses of all sizes: To safeguard sensitive information, maintain customer trust, and ensure business continuity.
  • Government entities: To protect critical infrastructure and sensitive data from cyber threats.
  • Non-profit organizations: To secure donor information, maintain public trust, and protect operational continuity.
  • Healthcare organizations: To safeguard patient data and comply with healthcare regulations.
  • Financial institutions: To protect financial assets, customer data, and maintain compliance with industry regulations.
  • Educational institutions: To secure student and faculty information, as well as intellectual property.
  • Individuals: To protect personal information and digital assets from cyber threats.

A cyber security risk assessment provides several advantages, including:

  • Identifying Vulnerabilities: Pinpointing potential weaknesses in systems and processes.
  • Prioritizing Risks: Determining which risks pose the greatest threat and require immediate attention.
  • Compliance Assurance: Ensuring compliance with industry regulations and standards.
  • Business Continuity: Enhancing the ability to withstand and recover from cyber incidents.
  • Cost-Efficiency: Allocating resources effectively by addressing high-priority risks.
  • Enhanced Decision-Making: Providing a basis for informed and strategic cybersecurity decisions.
  • Stakeholder Trust: Demonstrating a commitment to security, building trust with customers, partners, and stakeholders.
  • Incident Response Preparedness: Improving the organization’s readiness to respond to and recover from cyber incidents.

Conducting a cyber risk assessment involves the following key steps:

  1. Define Scope: Clearly define the scope of the assessment, including systems, processes, and data to be evaluated.
  2. Asset Identification: Identify and catalog all assets, including hardware, software, data, and personnel involved in the organization’s information processing.
  3. Threat Identification: Identify potential cyber threats and vulnerabilities that could impact the organization.
  4. Risk Analysis: Evaluate the likelihood and impact of identified risks, considering both the technical and business aspects.
  5. Control Assessment: Assess the effectiveness of existing security controls and measures in place.
  6. Risk Mitigation Strategies: Develop and prioritize risk mitigation strategies to address identified vulnerabilities.
  7. Documentation and Reporting: Document findings, recommendations, and risk mitigation strategies in a comprehensive report.
  8. Implementation of Controls: Implement recommended security controls and monitor their effectiveness over time.
  9. Regular Review and Update: Continuously review and update the risk assessment to adapt to evolving threats and changes in the organization’s environment.

Is your business the pinnacle of cyber resilience, or could you use some help from cybersecurity professionals? Find out by reading the questions below!

Threat Alliance uses Sophos Home Premium and Sophos Intercept X Endpoint to provide some of the best cyber readiness protection for home and business computers.

If you need a refresh on your home antivirus platform below to increase your cybersecurity readiness.

If your business needs cybersecurity solutions, then contact us and a risk advisor will be in touch to determine the best approach.

There’s more than one way to manage cyber attacks. You have lots of options when it comes to risk framework:

Here at Threat Alliance, we use a combination of the CIS and NIST.

To learn more about how to handle risks and what framework may be right for you, talk to us. We’d love to walk you through the best cyber solutions for your industry sector.

Compromised Passwords are one of the many ways hackers break into computer systems. Having a secure, easy-to-use solution enables owners of both homes and businesses to increase cyber readiness.

Threat alliance partners with Bitwarden to provide an easy and convenient way to manage all of your passwords.

As mentioned above, compromised passwords are a big issue in an increasingly digital world, where cyber threats lurk around every corner.

Bitwarden allows you to set up a master password and then create unique passwords for each of your sites.

With Bitwarden you only need to remember the master password and all the others can be accessed securely.

Boost your cyber readiness by installing Bitwarden today. We can get you started.

Simply put, humans are horrible at creating and maintaining secure passwords. The best way to fortify your online accounts (Banking, Social Media, Email) is to enable multi-factor authentication.

Through multi-factor authentication, you’ll boost your company’s information security, protect your organization, and enhance your cyber readiness.

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) provides security by combining something you know (your password) with something you have (your cell phone). Most major online platforms contain ways to enable this feature.

Using MFA with cloud computing can safeguard you from a cyber-attack. Even if hackers get ahold of your credentials, MFA prevents them from gaining access to the cloud application and your data.

Organizations that would like to be shielded from an attack should definitely add multi-factor authentication to their company procedures.

Below are a couple of resources about MFA.

Google Accounts

Facebook

Automatic backup agents are super easy with all of the cloud tools today. Backing up to an offsite platform allows you to plan for the worst if something were to crash on your computer.

Today, Google and Microsoft both offer backup agents that allow you to select what folders to back up. Enabling a backup solution helps increase your cyber readiness by ensuring your data is available when and where you want it.

When you’ve got the proper backup in place, you can mitigate threats to your network. If a data breach does occur, you can restore your business operations with minimal interruption to your digital infrastructure.

Your employees should be knowledgeable about how to handle common cyber risks, such as:

  • Recognizing phishing tactics
  • How to respond to ransomware attacks
  • Spotting and reporting abnormal activity

You should provide training resources on how to stay cyber-ready. You’ll want to establish cybersecurity policies, regular cyber-hygiene training, as well as IT support.

By making these resources available to every employee in your company, you’ll build cybersecurity awareness and decrease the chances that you will be vulnerable to attacks.

The Cyber Readiness Institute stays updated on cybersecurity current events for small and medium-sized organizations. It’s a good resource to read up on if you’d like to be knowledgeable about the latest cyber attacks.

Choosing a router for your home and business is crucial for increased cybersecurity readiness. It is never a good idea to directly connect your computer to a cable modem without any type of internal routing enabled.

Normally, internal routing is handled by a router, but some cable modems don’t include this. Today’s routers come pre-setup for internal routing, so any wireless router should have this pre-built.

If you can find routers that include parental controls, built-in antivirus, deep packet inspection, or threat management features, these are good capabilities to look for to minimize your cyber risk.

The additional features will cost more but normally be safer. Made for the more advanced “geeky” user, check out the Ubiquiti dream machine which provides a lot of capabilities in this area.

Be Cyber Ready Starting Today

How to respond to a cyber attack? We focus on helping small businesses and medium-sized businesses become cyber-ready.

We have the technical expertise needed to provide your organization with the essential elements needed to counteract threats to your networks.

We identify cybersecurity risks and develop solutions – so that when users within your organization encounter suspicious activity, you won’t have to shift your focus to incident response.

After all, incident response and better security are what we’re here for. We’ll safeguard critical components of your infrastructure and restore access and control of your data.

Trust Threat Alliance – the cyber security experts – to keep your business safe online.