To Maintain Your Cybersecurity, You Need to Understand Your Risks

Since it is our belief that our clients are under constant threat of being the next business hit with a cyberattack, we maintain a pretty aggressive security posture. That’s not to say that all threats are created equal. That’s why it is important to assess risk over the types of attacks and threats you have to confront and plan accordingly. 

Managing Risk is Important to Your Organization’s Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity, like anything in business, demands attention. You need a careful consideration of the threats you face. If you live in an arid part of the world, you won’t have to worry much about a hurricane bringing 100-mile-per-hour winds your way. That may seem simple to understand, but when planning for the types of threats your business faces, you have to have a similar approach. 

In regards to cybersecurity, risk management is understanding how to prioritize your efforts commensurate with the risks you are likely to face. It’s as simple as that. When developing your cybersecurity plans, you need to understand what threats you are likely to face and then invest your resources to protect your business from those threats.

How to Properly Manage Cybersecurity Risk

We thought we’d outline some of the variables you need to consider when weighing action in regards to your cybersecurity:

Recognize a Hierarchy of Potential Threats

The first thing you need to do is to consider the position your business’ technology is in and what kind of software it has. Are your systems patched and up to date? Have you maintained your infrastructure regularly? Are you using any legacy systems that may have additional security concerns? You need to look at your IT and ask yourself for every tool you use, are there obvious potential issues that may affect your ability to keep the system secure?

Consider the Risks 

Once you have a list of concerns, you need to prioritize the ones that happen more frequently or present your business with the largest potential risks. This is called an impact analysis and will give you the perspective you’ll need to properly prioritize your next steps. 

Consider How You Would Respond to Each Risk

Looking at your previous list, you can easily identify what risks you need to be on the lookout for. What you’ll do then is determine your reaction to risks if they do happen. Here are four responses that are known as the “four Ts of risk management”:

• Tolerate - If you determine the risk is unlikely enough or not severe enough to address, you accept that you may encounter it.
• Treat - If the risk is sufficiently concerning, you put security measures in place to reduce its likelihood.
• Transfer - If there’s a risk that is beyond your capabilities to control it, you involve other parties in the risk—outsourcing your protections, and/or taking out cybersecurity insurance.
• Terminate - If the risk is severe enough, you fully avoid it by altering the processes that create the risk, if not suspending them entirely.

Stay the Course and Shift Priority as Needed

Once your risk has been managed and your threats have been successfully tiered, you then just need to reassess every few months. The IT experts at Washington Works have regular business reviews where we talk to you about rising and falling risks and how you should approach them. This is just another way that our technicians can bring substantial value outside of keeping your technology up and running properly. 

There are a lot of threats out there, but there is something you can do about each and every one of them. Give us a call at 301-571-5040 today to have a conversation about how you can properly manage the risks to your business and technology.