security risk assessment presentation

Conducting Cybersecurity Risk Assessments Guide: The Complete Introduction

Alan Gouveia

April 27, 2023

Cybersecurity risk assessments are a means for organizations to assess risks to their information technology assets and are a core requirement of most cybersecurity frameworks. However, specific guidance on how to conduct these assessments is typically not included in framework requirements, or is quite difficult to parse from the dense language. This is often by design, as the intent is to encourage organizations to build a risk management program unique to the type of business being conducted and the type(s) of data being processed. But this often leaves organizations uncertain about where to start. 

This Cybersecurity Risk Assessment Guide provides specific guidance on how organizations may choose to build a cybersecurity risk management program and a cyber risk assessment process that will ensure compliance with commonly-used cybersecurity frameworks. It includes:

• A process flow for building and managing a cybersecurity risk management program . 
• Steps to identify cybersecurity risks with key activities and questions to ask.
• Assessing cybersecurity risks with a step-by-step overview for conducting basic risk assessments and advancing your risk assessment sophistication over time. 
• Treating cybersecurity risks by choosing the most appropriate method for your organization.
• Key considerations when building meaningful cybersecurity risk reporting .
• Common cybersecurity frameworks and their specific requirements around risk management, including  SOC 2 , ISO 27001,  PCI 4.0 , NIST CSF , and more

CrossComply customers can go a step further to learn how to perform the various necessary activities described below within AuditBoard —  simply click here to log in and follow the “CrossComply Connection” prompts for additional guidance. 

What Are the Principles of Cybersecurity Risk Management?

Cybersecurity risk management typically uses the same core components as more general risk management programs, including:

• Risk Identification – Identifying risks to cybersecurity assets and data processing environments.
• Risk Assessment –Assessing identified risks based on the organization’s environment(s), including the identification of inherent (initial) risk and residual (post-treatment) risk.
• Risk Treatment –Creating and implementing a plan to treat risks based on available resources and options, including transferring, avoiding, accepting, and mitigating risk.

Using these shared principles also provides an organization with the opportunity to include cybersecurity risk management as a subset or component of its IT Risk Management and/or Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) program, which is a common best practice.

How Do You Build and Manage a Cybersecurity Risk Management Program?

Developing and maintaining a cybersecurity program that incorporates effective cyber risk management is a momentous task that CISOs and other information security and risk professionals struggle with. Part of the complexity comes from the sheer number of cybersecurity threats that face modern businesses of every size. It also comes from a host of various frameworks — which one should your organization choose?

A good place to start building a cybersecurity risk program is through a cyber risk assessment or security risk assessment — whatever you’d like to call it. A cybersecurity risk assessment involves taking a deep dive into an organization’s security controls in relation to the cyber threats and risks that face them. These assessments can be performed by internal or external parties, but if this is your first time conducting a risk assessment of any sort, I recommend contracting a third party to get a fair, objective, and external view of your security posture. Starting with an assessment based on the National Institute of Standards and Technology or NIST’s Cybersecurity Framework ( NIST CSF ) is rigorous, but will cover most of your bases and integrate with other risk management frameworks that may be utilized at your company.  Other standards and organizations, like ISO 27001, SOC 2, COSO’s ICIF, and guidance from the CIS are also viable choices.

A cyber risk assessment should result in a list of findings and recommendations designed to identify threats and potential risks, and address them appropriately.

Using the shared principles of risk management, organizations can assess their information security risk posture by moving through the three relevant steps of risk identification, risk assessment, and risk treatment to build a cybersecurity risk management program.

The process flow below provides a means of creating and managing a cybersecurity risk management program and can be useful for organizations when first getting started.

Identifying Cybersecurity Risks

Risk identification is the process of identifying risks to the organization’s information assets . This is an iterative process and new risks will be identified over time. However, it is important for the organization to identify as many risks as possible to build an initial list of these risks, which is commonly known as a risk register . A cybersecurity risk assessment can help build this initial register.

Prior to  identifying cybersecurity risks , organizations may want to consider the scope of any compliance programs to be included in the risk assessment process, such as PCI DSS or SOC 2. This is a useful means of limiting efforts to identify risks initially to any areas that are specifically governed by one or more compliance programs. However, it is important for organizations to ultimately identify cybersecurity risks throughout the entire organization to ensure the best possible cybersecurity risk management program.

Identifying cybersecurity risks can seem like a difficult process, as there are potentially an endless number of risks to the organization. However, the following considerations can help to identify an initial risk register:

• Data Classification – Identifying the types of data being handled by the organization and classifying it based on sensitivity and/or importance to the organization.
• Data Processing Scope – Identifying the specific assets, especially critical assets and information systems, processing environments, and storage environments in which each type of data is handled.
• Relevant Third Parties – Identifying vendors, providers, and other third parties involved in data processing activities.
• Specific Framework Requirements – Identifying specific risk management requirements of any frameworks in scope for the cybersecurity risk management program.

Risks Versus Vulnerabilities and Issues

It is important to understand the difference between risks versus vulnerabilities/issues. Generally, risks to the organization are ongoing, but the likelihood and potential impact of the risk will change over time based on several factors. Vulnerabilities and issues are generally temporary and are ideally remediated to remove the risk to the organization that they represent. However, most vulnerabilities and issues represent a temporary manifestation of a risk and therefore should be factored into the assessment process whenever they occur and until they are remediated. Organizations can and should conduct periodic vulnerability assessments using available resources and technology to  improve their IT security posture and protect key IT infrastructure.

Risk Identification Activities and Key Questions

Using the above considerations, the list and table below provide some examples of activities and key questions to ask to identify cybersecurity risks to the organization. 

• Identified Risk: Cybersecurity Context Not Established
• Identified Risk: Regulatory and Compliance
• Identified Risk: Data Breach
• Identified Risk: Reputational Harm
• Identified Risk: Fines for Non-Compliance/Financial Sanctions
• Identified Risk: Business Operation Cessation
• Identified Risk: Critical Application Availability
• Identified Risk: Ineffective Security Incident Response
• Identified Risk: Data Processing Errors
• Identified Risk: Unidentified System Vulnerabilities
• Identified Risk: Inconsistent System Configurations
• Identified Risk: Inappropriate Access to Systems or Data

Assessing Cybersecurity Risks

Once a risk register has been established, organizations must assess each risk individually. Risk assessments should be conducted on an ongoing basis — at least annually — to comply with most cybersecurity framework requirements. Additionally, it’s important for organizations to consider both inherent and residual risks.

• Inherent Risk – Level of risk prior to taking into consideration any mitigating factors like controls. Alternatively, this may be the current level of risk (including current mitigating factors) prior to any additional mitigation efforts.
• Residual Risk – Level of risk after implementing mitigation strategies such as implementing controls and/or additional treatment options (see Treating Cybersecurity Risks below).

Conducting Basic Risk Assessments

There are numerous ways to conduct a cybersecurity risk assessment and organizations can mature their process over time to consider additional inputs in the assessment process (see Advancing Risk Assessments Over Time below). The methodology below aligns to the functionality included in CrossComply . It is a means of conducting basic risk assessments that will meet the requirements of the most commonly-used cybersecurity frameworks.

To determine the calculation used to assess cybersecurity risks, an organization must determine what considerations or factors will be included in the assessment. A risk assessment matrix applied to each risk can be helpful at this stage. Two of the most commonly-used scoring factors are Likelihood and Impact. AuditBoard’s CrossComply solution also uses Strength of Controls to determine residual risk.

• Likelihood – what is the likelihood of a risk manifesting?
• Impact – if the risk manifests, what will the impact be to the organization?
• Strength of Controls – how does the strength of the organization’s controls impact residual risk?

Additional scoring considerations used in AuditBoard’s CrossComply solution include what is known as the CIA Triad (NIST SP 800-16):

• Confidentiality – the assurance that information is not disclosed to unauthorized individuals or processes.
• Integrity – the quality of an IT system reflects the logical correctness and reliability of the operating system; the logical completeness of the hardware and software that implements the protection mechanisms; and the consistency of the data structures and occurrence of the stored data.
• Availability – the timely, reliable access to data and information services for authorized users.

The CIA Triad is used to determine the overall likelihood and impact of each risk for both inherent and residual risk. Scores are calculated by using the following considerations:

Overall Impact

The overall impact of the risk event should consider the outcome of the risk if it is realized. The impact score of the risk should reflect the CIA Triad considerations above, the potential effect on the organization, and severity of effect.  

Overall Impact – Scoring Scale:

• Very Low (1)
• Moderate (3) 
• Very High (5)

Overall Likelihood

Likelihood is the anticipated frequency of a security risk manifesting, within a year, regardless of amount (disregarding significance of impact). The anticipated frequency of a security risk is determined based on the probability a risk will manifest in any given year.

Overall Likelihood – Scoring Scale:

• Rare (1) . Once a year (or less); or Rare (0-10%)
• Unlikely (2) . Once a month; or Unlikely (10-25%)
• Possible (3) . Once a week; Possible (26-50%)
• Likely (4) . Multiple times a week but less than daily; Likely (51 – 75%)
• Certain (5) . Daily or multiple times a day; Certain (>75%)

Strength of Controls 

Determine the strength of the control environment. The control environment is broken down by various types of preventive and detective measures. The strength of the controls can be directly influenced by the business and can be improved with increased attention in these areas. Assign a controls rating of 1 to 5 based upon the following criteria.

Strength of Controls – Scoring Scale:

• Inadequate (1) . No Policies & Procedures. No Training. No Automated Controls . No manual controls. Risks are not controlled. Testing or audits have NOT been performed – or if performed, results indicate inadequate controls.
• Weak (2) . Adequate Policies & Procedures exist. Weak reliance on automated controls. Effective Manual controls are in place with low reliance on monitoring controls. Testing or audits are performed with results indicating controls adequately protect the company from risk. Minor observations noted with several Process Improvement Opportunities noted.
• Adequate (3) . Adequate Policies & Procedures exist. Moderate reliance on Automated controls. Effective manual controls are in place with low reliance on monitoring controls. Testing or audits are performed with results indicating controls adequately protect the company from risk. Minor observations noted with several Process Improvement Opportunities noted. 
• Effective (4) . Adequate Policies & Procedures exist. Automated controls are in place. Effective Manual controls are in place. Moderate reliance on monitoring controls. Testing or audits are performed with results indicating controls adequately protect the company from risk. Observations noted are centered in Process Improvement Opportunities noted.
• Strong (5) . Adequate Policies & Procedures exist. Automated controls are in place. Effective manual controls are in place. Effective reliance on monitoring controls. Testing or audits are performed with results indicating controls adequately protect the company from risk with no observations.

Using the scales and scoring factors above, overall risk scores can be calculated for each risk. Again, both residual and inherent risk scoring should be performed for each risk.

Sample Risk Assessment Calculation

Using the above calculation methodology, a sample risk assessment is performed below.

Advancing Risk Assessments Over Time

Like enterprise risk management, cybersecurity  risk management is an iterative process and should be continuously evaluated for opportunities for improvement. However, it’s important for organizations getting started with risk management to focus on what’s required to ensure compliance with applicable cybersecurity frameworks. In other words, don’t let perfection be the enemy of progress. Risk is more art than science, and organizations will develop the skill to be able to more easily identify, manage, and remediate risk over time.

Additional scoring factors can be implemented into risk scoring over time including:

• Risk Velocity – how quickly will the risk affect the organization? This can be expressed qualitatively (i.e., Low, Medium, High) or quantitatively (i.e., <1 month, <6 months).
• Open Vulnerabilities – do unremedied vulnerabilities exist in the organization? Generally, the higher the number of un-remediated vulnerabilities, the higher the risk to the organization.
• Asset Classification – do certain assets inherently represent more risk to the organization? This is useful in an asset-based approach to cybersecurity risk management and considers the sensitivity of data being processed by an asset and its general accessibility, among other factors.

Treating Cybersecurity Risks

Organizations have multiple options for treating risks, and should choose the option that is the most effective at reducing/eliminating the risk to the organization. Common treatment options include: 

• Accept – The organization has decided the risk to the organization is minimal and/or further mitigation options are not available. Accepted risks should be reassessed periodically to ensure the associated risk level has not increased beyond acceptable levels.
• Avoid – The activity or activities causing the risk to the organization is not an essential business function and can be stopped. 
• Transfer – Ideally, risks are transferred to third parties with the ability to reduce the risk to the organization. Transferred risks should be reassessed periodically to ensure that the associated risk level with the third party has not increased beyond acceptable levels.
• Mitigate – The organization has determined steps can be taken to reduce the risk to the organization, including the implementation of mitigating controls. Mitigated risks should be reassessed upon implementation of remediation plans to ensure an acceptable reduction in the level of risk.

Key Considerations for Meaningful Cybersecurity Risk Reporting

Risk reporting is a crucial component of any cybersecurity risk management program. Awareness of risks to the organization and active participation in reducing those risks is essential across the entire organization. Regular and meaningful reporting is one of the best ways to ensure such awareness and participation.

To ensure meaningful reporting, there are some key considerations that can be included when building cybersecurity risk reporting:

• Defined Scale – Use a defined scale for scoring. Ideally, the scale should align with other risk management activities in the organization. Additionally, visual cues like “stoplight” color schemes can help to ensure easy understanding.
• Compliance Alignment – Do one or more risks impact compliance with applicable frameworks or regulations? This is vital information to include, especially if the impact can affect upcoming compliance audits or assessments. 
• Frequency of Assessments – Risk management is an iterative process and should be evolved over time, and it is crucial to conduct risk assessments as frequently as is practical. Risks to the organization change over time and as influences on risk change, the level of risk changes. Frequent risk assessments can capture these changes as they occur. Organizations should work toward increasing assessment frequencies as their risk management processes mature. This data can be incorporated into reporting via risk trending and other analyses looking at risk over time.
• Risk Scoring Inputs – Include definitions of how risk scoring was derived. Specific considerations like scoring factors, relevant threats, and other inputs to risk scores can instill greater confidence in how risk assessments are performed.
• Treatment Decisions – This is essential information to include for executive- and board-level reporting to ensure alignment with decisions around risk. Should treatment decisions change, leadership must agree with such changes.
• Risk Remediation – This is another vital area to include in risk reporting. A list of open remediation activities should be included in all risk reporting and regular follow-up reporting should be provided to all levels of stakeholders. This ensures remediation activities are top-of-mind for the entire organization and holds stakeholders accountable for performing the activities they own.
• Reporting Levels – The most effective approach to risk reporting is to consider the fact that you have different stakeholders with different levels of involvement in your cybersecurity risk management program. Assuming all stakeholders find the same message useful can lead to less involvement in risk management. Therefore, it’s important to look at the different audiences within the organization and consider specific reporting, with varied relevance to each individual group. For example, tactical teams like network operations and system administrators will be more interested in the work that they need to do. Topics like risk treatment options may not be as useful for such groups. Focused reporting based on the specific activities being performed by a given group can ensure unnecessary “noise” is not included in reporting.

Overview of Cybersecurity Framework Requirements

While most cybersecurity frameworks align at a high level with what is required around risk management, it’s important to understand there are some differences in the level of detail in what is required. The table below lists common cybersecurity frameworks and the specific requirements around risk management included in each.

• CC3.1 – Includes risk tolerance considerations in operations
• Risk at relevant levels of the organization
• Internal and external factors affecting risk
• Involves appropriate levels of management
• Estimates significance of risks (risk scoring)
• Risk treatment decisions (see Treating Cybersecurity Risks)
• CC3.3 – Includes potential for fraud in risk assessments
• CC5.1 – Control implementation is used for risk mitigation
• Performs business continuity/disaster recovery planning
• Considers insurance to mitigate financial risk
• CC9.2 – Includes management of third-party risk
• 12.3 – Risk management program for the Cardholder Data Environment (CDE)
• 12.3.1 – Targeted risk analysis is performed for each PCI requirement that allows variability 
• 12.3.2 – Targeted risk analysis is performed for each PCI requirement where the customized approach is used
• A2.1.2 (Only for organizations using SSL or early versions of TLS) – Risks associated with SSL/early TLS are managed
• ID.RA, ID.RM, ID.RM-1 – Risks to the organization are managed
• ID.RA-5 – Threats, vulnerabilities, likelihood and impact are included in risk management activities
• ID.RA-6 – Risk responses are identified and prioritized
• ID.RM-2, ID.RM-3 – Risk tolerances are established and justified

NIST 800-53

• CA-7(4) – Include risk monitoring in ongoing monitoring
• PM-9 – Develop a risk management strategy
• PM-28 – Ensure risks are framed in context of the organization
• PM-29 – Ensure risk leadership roles are identified
• PM-30 – Implement a supply chain risk management strategy
• RA-3, RA-3(1), RA-3(2), RA-3(4) – Conduct a risk assessment
• RA-7 – Develop a risk response plan
• SA-9(1) – Conduct a risk assessment prior to engaging third parties

NIST 800-171

• 3.11.1 – Periodically assess risk to organizational operations
• 3.11.3 – Remediate identified vulnerabilities
• 164.308(a)(1)(ii)(A) – Conduct an assessment of risks to the CIA of ePHI
• 164.308(a)(1)(ii)(B) – Implement a program to manage risks through mitigation strategies
• RM.2.141, RM.3.144 – Periodically assess risk to organizational operations
• RM.2.143 – Remediate identified vulnerabilities
• RM.3.146 – Develop and implement risk mitigation plans
• RM.4.148 – Develop and implement a third-party risk management plan
• Principle 10. PoF-1 – Integrates control activities into risk assessments
• Principle 6. PoF-2, Principle 6. PoF-15 – Considers tolerances for risk
• Principle 7, Principle 7. PoF-4 – Identifies and analyzes risk
• Principle 7. PoF-5 – Identifies plans for responding to risk
• Principle 8 – Assesses fraud risk

23 NYCRR 500 (NYDFS)

• 23NYCRR500: 500.09 – Conduct a periodic risk assessment
• No specific requirements; recommended as best practice
• No specific requirements; however, risks to processing activities must be taken into consideration in defining operational activities

CIS Controls v8

• No specific requirements; however, specific requirements exist around vulnerability management and supplier risk management

Managing Cybersecurity Risk in CrossComply

It doesn’t take expensive consultancy fees to get started with good security policies and procedures today. By focusing on high-risk and sensitive information and systems, identifying potential threats, and prioritizing on data security and data protection, as well as making informed decisions based on your cybersecurity risk program, your organization can take steps to streamline and improve your cybersecurity and compliance programs.

AuditBoard’s CrossComply solution is designed to enable organizations to conduct cybersecurity risk assessments and effectively manage cybersecurity risk in today’s volatile risk landscape. CrossComply customers can learn how to perform the various necessary activities described above within AuditBoard — simply  click here to log in and follow the “CrossComply Connection” prompts for additional guidance.

Interested in learning more about how AuditBoard can be used across your organization? Reach out to our team to  schedule a product demonstration today !

Frequently Asked Questions About Cybersecurity Risk Assessments

What are the core components of cybersecurity risk management.

Cybersecurity risk management typically uses the same core components of more general risk management programs, including:

What are the steps to Identifying Cybersecurity Risks?

Organizations can begin identifying cybersecurity risks by considering “what could go wrong” and what cyber threats face the organization.

How do you conduct a basic cyber risk assessment?

Alan Gouveia is Head of Customer Experience, CrossComply at AuditBoard. Alan has worked in the GRC and cybersecurity space for over 20 years across multiple industries and organizations of different sizes. He specializes in a collaborative approach to GRC and cybersecurity, showing customers how to work across the entire organization to achieve business goals. Connect with Alan on LinkedIn .

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Security Risk Assessment

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A Security Risk Assessment is an assessment that involves identifying the risks in your company, your technology and your processes to verify that controls are in place to safeguard against security threats. Security risk assessments are typically required by compliance standards, such as PCI-DSS standards for payment card security. Because of this, security risk assessments can go by many names, sometimes called a risk assessment, an IT infrastructure risk assessment, a security risk audit, or security audit.

Security Risk Assessments are performed by a security assessor who will evaluate all aspects of your companies systems to identify areas of risk. These may be as simple as a system that allows weak passwords, or could be more complex issues, such as insecure business processes. The assessor will typically review everything from HR policies to firewall configurations while working to identify potential risks.

For example, during the discovery process an assessor will identify all databases containing any sensitive information, an asset. That database is connected to the internet, a vulnerability. In order to protect that asset, you need to have a control in place, in this case it would be a firewall. You have now taken the first step in mitigating risk.

A Security Risk Assessment is vital in protecting your company from security risks. A security risk assessment provides you with the blueprint of risks that exist in your environment and gives you vital information about how critical each issue is. Knowing where to begin when improving your security allows you to maximize your IT resources and budget, saving you time and money.

Security Risk Assessments are deep dive evaluations of your company, or maybe even a specific IT project or even a company department. During the assessment, the goal is to find problems and security holes before the bad guys do. The assessment process should review and test systems and people, looking for weaknesses. As they are found, they are ranked based on how big of a risk they are to the company. The resulting report will identify systems that are working well and properly secured, and those that have issues. A Security Risk Assessment will typically have very specific technical results, such as network scanning results or firewall configuration results.

Crisis managers can use the slides of this template when preparing their strategy for getting the company out of losses. You can describe in detail what and what impact they have on each of the business processes in the company.

Analysts and stock traders can use the slides of this template to prepare analytical reports by categories of profitability and level of risk of investments in various stocks.

The Security Risk Assessment template will be useful for risk professionals, analysts and startup executives. All slides in this template have all the tools you need to build a professional presentation. You can customize colors, block sizes and infographics yourself. The Security Risk Assessment Template will be a worthy addition to your collection of professional presentations.

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Resource Overview

Conducting an SRA in accordance with HIPAA policy is a complex task, especially for small to medium providers such as community health centers. The HIPAA Security Rule mandates security standards to safeguard electronic Protected Health Information (ePHI) maintained by electronic health record (EHR) technology, with detailed attention to how ePHI is stored, accessed, transmitted, and audited. This rule is different from the HIPAA Privacy Rule, which requires safeguards to protect the privacy of PHI and sets limits and conditions on it use and disclosure. Meaningful Use supports the HIPAA Security Rule. In order to successfully attest to Meaningful Use, providers must conduct a security risk assessment (SRA), implement updates as needed, and correctly identify security deficiencies. By conducting an SRA regularly, providers can identify and document potential threats and vulnerabilities related to data security, and develop a plan of action to mitigate them.

Security vulnerabilities must be addressed before the SRA can be considered complete. Providers must document the process and steps taken to mitigate risks in three main areas: administration, physical environment, and technical hardware and software. The following set of resources provide education, strategies and tools for conducting SRA.

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A hiteq privacy & security resource - october 2018 updates for the onc sra tool.

This HITEQ Security Risk Assessment presentation provides a template for leadership and privacy and security project leads that can be adapted for specific health center needs. This presentation template covers the following agenda:

• Overview of Healthcare Privacy & Security Policies related to SRA
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• Review of the Office of the National Coordinator SRA Toolkit
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Resource links.

• ONC has provided a new update to their SRA tool as of 10/2018 The new SRA tool features a broader application of health information risks and an improved user experience. The SRA Tool intends to help HIPAA-covered organizations integrate security safeguards and risk management practices into their regular business practices in order to better safeguard patients’ health information.

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How to perform a cybersecurity risk assessment.

Abi Tyas Tunggal

Risk assessments are nothing new, and whether you like it or not, if you work in information security , you are in the risk management business. As organizations rely more on information technology and information systems to do business, the digital risk threat landscape expands, exposing ecosystems to new critical vulnerabilities .

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed a Cybersecurity Framework to provide a base for risk assessment practices.

Take a tour of UpGuard's risk assessment features >

What is Cyber Risk?

Cyber risk is the likelihood of suffering negative disruptions to sensitive data , finances, or business operations online. Cyber risks are commonly associated with events that could result in a data breach .

Cyber risks are sometimes referred to as security threats. Examples of cyber risks include:

• Insider threats
• Cyberattacks

There are practical strategies that you can take to reduce your cybersecurity risk.

Though commonly used interchangeably, cyber risks and vulnerabilities are not the same. A vulnerability is a weakness that results in unauthorized network access when exploited, and a cyber risk is the probability of a vulnerability being exploited.

Cyber risks are categorized from zero, low, medium, to high-risks. The three factors that impact vulnerability assessments are:

• What is the threat?
• How vulnerable is the system?
• What is the reputational or financial damage if breached or made unavailable?

Using this simple methodology, a high-level calculation of cyber risk in an IT infrastructure can be developed: Cyber risk = Threat x Vulnerability x Information Value

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Imagine you were to assess the risk associated with a cyber attack compromising a particular operating system . This operating system has a known backdoor in version 1.7 of its software that is easily exploitable via physical means and stores information of high value on it. If your office has no physical security, your risk would be high.

However, if you have good IT staff who can identify vulnerabilities and they update the operating system to version 1.8, your vulnerability is low, even though the information value is still high because the backdoor was patched in version 1.8.

A few things to keep in mind is there are very few things with zero risk to a business process or information system, and risk implies uncertainty. If something is guaranteed to happen, it's not a risk. It's part of general business operations.

The process of quantifying cyber risks is a function of potential risks, risk tolerance, your specific cybersecurity threats, and other risk mitigation factors. To learn more about this process, refer to this post.

What is a Cyber Risk Assessment?

NIST defines cyber risk assessments as risk assessments used to identify, estimate, and prioritize risk to organizational operations, organizational assets, individuals, other organizations, and the Nation, resulting from the operation and use of information systems.

The primary purpose of a cyber risk assessment is to keep stakeholders informed and support proper responses to identified risks . They also provide an executive summary to help executives and directors make informed security decisions.

Learn how UpGuard streamlines cyber risk assessments >

The information security risk assessment process is concerned with answering the following questions:

• What are our organization's most important information technology assets?
• What type of data breach would have a significant impact on our business, whether from malware, cyber attack, or human error? Think customer information.
• Can all threat sources be identified?
• What is the level of the potential impact of each identified threat?
• What are the internal and external vulnerabilities?
• What is the impact if those vulnerabilities are exploited?
• What is the likelihood of exploitation?
• What cyber attacks, cyber threats , or security incidents could affect the business's ability to function?
• What is the level of risk my organization is comfortable taking?

Download your vendor risk assessment template >

If you can answer those questions, you can decide what is important to protect. This means you can develop IT security controls and data security strategies for risk remediation. Before you can do that, though, you need to answer the following questions:

• What is the risk I am reducing?
• Is this the highest priority security risk?
• Am I reducing the risk most cost-effectively?

Learn the key features of effective risk remediation software >

This will help you understand the information value of the data you are trying to protect and better understand your information risk management process in the scope of safeguarding business needs.

There are several risk management frameworks available. Your choice depends on your industry, your risk appetite , and any applicable regulations - like the GDPR . If you’re unsure which security assessment framework to choose, the NIST Cybersecurity Framework is popular for most general cybersecurity program requirements.

For an overview of the top features of an ideal risk assessment solution, read this post comparing the top third-party risk assessment software options.

Why Perform a Cyber Risk Assessment?

There are several reasons you want to perform a cyber risk assessment and a few reasons you need to. Let's walk through them:

• Reduction of Long-Term Costs - Identifying potential threats and vulnerabilities and then mitigating them can prevent or reduce security incidents, saving your organization money and/or reputational damage in the long term.
• Provides a Cybersecurity Risk Assessment Template for Future Assessments - Cyber risk assessments aren't one of the processes; you need to update them continually; doing a good first turn will ensure repeatable processes even with staff turnover.
• Better Organizational Knowledge - Knowing organizational vulnerabilities gives you a clear idea of where your organization needs to improve.
• Avoid Data Breaches - Data breaches can have a huge financial and reputational impact on any organization.
• Avoid Regulatory Issues - Customer data that is stolen because you failed to comply with HIPAA, PCI DSS, or APRA CPS 234 .
• Avoid Application Downtime - Internal or customer-facing systems must be available and functioning for staff and customers to do their jobs .
• Data Loss - Theft of trade secrets, code, or other critical information assets could mean you lose business to competitors.

Beyond that, cyber risk assessments are integral to information risk management and any organization's broader risk management strategy.

Learn how to create a vendor risk assessment matrix >

Who Should Perform a Cyber Risk Assessment?

Ideally, organizations should have dedicated in-house teams processing risk assessments. This means having IT staff with an understanding of how your digital and network infrastructure works, executives who understand how information flows, and any proprietary organizational knowledge that may be useful during the assessment.

Organizational transparency is key to a thorough cyber risk assessment.

Small businesses may not have the right people in-house to do a thorough job and must outsource assessment to a third party. Organizations are also turning to cybersecurity software to monitor their cybersecurity score, prevent breaches , send security questionnaires, and reduce third-party risk.

Learn how UpGuard calculates security ratings >

How to Perform a Cyber Risk Assessment

We'll start with a high-level overview and drill down into each step in the following sections. After reviewing this process, you may want to reference this more in-depth overview of the third-party risk assessment process .

Before you start assessing and mitigating risks, you must understand your data, infrastructure, and the value of the data you are trying to protect.

You may want to start by auditing your data to answer the following questions:

• What data do we collect?
• How and where are we storing this data?
• How do we protect and document the data?
• How long do we keep data?
• Who has access internally and externally to the data?
• Is the place we are storing the data properly secured? Many breaches come from poorly configured S3 buckets ; check your S3 permissions, or someone else will.

Next, you'll want to define the parameters of your assessment. Here are a few good primer questions to get you started:

• What is the purpose of the assessment?
• What is the scope of the assessment?
• Are there any priorities or constraints I should know about that could affect the assessment?
• Who do I need access to in the organization to get all the information I need?
• What risk model does the organization use for risk analysis ?

A lot of these questions are self-explanatory. What you want to know is what you'll be analyzing, who has the expertise to assess them appropriately, and whether there are any regulatory requirements or budget constraints you need to be aware of.

Learn about the top cyber regulations in finance >

Now let's look at what steps need to be taken to complete a thorough cyber risk assessment, providing you with a risk assessment template.

Step 1: Determine Informational Value

Most organizations don't have an unlimited budget for information risk management , so limiting your scope to the most business-critical assets is best.

To save time and money later, spend some time defining a standard for determining the importance of an asset. Most organizations include asset value, legal standing, and business importance. Once the standard is formally incorporated into the organization's information risk management policy, use it to classify each asset as critical, major, or minor.

There are many questions you can ask to determine value:

• Are there financial or legal penalties associated with exposing or losing this information?
• How valuable is this information to a competitor?
• Could we recreate this information from scratch? How long would it take, and what would be the associated costs?
• Would losing this information have an impact on revenue or profitability?
• Would losing this data impact day-to-day business operations? Could our staff work without it?
• What would be the reputational damage of this data being leaked ?

Step 2: Identify and Prioritize Assets

The first step is to identify assets to evaluate and determine the scope of the assessment. This will allow you to prioritize which assets to assess. You may only want to assess some buildings, employees, electronic data, trade secrets, vehicles, and office equipment. Remember, not all assets have the same value.

You need to work with business users and management to create a list of all valuable assets. For each asset, gather the following information where applicable:

• Support personal
• Criticality
• Functional requirements
• IT security policies
• IT security architecture
• Network topology
• Information storage protection
• Information flow
• Technical security controls
• Physical security controls
• Environmental security

Asset prioritization is simplified with a risk matrix indicating critical risks most likely to negatively impact your security posture. A risk matrix can also summarize your risk exposure at a third-party vendor level.

Here’s an example of a risk matrix representing the distribution of critical third-party vendors requiring greater cybersecurity attention.

Step 3: Identify Cyber Threats

A cyber threat is any vulnerability that could be exploited to breach security to cause harm or steal data from your organization. While hackers, malware, and other IT security risks leap to mind, there are many other threats:

• Natural disasters : Floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, lightning, and fire can destroy as much as any cyber attacker. You can, not only lose your data, but your servers too. When deciding between on-premise and cloud-based servers, consider the potential impacts of natural disasters.
• System failure : Are your most critical systems running on high-quality equipment? Do they have good support?
• Human error : Are your S3 buckets holding sensitive information properly configured ? Does your organization have proper education policies covering common cybercriminal tactics, like malware, phishing , and social engineering ?
• Adversarial threats : third-party vendors , insiders, trusted insiders, privileged insiders, established hacker collectives, ad hoc groups, corporate espionage , suppliers, nation-states

Some common threats that affect every organization include:

• Unauthorized access : both from attackers, malware, employee error
• Misuse of information by authorized users : typically an insider threat where data is altered, deleted, or used without approval
• Data leaks : Personally identifiable information (PII) and other sensitive data by attackers or via poor configuration of cloud services
• Loss of data : organization loses or accidentally deleted data as part of poor backup or replication
• Service disruption : loss of revenue or reputational damage due to downtime

After identifying your organization's threats, you'll need to assess their impact. To ensure your security teams will respond to cyber threats promptly, ensure you have a well-designed and regularly tested Incident Response Plan.

Learn how to create an Incident Response Plan >

Step 4: Identify Vulnerabilities

Now it's time to move from what "could" happen to what has a chance of happening. A vulnerability is a weakness that a threat can exploit to breach security, harm your organization, or steal sensitive data . Vulnerabilities are found through vulnerability analysis, audit reports, the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) vulnerability database , vendor data, incident response teams , and software security analysis .

You can reduce organizational software-based vulnerabilities with proper patch management via automatic forced updates. But don't forget physical vulnerabilities, the chance of someone gaining access to an organization's computing system is reduced by having keycard access.

Identifying vulnerabilities in your ecosystem is significantly simplified with an Attack Surface Monitoring solution . Attack Surface Management is an effective strategy for minimizing the number of attack vectors in your digital footprint to reduce your risk of suffering data breaches

For an introduction to Attack Surface Management, watch this video.

Get a free trial of UpGuard >

Step 5: Analyze Controls and Implement New Controls

Analyze controls that are in place to minimize or eliminate the probability of a threat or vulnerability. Controls can be implemented through technical means, such as hardware or software, encryption , intrusion detection mechanisms, two-factor authentication , automatic updates, continuous data leak detection , or through nontechnical means like security policies and physical mechanisms like locks or keycard access.

Controls should be classified as preventative or detective controls. Preventive controls attempt to stop attacks through encryption, firewalls, antivirus, or continuous security monitoring ; detective controls try to discover when an attack has occurred, like continuous data exposure detection.

Learn more about cyber threat exposure management >

Step 6: Calculate the Likelihood and Impact of Various Scenarios on a Per-Year Basis

Now you know the information value, threats, vulnerabilities, and controls; the next step is to identify how likely these cyber risks are to occur and their impact if they happen. 

Change your mindset from "if I get impacted" to "what are my chances of success when I get impacted."

Imagine you have a database that stores all your company's most sensitive information, and that information is valued at $100 million based on your estimates. You estimate that in the event of a breach, at least half of your data would be exposed before it could be contained, resulting in an estimated loss of $50 million. 

But you expect this is unlikely to occur, say a one in fifty-year occurrence, this would be equivalent to an estimated loss of $50m every 50 years or, in annual terms, $1 million yearly. For the latter scenario, it would make sense to project an annual budget of $1 million for a data breach prevention program.

Learn how to prevent data breaches with this free guide >

Step 7: Prioritize Risks Based on the Cost of Prevention Vs. Information Value

Use risk level as a basis and determine actions for senior management or other responsible individuals to mitigate the risk. Here are some general guidelines:

• High-corrective measures to be developed as soon as possible
• Medium - correct measures developed within a reasonable period.
• Low - decide whether to accept the risk or mitigate

Remember, you have now determined the asset's value and how much you could spend to protect it. The next step is easy: if it costs more to protect the asset than it's worth, it may not make sense to use preventative control to protect it. That said, remember there could be a reputational impact , not just a financial impact, so it’s essential to factor that in too.

Also, consider the following:

• Organizational policies
• Reputational damage
• Feasibility
• Regulations
• Effectiveness of controls
• Reliability
• Organizational attitude toward risk
• Tolerance for uncertainty regarding risk factors
• The organizational weighting of risk factors

Step 8: Document Results from Risk Assessment Reports

The final step is to develop a risk assessment report to support management in deciding on budgets, policies, and procedures. The report should describe the risk, vulnerabilities, and value of each threat, along with the impact and likelihood of occurrence and control recommendations.

As you work through this process, you'll understand what infrastructure your company operates, what your most valuable data is, and how you can better operate and secure your business. You can then create a risk assessment policy that defines what your organization must do periodically to monitor its security posture , how risks are addressed and mitigated, and how you will conduct subsequent risk assessment processes.

Whether you are a small business or a multinational enterprise, information risk management is at the heart of cybersecurity. These processes help establish rules and guidelines that answer what threats and vulnerabilities can cause financial and reputational damage to your business and how they are mitigated .

Ideally, as your security implementations improve and you address the risks discovered in assessment responses, your cybersecurity posture should also improve.Cybersecurity risk assessments help organizations understand, control, and mitigate all forms of cyber risk. It is a critical component of risk management strategy and data protection efforts.

To learn how UpGuard can help you streamline your cybersecurity risk assessment workflows, watch this video.

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Edward Kost

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Cyber security risk management powerpoint presentation slides

Critical assets security requires planning and due importance in businesses today to keep the vital information confidential with integrity, availability and assurance. Here is an efficiently designed template on Cyber Security Risk Management at Workplace that will reduce the risk of crisis in your company and the effects of that crisis occurring outside. This template aims to identify high safety risks, enable cyber threat security to protect the company from fears, and set up safety plans to reduce such risks. One can display their current security plans critical success factors and significant reasons for poor security to know the companys challenges. Security tasks require organizations to show the elements that affect the operations and overcome them by setting an advanced safety plan for IT. Businesses evaluate information processing assets for analyzing the risk and clearly define the threat management system through adopting high-tech assessment controls for themselves. Book a free demo with our research or design team and customize this 100 percent editable template based on your needs. Get access now.

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PowerPoint presentation slides

Enthrall your audience with this Cyber Security Risk Management Powerpoint Presentation Slides. Increase your presentation threshold by deploying this well-crafted template. It acts as a great communication tool due to its well-researched content. It also contains stylized icons, graphics, visuals etc, which make it an immediate attention-grabber. Comprising sixty seven slides, this complete deck is all you need to get noticed. All the slides and their content can be altered to suit your unique business setting. Not only that, other components and graphics can also be modified to add personal touches to this prefabricated set.

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Content of this Powerpoint Presentation

Slide 1 : This slide introduces Cyber Security Risk Management. State Your Company Name and begin. Slide 2 : This slide shows Agenda of Cyber Security Risk Management. Slide 3 : This slide presents Table of Content for the presentation. Slide 4 : This is another slide continuing Table of Content for the presentation. Slide 5 : This slide depicts title for 'Current scenraio assessment'. Slide 6 : This slide provides information regarding the potential implications/concerns existing in firm. Slide 7 : This slide provides details regarding present management capabilities assessment. Slide 8 : This slide provides details regarding statistics associated to workplace threats. Slide 9 : This slide displays title for 'Handling cyber threats to secure digital assets'. Slide 10 : This slide provides details regarding various kinds of insider digital threats. Slide 11 : This slide provides details regarding indicators associated to insider threats. Slide 12 : This slide provides details regarding internal and external sources of threat data. Slide 13 : This slide provides details regarding insider threats identified in various industries. Slide 14 : This slide provides details regarding sequence phases for threat attack by threat actor. Slide 15 : This slide presents continued content. Slide 16 : This slide provides details regarding comparative assessment of different threat agents on various parameters. Slide 17 : This slide provides details regarding asset security categorization on certain parameters. Slide 18 : This slide provides details regarding several threat actors profile. Slide 19 : This slide provides details regarding threat scenario assessment by understanding various phases of threat actor attack on victim. Slide 20 : This slide provides details regarding various ways to handle insider cyber threats. Slide 21 : This slide exhibits continued content. Slide 22 : This slide provides details regarding ensuring collaboration among various functional areas. Slide 23 : This slide provides details regarding checklist associated to insider threat program. Slide 24 : This slide portrays information contingency plan for handling threats with the help of technical equipment. Slide 25 : This slide shows title for 'People security against workplace violence or threat'. Slide 26 : This slide provides details regarding various types of workplace violence threats created by people. Slide 27 : This slide provides details regarding roles and responsibilities assigned to ensure minimum violence work environment. Slide 28 : This slide depicts Workplace Employee Assistance Program. Slide 29 : This slide displays title for 'Ensuring physical security'. Slide 30 : This slide provides overview of the various reported incidents. Slide 31 : This slide can be utilized to report any workplace incident. Slide 32 : This slide presents Threat Management Action Plan. Slide 33 : This slide exhibits continued content. Slide 34 : This slide shows title for 'Securing firm from natural calamity threats'. Slide 35 : This slide provides details regarding natural calamities posing as threat. Slide 36 : This slide provides details regarding business functions recovery as firm needs to retrieve the crucial information. Slide 37 : This slide provides information regarding vital record maintenance in order to store crucial information. Slide 38 : This slide displays title for 'Ensuring financial assets security'. Slide 39 : This slide provides information regarding the various financial scenarios that pose a threat to firm. Slide 40 : This slide presents Evaluating Financial Practices in Firm. Slide 41 : This slide provides details regarding handling financial threats by safeguarding financial stability. Slide 42 : This slide provides details regarding various ways through financial risks can be controlled. Slide 43 : This slide presents title for 'Leveraging workforce'. Slide 44 : This slide exhibits 'Determine Threat Management Team Structure'. Slide 45 : This slide addresses Threat Management Team Training Schedule. Slide 46 : This slide shows 'Determine Staff Training Schedule for Skills Enhancement'. Slide 47 : This slide depicts title for 'Budget assessment'. Slide 48 : This slide highlights 'Selecting Secured Threat Management Software'. Slide 49 : This slide illustrates Budget for Effective Threat Management at Workplace. Slide 50 : This slide presents title for 'Impact assessment'. Slide 51 : This slide portrays information regarding how firm is successful in handling security threats. Slide 52 : This slide depicts the impact of successful implementation of threat management. Slide 53 : This slide exhibits title for 'Dashboard'. Slide 54 : This slide shows Incident Reporting Dashboard. Slide 55 : This slide presents the dashboard which will help firm in tracking the fiscal performance. Slide 56 : This slide portrays information regarding the dashboard that firm will use to manage cyber threats. Slide 57 : This slide displays Icons for Cyber Security Risk Management. Slide 58 : This slide is titled as Additional Slides for moving forward. Slide 59 : This slide provides 30 60 90 Days Plan with text boxes. Slide 60 : This slide shows Weekly Timeline with Task Name. Slide 61 : This slide displays Roadmap for Process Flow. Slide 62 : This slide shows Post It Notes. Post your important notes here. Slide 63 : This slide presents Bar chart with two products comparison. Slide 64 : This is a Comparison slide to state comparison between commodities, entities etc. Slide 65 : This slide showcases Magnifying Glass to highlight information, specifications etc Slide 66 : This is Our Target slide. State your targets here. Slide 67 : This is a Thank You slide with address, contact numbers and email address.

Cyber security risk management powerpoint presentation slides with all 72 slides:

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Ratings and Reviews

by James Lewis

March 7, 2022

by Deandre Munoz

Certification of Health IT

Health information technology advisory committee (hitac), health equity, hti-1 final rule, information blocking, interoperability, patient access to health records, clinical quality and safety, health it and health information exchange basics, health it in health care settings, health it resources, laws, regulation, and policy, onc funding opportunities, onc hitech programs, privacy, security, and hipaa, scientific initiatives, standards & technology, usability and provider burden, security risk assessment tool.

The  Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Security Rule  requires that  covered entities  and its business associates conduct a risk assessment of their healthcare organization. A risk assessment helps your organization ensure it is compliant with HIPAA’s  administrative, physical, and technical safeguards . A risk assessment also helps reveal areas where your organization’s protected health information (PHI) could be at risk. To learn more about the assessment process and how it benefits your organization, visit the  Office for Civil Rights' official guidance .

What is the Security Risk Assessment Tool (SRA Tool)?

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), in collaboration with the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR), developed a downloadable Security Risk Assessment (SRA) Tool to help guide you through the process. The tool is designed to help healthcare providers conduct a security risk assessment as required by the HIPAA Security Rule. The target audience of this tool is medium and small providers; thus, use of this tool may not be appropriate for larger organizations.

SRA Tool for Windows

The SRA Tool is a desktop application that walks users through the security risk assessment process using a simple, wizard-based approach. Users are guided through multiple-choice questions, threat and vulnerability assessments, and asset and vendor management. References and additional guidance are given along the way. Reports are available to save and print after the assessment is completed.

This application can be installed on computers running 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows 7/8/10/11. All information entered into the tool is stored locally on the user's computer. HHS does not collect, view, store, or transmit any information entered into the SRA Tool.

Download Version 3.4 of the SRA Tool for Windows [.msi - 70.4 MB]

SRA Tool Excel Workbook

This version of the SRA Tool takes the same content from the Windows desktop application and presents it in a familiar spreadsheet format. The Excel Workbook contains conditional formatting and formulas to calculate and help identify risk in a similar fashion to the SRA Tool application. This version of the SRA Tool is intended to replace the legacy "Paper Version" and may be a good option for users who do not have access to Microsoft Windows or otherwise need more flexibility than is provided by the SRA Tool for Windows.

This workbook can be used on any computer using Microsoft Excel or another program capable of handling .xlsx files. Some features and formatting may only work in Excel.

Download Version 3.4 of the SRA Tool Excel Workbook [.xlsx - 128 KB]

SRA Tool User Guide

Download the SRA Tool User Guide for FAQs and details on how to install and use the SRA Tool application and SRA Tool Excel Workbook.

Download SRA Tool User Guide [.pdf - 3.3 MB]

What's new in Version 3.4: 

• Remediation Report – Track response to vulnerabilities inside the tool
• Glossary & tool tips – Hover over terms to get more information
• HICP 2023 edition references
• Bug fixes, usability improvements

The Security Risk Assessment Tool at HealthIT.gov is provided for informational purposes only. Use of this tool is neither required by nor guarantees compliance with federal, state or local laws. Please note that the information presented may not be applicable or appropriate for all health care providers and organizations. The Security Risk Assessment Tool is not intended to be an exhaustive or definitive source on safeguarding health information from privacy and security risks. For more information about the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules, please visit the  HHS Office for Civil Rights Health Information Privacy website .

NOTE: The NIST Standards provided in this tool are for informational purposes only as they may reflect current best practices in information technology and are not required for compliance with the HIPAA Security Rule’s requirements for risk assessment and risk management. This tool is not intended to serve as legal advice or as recommendations based on a provider or professional’s specific circumstances. We encourage providers, and professionals to seek expert advice when evaluating the use of this tool.

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