network risk assessment methodology

• Risk management

This comprehensive guide to cybersecurity planning explains what cybersecurity is, why it's important to organizations, its business benefits and the challenges that cybersecurity teams face. You'll also find an overview of cybersecurity tools, plus information on cyberattacks to be prepared for, cybersecurity best practices, developing a solid cybersecurity plan and more. Throughout the guide, there are hyperlinks to related TechTarget articles that cover the topics more deeply and offer insight and expert advice on cybersecurity efforts.

How to perform a cybersecurity risk assessment in 5 steps, this five-step framework for performing a cybersecurity risk assessment will help your organization prevent and reduce costly security incidents and avoid compliance issues..

• Michael Cobb

Practically every organization has internet connectivity and some form of IT infrastructure, which means nearly all organizations are at risk of a cyberattack. To understand how great this risk is and to be able to manage it, organizations need to complete a cybersecurity risk assessment, a process that identifies which assets are most vulnerable to the cyber-risks the organization faces. This is a risk assessment that looks specifically at cyberthreats, so risks such as fire and flooding -- which would be included in a general risk assessment -- are not in scope.

Mitigating the  risks identified during the assessment  will prevent and reduce costly security incidents and data breaches, and avoid regulatory and compliance issues. The risk assessment process also obliges everyone within an organization to consider how cybersecurity risks can impact the organization's objectives, which helps to  create a more risk-aware culture . So, what is at the heart of a cybersecurity risk assessment?

What does a cybersecurity risk assessment entail?

A cybersecurity risk assessment requires an organization to determine its key business objectives and identify the information technology assets that are essential to realizing those objectives. It's then a case of  identifying cyberattacks  that could adversely affect those assets, deciding on the likelihood of those attacks occurring and understanding the impact they might have; in sum, building a complete picture of the threat environment for particular business objectives. This enables stakeholders and security teams to make informed decisions about how and where to implement security controls to reduce the overall risk to one with which the organization is comfortable.

How to perform a cybersecurity risk assessfment: 5 steps

A cybersecurity risk assessment can be split into many parts, but the five main steps are: scoping, risk identification, risk analysis, risk evaluation and documentation.

This article is part of

The ultimate guide to cybersecurity planning for businesses

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Step 1: Determine the scope of the risk assessment

A risk assessment starts by deciding what is in scope of the assessment. It could be the entire organization, but this is usually too big an undertaking, so it is more likely to be a business unit, location or a specific aspect of the business, such as payment processing or a web application. It is vital to have the full support of all stakeholders whose activities are within the scope of the assessment, as their input will be essential to understanding which assets and processes are the most important, identifying risks, assessing impacts and defining risk tolerance levels. A third party specializing in risk assessments might be needed to help them through what is a resource-intensive exercise.

Everyone involved should be familiar with the terminology used in a risk assessment, such as likelihood and impact, so that there is a common understanding of how the risk is framed. For those who are unfamiliar with cybersecurity concepts, ISO/IEC TS 27100 provides a useful overview. Prior to undertaking a risk assessment, it is well worth reviewing standards like ISO/IEC 27001 and frameworks such as  NIST SP 800-37  and  ISO/IEC TS 27110 , which can help guide organizations on how to assess their information security risks in a structured manner and ensure mitigating controls are appropriate and effective.

Various standards and laws such as HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley and  PCI DSS  require organizations to complete a formalized risk assessment and often provide guidelines and recommendations on how to complete them. However,  avoid a compliance-oriented, checklist approach  when undertaking an assessment, as simply fulfilling compliance requirements doesn't necessarily mean an organization is not exposed to any risks.

Step 2: How to identify cybersecurity risks

2.1 identify assets.

You can't protect what you don't know, so the next task is to identify and create an inventory of all physical and logical assets that are within the scope of the risk assessment. When identifying assets, it is important to not only establish those that are considered the organization's  crown jewels  -- assets critical to the business and probably the main target of attackers -- but also assets attackers would want to take control over, such as an Active Directory server or picture archive and communications systems, to use as a pivot point to expand an attack. Creating a network architecture diagram from the asset inventory list is a great way to visualize the interconnectivity and communication paths between assets and processes as well as entry points into the network, making the next task of identifying threats easier.

2.2 Identify threats

Threats are the tactics, techniques and methods used by threat actors that have the potential to cause harm to an organization's assets. To help identify potential threats to each asset, use a threat library such as the  Mitre ATT&CK Knowledge Base  and resources from the  Cyber Threat Alliance , which both provide high-quality, up-to-date cyberthreat information. Security vendor reports and advisories from government agencies such as the  Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency  can be an excellent source of news on new threats surfacing in specific industries, verticals and geographic regions or particular technologies.

Also consider where each asset sits in the  Lockheed Martin cyber kill chain , as this will help determine the types of protection they need. The cyber kill chain maps out the stages and objectives of a typical real-world attack.

2.3 Identify what could go wrong

This task involves specifying the consequences of an identified threat exploiting a vulnerability to attack an in-scope asset. For example, consider the following scenario:

• Threat: An attacker performs a SQL injection.
• Vulnerability/asset: Unpatched web server.
• Consequence: Customers' private data stolen, resulting in regulatory fines and damage to reputation.

Summarizing this information in simple scenarios like this makes it easier for all stakeholders to understand the risks they face in relation to key business objectives and for security teams to identify appropriate measures and best practices to address the risk.

Step 3: Analyze risks and determine potential impact

Now it is time to determine the likelihood of the risk scenarios documented in Step 2 actually occurring, and the impact on the organization if it did happen. In a cybersecurity risk assessment, risk likelihood -- the probability that a given threat is capable of exploiting a given vulnerability -- should be determined based on the discoverability, exploitability and reproducibility of threats and vulnerabilities rather than historical occurrences. This is because the dynamic nature of cybersecurity threats means  likelihood  is not so closely linked to the frequency of past occurrences in the way that flooding and earthquakes are, for example.

Ranking likelihood on a scale of 1 (Rare) to 5 (Highly Likely), and impact on a scale of 1 (Negligible) to 5 (Very Severe) makes it straightforward to create the risk matrix illustrated in Step 4.

Impact refers to the magnitude of harm to the organization resulting from the consequences of a threat exploiting a vulnerability. The impact on confidentiality, integrity and availability should be assessed in each scenario with the highest impact used as the final score. This aspect of the assessment is subjective in nature, which is why input from stakeholders and security experts is so important. Taking the  SQL injection  above, the impact rating on confidentiality would probably be ranked as "Very Severe."

Step 4: Determine and prioritize risks

Using a risk matrix like the one below where the risk level is "Likelihood times Impact," each risk scenario can be classified. If the risk of a SQL injection attack were considered "Likely" or "Highly Likely" our example risk scenario would be classified as "Very High."

Any scenario that is above the agreed-upon tolerance level should be prioritized for treatment to bring it within the organization's risk tolerance level. The following are three ways of doing this:

• Avoid.  If the risk outweighs the benefits, discontinuing an activity may be the best course of action if it means no longer being exposed to it.
• Transfer.  Share a portion of the risk with other parties through outsourcing certain operations to third parties, such as DDoS mitigation or purchasing cyber insurance. First-party coverage generally only covers the costs incurred due to a cyber event, such as informing customers about a data breach, while third-party coverage would cover the cost of funding a settlement after a data breach along with penalties and fines. What it will not cover are the intangible costs of loss of intellectual property or damage to brand reputation.
• Mitigate.  Deploy security controls and other measures to reduce the likelihood and/or effect and therefore the risk level to within the agreed risk tolerance level. Responsibility for implementing the measures to reduce unacceptably high risks should be assigned to the appropriate team. Dates for progress and completion reports should also be set to ensure that the owner of the risk and the treatment plan are kept up to date.

However, no system or environment can be made 100% secure, so there is always some risk left over. This is called  residual risk  and must be formally accepted by senior stakeholders as part of the  organization's cybersecurity strategy .

Step 5: Document all risks

It's important to document all identified risk scenarios in a  risk register . This should be regularly reviewed and updated to ensure that management always has an up-to-date account of its cybersecurity risks. It should include the following:

• Risk scenario.
• Identification date.
• Existing security controls.
• Current risk level.
• Treatment plan, meaning the planned activities and timeline to bring the risk within an acceptable risk tolerance level along with the commercial justification for the investment.
• Progress status, as in the status of implementing the treatment plan.
• Residual risk, or the risk level after the treatment plan is implemented.
• Risk owner, meaning the individual or group responsible for ensuring that the residual risks remain within the tolerance level.

A cybersecurity risk assessment is a large and ongoing undertaking, so time and resources need to be made available if it is going to improve the future security of the organization. It will need to be repeated as new cyberthreats arise and new systems or activities are introduced; but, done well the first time around, it will provide a repeatable process and template for future assessments, while reducing the chances of a cyberattack adversely affecting business objectives.

Michael Cobb, CISSP-ISSAP, is a renowned security author with more than 20 years of experience in the IT industry.

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How to perform a network security risk assessment in 6 steps.

Tsippi Dach

Jan 18, 2024 · 9 min read, short bio about author here lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur. vitae donec tincidunt elementum quam laoreet duis sit enim. duis mattis velit sit leo diam., share this article.

For your organization to implement robust security policies, it must have clear information on the security risks it is exposed to. An effective IT security plan must take the organization’s unique set of systems and technologies into account. This helps security professionals decide where to deploy limited resources for improving security processes.

Cybersecurity risk assessments provide clear, actionable data about the quality and success of the organization’s current security measures. They offer insight into the potential impact of security threats across the entire organization, giving security leaders the information they need to manage risk more effectively.

Conducting a comprehensive cyber risk assessment can help you improve your organization’s security posture, address security-related production bottlenecks in business operations, and make sure security team budgets are wisely spent.

This kind of assessment is also a vital step in the compliance process . Organizations must undergo information security risk assessments in order to meet regulatory requirements set by different authorities and frameworks, including:

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA),

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO)

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

What is a Security Risk Assessment?

Your organization’s security risk assessment is a formal document that identifies, evaluates, and prioritizes cyber threats according to their potential impact on business operations. 

Categorizing threats this way allows cybersecurity leaders to manage the risk level associated with them in a proactive, strategic way.

The assessment provides valuable data about vulnerabilities in business systems and the likelihood of cyber attacks against those systems. It also provides context into mitigation strategies for identified risks, which helps security leaders make informed decisions during the risk management process.

For example, a security risk assessment may find that the organization needs to be more reliant on its firewalls and access control solutions . If a threat actor uses phishing or social engineering to bypass these defenses (or take control of them entirely), the entire organization could suffer a catastrophic data breach. In this case, the assessment may recommend investing in penetration testing and advanced incident response capabilities.

Organizations that neglect to invest in network security risk assessments won’t know their weaknesses until after they are actively exploited. By the time hackers launch a ransomware attack, it’s too late to consider whether your antivirus systems are properly configured against malware.

Who Should Perform Your Organization’s Cyber Risk Assessment?

A dedicated internal team should take ownership over the risk assessment process . The process will require technical personnel with a deep understanding of the organization’s IT infrastructure. Executive stakeholders should also be involved because they understand how information flows in the context of the organization’s business logic, and can provide broad insight into its risk management strategy .

Small businesses may not have the resources necessary to conduct a comprehensive risk analysis internally. While a variety of assessment tools and solutions are available on the market, partnering with a reputable managed security service provider is the best way to ensure an accurate outcome. Adhering to a consistent methodology is vital, and experienced vulnerability assessment professionals ensure the best results.

How to Conduct a Network Security Risk Assessment

1. develop a comprehensive asset map.

The first step is accurately mapping out your organization’s network assets. If you don’t have a clear idea of exactly what systems, tools, and applications the organization uses, you won’t be able to manage the risks associated with them.

Keep in mind that human user accounts should be counted as assets as well. The Verizon 2023 Data Breach Investigation Report shows that the human element is involved in more than a quarter of all data breaches. The better you understand your organization’s human users and their privilege profiles, the more effectively you can protect them from potential threats and secure critical assets effectively.

Ideally, all of your organization’s users should be assigned and managed through a centralized system. For Windows-based networks, Active Directory is usually the solution that comes to mind. Your organization may have a different system in place if it uses a different operating system.

Also, don’t forget about information assets like trade secrets and intellectual property. Cybercriminals may target these assets in order to extort the organization. Your asset map should show you exactly where these critical assets are stored, and provide context into which users have permission to access them.

Log and track every single asset in a central database that you can quickly access and easily update. Assign security value to each asset as you go and categorize them by access level . 

Here’s an example of how you might want to structure that categorization:

Public data. This is data you’ve intentionally made available to the public. It includes web page content, marketing brochures, and any other information of no consequence in a data breach scenario.

Confidential data. This data is not publicly available. If the organization shares it with third parties, it is only under a non-disclosure agreement. Sensitive technical or financial information may end up in this category.

Internal use only. This term refers to data that is not allowed outside the company, even under non-disclosure terms. It might include employee pay structures, long-term strategy documents, or product research data.

Intellectual property. Any trade secrets, issued patents, or copyrighted assets are intellectual property. The value of the organization depends in some way on this information remaining confidential.

Compliance restricted data. This category includes any data that is protected by regulatory or legal obligations. For a HIPAA-compliant organization, that would include patient data, medical histories, and protected personal information.

This database will be one of the most important security assessment tools you use throughout the next seven steps.

2. Identify security threats and vulnerabilities

Once you have a comprehensive asset inventory, you can begin identifying risks and vulnerabilities for each asset. There are many different types of tests and risk assessment tools you can use for this step. Automating the process whenever possible is highly recommended, since it may otherwise become a lengthy and time-consuming manual task.

Vulnerability scanning tools can automatically assess your network and applications for vulnerabilities associated with known threats. The scan’s results will tell you exactly what kinds of threats your information systems are susceptible to, and provide some information about how you can remediate them.

Be aware that these scans can only determine your vulnerability to known threats. They won’t detect insider threats , zero-day vulnerabilities and some scanners may overlook security tool misconfigurations that attackers can take advantage of.

You may also wish to conduct a security gap analysis. This will provide you with comprehensive information about how your current security program compares to an established standard like CMMC or PCI DSS. This won’t help protect against zero-day threats, but it can uncover information security management problems and misconfigurations that would otherwise go unnoticed.

To take this step to the next level, you can conduct penetration testing against the systems and assets your organization uses. This will validate vulnerability scan and gap analysis data while potentially uncovering unknown vulnerabilities in the process. Pentesting replicates real attacks on your systems, providing deep insight into just how feasible those attacks may be from a threat actor’s perspective.

When assessing the different risks your organization faces, try to answer the following questions:

What is the most likely business outcome associated with this risk?

Will the impact of this risk include permanent damage, like destroyed data?

Would your organization be subject to fines for compliance violations associated with this risk?

Could your organization face additional legal liabilities if someone exploited this risk?

3. Prioritize risks according to severity and likelihood

Once you’ve conducted vulnerability scans and assessed the different risks that could impact your organization, you will be left with a long list of potential threats. This list will include more risks and hazards than you could possibly address all at once. The next step is to go through the list and prioritize each risk according to its potential impact and how likely it is to happen.

If you implemented penetration testing in the previous step, you should have precise data on how likely certain attacks are to take place. Your team will tell you how many steps they took to compromise confidential data, which authentication systems they had to bypass, and what other security functionalities they disabled. Every additional step reduces the likelihood of a cybercriminal carrying out the attack successfully.

If you do not implement penetration testing, you will have to conduct an audit to assess the likelihood of attackers exploiting your organization’s vulnerabilities. Industry-wide threat intelligence data can give you an idea of how frequent certain types of attacks are.

During this step, you’ll have to balance the likelihood of exploitation with the severity of the potential impact for each risk. This will require research into the remediation costs associated with many cyberattacks.

Remediation costs should include business impact – such as downtime, legal liabilities, and reputational damage – as well as the cost of paying employees to carry out remediation tasks. 

Assigning internal IT employees to remediation tasks implies the opportunity cost of diverting them from their usual responsibilities. The more completely you assess these costs, the more accurate your assessment will be.

4. Develop security controls in response to risks

Now that you have a comprehensive overview of the risks your organization is exposed to, you can begin developing security controls to address them. These controls should provide visibility and functionality to your security processes, allowing you to prevent attackers from exploiting your information systems and detect them when they make an attempt.

There are three main types of security control available to the typical organization:

Physical controls prevent unauthorized access to sensitive locations and hardware assets. Security cameras, door locks, and live guards all contribute to physical security. These controls prevent external attacks from taking place on premises.

Administrative controls are policies, practices, and workflows that secure business assets and provide visibility into workplace processes. These are vital for protecting against credential-based attacks and malicious insiders.

Technical controls include purpose-built security tools like hardware firewalls, encrypted data storage solutions, and antivirus software. Depending on their configuration, these controls can address almost any type of threat.

These categories have further sub-categories that describe how the control interacts with the threat it is protecting against. Most controls protect against more than one type of risk, and many controls will protect against different risks in different ways. Here are some of the functions of different controls that you should keep in mind:

Detection-based controls trigger alerts when they discover unauthorized activity happening on the network. Intrusion detection systems (IDS) and security information and event management (SIEM) platforms are examples of detection-based solutions. When you configure one of these systems to detect a known risk, you are implementing a detection-based technical control.

Prevention-based controls block unauthorized activity from taking place altogether. Authentication protocols and firewall rules are common examples of prevention-based security controls. When you update your organization’s password policy, you are implementing a prevention-based administrative control.

Correction and compensation-based controls focus on remediating the effects of cyberattacks once they occur. Disaster recovery systems and business continuity solutions are examples. When you copy a backup database to an on-premises server, you are establishing physical compensation-based controls that will help you recover from potential threats.

5. Document the results and create a remediation plan

Once you’ve assessed your organization’s exposure to different risks and developed security controls to address those risks, you are ready to condense them into a cohesive remediation plan . You will use the data you’ve gathered so far to justify the recommendations you make, so it’s a good idea to present that data visually.

Consider creating a risk matrix to show how individual risks compare to one another based on their severity and likelihood. High-impact risks that have a high likelihood of occurring should draw more time and attention than risks that are either low-impact, unlikely, or both.

Your remediation plan will document the steps that security teams will need to take when responding to each incident you describe. If multiple options exist for a particular vulnerability, you may add a cost/benefit analysis of multiple approaches. This should provide you with an accurate way to quantify the cost of certain cyberattacks and provide a comparative cost for implementing controls against that type of attack.

Comparing the cost of remediation with the cost of implementing controls should show some obvious options for cybersecurity investment. It’s easy to make the case for securing against high-severity, high-likelihood attacks with high remediation costs and low control costs. Implementing security patches is an example of this kind of security control that costs very little but provides a great deal of value in this context.

Depending on your organization’s security risk profile, you may uncover other opportunities to improve security quickly. You will probably also find opportunities that are more difficult or expensive to carry out. You will have to pitch these opportunities to stakeholders and make the case for their approval.

6. Implement recommendations and evaluate the effectiveness of your assessment

Once you have approval to implement your recommendations, it’s time for action. Your security team can now assign each item in the remediation plan to the team member responsible and oversee their completion. Be sure to allow a realistic time frame for each step in the process to be completed – especially if your team is not actively executing every task on its own.

You should also include steps for monitoring the effectiveness of their efforts and documenting the changes they make to your security posture. This will provide you with key performance metrics that you can compare with future network security assessments moving forward, and help you demonstrate the value of your remediation efforts overall.

Once you have implemented the recommendations, you can monitor and optimize the performance of your information systems to ensure your security posture adapts to new threats as they emerge. Risk assessments are not static processes, and you should be prepared to conduct internal audits and simulate the impact of configuration changes on your current deployment. You may wish to repeat your risk evaluation and gap analysis step to find out how much your organization’s security posture has changed.

You can use automated tools like AlgoSec to conduct configuration simulations and optimize the way your network responds to new and emerging threats. Investing time and energy into these tasks now will lessen the burden of your next network security risk assessment and make it easier for you to gain approval for the recommendations you make in the future.

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What is a network risk assessment & how do you conduct one?

What do UnitedHealth, the International Monetary Fund, and Trello have in common? 

All three experienced major data breaches in 2024, proving that no industry is safe from cyberattacks .

Many business owners are unaware of hidden vulnerabilities that could lead to cyberattacks, resulting in financial loss and reputation damage. 

The solution? A network risk assessment helps uncover and address potential threats, ensuring your business operates smoothly and securely. 

This article will guide you through the essentials, providing the knowledge you need to protect your business and keep your network secure. We’ll discuss:

What is a network risk assessment?

Why conduct a network risk assessment, key components of a network risk assessment, how to conduct a network risk assessment, tools and technologies for network risk assessment, best practices for network risk assessment.

A network security assessment checks the overall security of a network , including how well current protections work and whether security rules are followed. 

Meanwhile, a network risk assessment looks for specific risks and weak spots in a network to stop potential threats. Its primary purpose is to: 

• Identify vulnerabilities that could be exploited by attackers through data breaches or other incidents. 
• Mitigate these risks through appropriate security measures.
• Ensure compliance with industry regulations and standards. 

This proactive approach helps organizations maintain the accuracy, privacy, and availability of their network and data.

Network risk assessments are a comprehensive approach to keep networks safe, efficient, and compliant. It helps identify vulnerabilities like:  

• Outdated software
• Weak passwords
• Unpatched systems
• Misconfigured firewalls and routers
• Poor access control 

It also guides implementation measures like firewalls, software updates, and strong password policies to protect sensitive data from cyber threats. Without these, your network is open to data breaches that could lead to the theft of customer information, financial data, or intellectual property. 

Proactively managing potential threats, like malware or phishing attacks, also reduces the impact of security incidents. 

Network monitoring and immediate threat response play a major role in preventing data breaches and minimizing downtime. Ignoring these threats could lead to:

• Lengthy system outages
• Critical data loss
• Significant recovery costs
• Intellectual property theft
• Reputation damage

Another reason is compliance — ensuring the network meets industry standards and requirements keeps your company safe from legal issues and scrutiny from regulators. For example, healthcare organizations must follow HIPAA regulations to protect patient data. Non-compliance can lead to hefty fines, unsatisfied customers, and legal repercussions. 

Before we get into how to conduct a network risk assessment, let’s look at why each step is integral to the whole process:

• Planning and preparation: Defining the scope and objectives helps you form a clear strategy from the start.
• ‍ Asset identification: Creating an accurate inventory list ensures no part of the network is overlooked.
• ‍ Threat analysis: Helps you understand potential threats to plan relevant defenses.
• ‍ Risk evaluation: Allows you to tackle the serious issues right away by prioritizing which risks are most critical.
• ‍ Security controls review: Ensures your security measures evolve with emerging threats.
• ‍ Compliance check: Helps you meet industry and legal requirements to avoid penalties or fines.
• ‍ Reporting and recommendations: Keeps decision-makers informed about the current state of security to aid decision-making.
• ‍ Implementation and follow-up: Secures your network and allows for further adjustments as needed. 

Keep in mind that this isn’t a one-time process . Regular network risk assessments help you adapt to new threats and maintain strong network security.

Now that you know why each step of the network risk assessment is important, let’s dive into the action .

Planning and preparation

To establish a detailed plan for your risk assessment, start by setting clear objectives.  

Security is always the main priority, but your business might have additional goals that target compliance or vulnerabilities. 

Define the scope by determining which parts of the network to assess. For example, addressing vulnerabilities focuses on external-facing systems instead of internal file servers. For compliance, you would examine data storage and handling practices rather than user access policies.

Next, assemble your IT team and assign responsibilities. Make sure your team has access to relevant documents and tools like:

• Network diagrams
• Asset inventories
• Security policies
• Vulnerability scanners
• Network monitoring software
• Documentation templates 

Regularly review their progress to keep the plan on track and make adjustments as needed to address any issues that arise.

Asset identification

With clear objectives, narrow down the scope with a detailed inventory list that includes:

• Hardware: Servers, routers, switches, modems, and user devices. 
• Software: Applications, operating systems, and licenses. 
• Data assets: Databases and file systems.

This process accounts for (and protects) all assets. Once you have a comprehensive list, cross-check it with existing records for accuracy. 

Meter simplifies this step for you with insights from your dashboard . See your entire network topology in one go, with detailed information about hardware and software.

Next, classify assets based on their criticality and sensitivity to prioritize security efforts. This step helps you allocate resources efficiently and focus on high-risk areas first.

You’ll also want to regularly update the inventory to reflect changes in your network. 

Threat and vulnerability analysis

A threat and vulnerability analysis identifies potential weaknesses and threats that could compromise your network security. Get started by:

• Researching recent cybersecurity threats and trends relevant to your industry.
• Conducting brainstorming sessions with your security team to list possible internal and external threats.
• Analyzing network logs to detect unusual activities that could indicate a breach. 
• Reviewing historical data on past security incidents within your organization.

Vulnerability scanners can help you detect known vulnerabilities in your network. You can also conduct penetration testing, which simulates cyberattacks and uncovers exploitable weaknesses. 

Before proceeding to risk evaluation, create a detailed report of all identified threats and vulnerabilities, methods used, and potential mitigation strategies. 

Risk evaluation

While a threat and vulnerability analysis identifies specific issues, a risk evaluation assesses the potential impact and likelihood of the identified threats.  

It prioritizes these risks to determine which ones need immediate attention and resources. 

Start by categorizing the risks identified in the previous step based on their severity. Use a risk matrix to plot the likelihood of each threat happening against its potential impact. 

Make sure you consider critical factors like the value of affected assets and the cost of damage. To pinpoint high-priority cases, use a low-medium-high scale to assign risk ratings to each threat.

Consult with stakeholders to understand the business impact of these risks . Develop specific mitigation strategies, like changing access controls or implementing new security measures.

Prioritize the most significant issues first . Regularly review and update the risk evaluation to reflect changes in the network and threat landscape. 

Review of security controls

Now that you know where problems might lie, evaluate the effectiveness of your current security measures . This involves checking controls, determining if they are adequate, and identifying gaps for improvement. 

Start by creating an inventory of all security controls , including firewalls, antivirus software, intrusion detection systems, and encryption protocols. 

Document their configurations, versions, and deployment locations. To check effectiveness:

• Conduct penetration tests to see if controls can be bypassed.
• Run vulnerability scans to identify any weaknesses.
• Use network monitoring tools to review logs for signs of past breaches or attempted attacks.

Next, research industry standards and best practices to compare your controls against. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is a great resource to get you started. Identify any gaps or weaknesses in the current setup. 

Look for specific solutions based on your findings , like updating software, reconfiguring settings, or adding new security measures.

Compliance verification

Regular compliance checks can help you avoid penalties and ensure good security practices . Compliance is also essential for legal protection and maintaining trust with stakeholders.

Start by gathering detailed requirements and standards that apply to your industry, such as:

• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act ( HIPAA )
• Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard ( PCI-DSS )
• Federal Information Security Management Act ( FISMA )
• Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act ( FERPA )
• Other industry-specific regulations

Next, conduct an internal audit to review policies, procedures, and security controls against these requirements. To ensure thoroughness, you may use compliance checklists and frameworks. 

Collect and organize documentation , like security policies, audit logs, and reports, that demonstrate compliance. Chances are, you might have identified some areas where current practices do not meet compliance standards. 

A third-party auditor is another option for validating compliance and providing an unbiased assessment. 

Whichever method you choose, you’ll need to implement remediation actions . Develop a clear, comprehensive plan to address identified gaps and put it into action — update policies, configure systems, and train staff as needed.

Reporting and recommendations

You’re likely overwhelmed with information, findings, assessment results, and matrices at this point. Now it’s time to organize all this data into a comprehensive report: 

• Write an executive summary highlighting key findings and their implications.
• Include detailed sections for each identified issue, describing the threat, its impact, and evidence.
• Attach supporting documents like scan results, logs, and audit trails.
• Develop actionable steps to resolve each potential threat or vulnerability. 

Share the draft report with stakeholders, like management or relevant teams, and incorporate their input. Make necessary revisions before you finalize the report.

Implementation and follow-up

Based on your report, develop an action plan to execute the recommended security measures. This step will vary depending on your network risk assessment findings, but some common ways to implement security measures are:

• Patch vulnerabilities: If a vulnerability scan identified outdated software, update to the latest version. For example, update all Windows servers to the latest security patch.
• ‍ Update configurations: If a configuration review found open ports that aren't in use, close those ports on the firewall to reduce attack surfaces.
• ‍ Enhance access controls: If weak access controls were identified, implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all critical systems.
• ‍ Install new security measures: If the assessment recommends a new intrusion detection system (IDS), install a suitable IDS like Snort , configuring it to monitor network traffic.
• ‍ Conduct training sessions: If user training on phishing threats was recommended, schedule and conduct regular security awareness training sessions for all employees.

After implementing changes, run follow-up vulnerability scans and penetration tests to test if the new controls are effective. Use monitoring tools to keep track of any signs of weakness or breaches. 

The right tools and technologies can streamline and simplify your network risk assessment process and beyond. 

• Vulnerability scanners: Tools like Nessus scan the resources on a network (laptop, servers, etc) for known vulnerabilities and provide detailed reports on security flaws and offer guidance on how to fix them.
• ‍ Network monitoring software: Network monitoring is built into your Meter subscription, providing proactive alerting and continuous monitoring of hardware, software, and network management .
• ‍ Risk management software: Platforms like RiskWatch help manage and document the entire risk assessment process. They assist in identifying, evaluating, and prioritizing risks, as well as tracking mitigation efforts.
• ‍ Penetration testing tools: Software like Metasploit simulates cyberattacks to test network defenses. It helps uncover weaknesses that could be exploited by real attackers and provides insights into improving security.
• ‍ Compliance management tools: Tools like LogicGate ensure that the network complies with industry standards and regulations. They automate the process of tracking compliance requirements and generating audit reports.

Make your network risk assessments more effective by following best practices. 

Employ your best assets — stakeholders and employees. Input from different departments, including IT, management, and operations, creates a more comprehensive understanding of potential risks and impacts. 

In addition to input, regular security training for employees builds an informed workforce. Run workshops on how to recognize potential threats, like phishing scams, and properly document and report them. 

Stay on top of the latest threats and security trends by following cybersecurity news and subscribing to threat intelligence feeds. Share this knowledge with employees to help identify new vulnerabilities and risk factors.

Boost security with a multi-layered security approach, combining firewalls, antivirus software, and intrusion detection systems. This strategy provides multiple barriers to potential threats.

Finally, keep detailed records of all risk assessment activities, including methods, findings, and action steps. Documentation creates transparency and helps in future assessments and audits.

Next steps: Strengthen network security with Meter

Network security starts with a strong infrastructure. 

Meter simplifies network management with our seamless, cloud-managed infrastructure.

We provide an end-to-end solution that handles everything from design and installation to ongoing maintenance and support. We keep your network safe and secure with:

• Supercharged security: Our centralized platform monitors, manages, and enforces security policies with DNS security , malware protection, VPN capabilities, and real-time insights to prevent unauthorized access and ensure data integrity.
• ‍ Complete network transparency: Monitor and control your network remotely with our intuitive dashboard, automating configurations and eliminating manual IT intervention.
• ‍ Improved speed and reliability: Integrated security appliances, routing, and switchin g ensure seamless network interoperability, high availability with redundancy, and preventive enterprise controls.
• ‍ Multi-WAN capabilities: Improves failover by spreading network traffic across all active connections using a round-robin method. This boosts network reliability, increases speed, and makes the best use of your ISP connections .
• ‍ Automatic failover: We support multiple ISPs for failover. We’ll work with you to determine which configuration is best for your company.

Get in touch for a demo of Meter to learn how we maintain secure networks and reduce potential risks and vulnerabilities. 

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It security risk assessment methodology: qualitative vs quantitative.

Abi Tyas Tunggal

Formulating an IT security risk assessment methodology is a key part of building a robust  information security  risk management program. 

The two most popular types of risk assessment methodologies used by assessors are:

• Qualitative risk analysis:  A scenario-based methodology that uses different threat-vulnerability scenarios to try and answer "what if" type questions. These assessments are subjective in nature.
• Quantitative risk analysis:  Assigns a numeric value to different risk assessment components. Accessors aim to quantify all elements (asset value, threat frequency, safeguard effectiveness, uncertainty and probability) to answer questions like "How much would a  data breach  cost us?" and "How long is an acceptable amount of time offline before we need to initiate our  incident response plan ?"

What is a Risk Assessment?

A risk assessment is a process that aims to identify  cybersecurity risks , their sources and how to mitigate them to an acceptable level of risk. 

The process generally starts with a series of questions to establish an inventory of information assets, procedures, processes and personnel. 

This allows your organization and its accessors to understand what your key information assets are and which pose the highest risk. Risk is generally calculated as the impact of an event multiplied by the frequency or probability of the event. 

Regardless of whether your organization uses a qualitative or quantitative risk assessment process, there is some level of decision making required. This generally comes in the form of a cost/benefit analysis to determine which risks are acceptable and which must be mitigated.  

A robust risk assessment process will focus on all aspects of  information security  including physical and environment, administrative and management, as well as technical controls.

This is a laborious process for assessors that requires strong quality assurance and project management skills, and becomes harder as your organization grows. Driven by the increasing pace of information systems, processes and personnel change, as well as the introduction of new  cyber threats ,  vulnerabilities  and  third-party vendors .

If you're new to risk assessments, refer to this overview of performing a third-party risk assessment .

Take a tour of UpGuard's risk assessment features >

When Should Risk Assessments Be Conducted? 

Risk assessments must be conducted across the lifecycle of an information assets, as business needs change and new  attack vectors  emerge. 

By employing a continuous risk assessment approach, organizations can identify emerging  cybersecurity risks  and controls that need to be put in place to address them. 

As with any other process, security needs to be continually monitor, improved and treated as a part of overall product/service quality. 

Consider conducting a risk assessment whenever security gaps or risk exposures are found, as well as when you are deciding to implement or drop a certain control or  third-party vendor . 

As with any  information risk management  process, this is largely based on the CIA triad (confidentiality, integrity and availability) and your business needs.

To streamline the risk assessment process, organizations should have internal security policies and standards that mandate security requirements, processes and procedures across the organization and its vendors, e.g. only using third-party vendors with  SOC 2  assurance and a  security rating  above 850. 

Download your vendor risk assessment template >

Why is a Risk Assessment Process Important?

Cybersecurity  is largely about risk mitigation. The moment you connect to the Internet, rely on new information technology or onboard a new  third-party vendor , you introduce some level of risk. 

Risk assessments identify key information assets, what their value is (qualitative or quantitative) to the organization, as well as its customers and partners.   

With this information, management is better able to understand its risk profile and whether existing security controls are adequate. 

This is becoming increasingly important due to the rise of outsourcing and a growing reliance on vendors to process, store and transmit  sensitive data , as well as to deliver goods and services to customers. 

Pair this with growing regulation focused on the protection and disclosure of  personally identifiable information (PII)  and  protected health information (PHI)  and the need for clear risk assessment methodology has never been higher.

Understand every piece of technology, vendor and employee is a potential  attack vector , whether from  social engineering  attacks like  phishing  and  spear phishing  or technology-based attacks like the  exploits  of  CVE -listed  vulnerabilities ,  man-in-the-middle attacks ,  ransomware  and other  types of malware .

To minimize potential loss and remain operational, every level of your organization need to understand security requirements and a robust risk assessment methodology can do a lot to mitigate identified risks.  

As a result of risk assessments, staff become more aware of  cyber threats  and learn to avoid bad practices that could be detrimental to the  information security ,  data security  and  network security , raising security awareness and helping  incident response planning . 

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.

Is a Quantitative or Qualitative Risk Assessment Methodology Better?

There are pros and cons to quantitative and qualitative risk assessment methodologies. Best-in-class organization employ a hybrid approach that takes into account quantitative and qualitative inputs. 

Risk management is focused on making risk-adjusted decisions to enable your organization to operate efficiently, while taking on as much or as little risk as you deem acceptable. 

And the only way to do that is to understand what risks you have, what you are willing to accept and which you wish to transfer, mitigate or avoid. For example, you may choose to ignore a high risk with extremely low probability, e.g. Amazon discontinuing Amazon Web Services, because you decide it's not cost effective to mitigate it.

In contrast, a different organization with a lower risk tolerance may decide to straddle two cloud service providers to mitigate the risk. 

Regardless of your risk profile, there is always residual risk as it's just not cost effective to mitigate everything.

ProsConsQualitative

• Qualitative analysis is a simpler assessment approach, there are aren't any complex calculations
• Determining the monetary value of assets isn't always necessary or possible to value intangible assets like reputation and customer goodwill
• It is not necessary to quantify threat frequency
• Easier to involve non-security and non-technical staff
• Subjective in nature
• Results and quality of the assessment depend on expertise and quality of risk management team
• Limited effort to understand monetary value of assets
• No cost/benefit analysis for risk mitigation techniques e.g. cost of implementing security controls and security policies

Quantitative

• Quantitative analysis is based on objective processes and metrics , removing subjectivity
• Assets value and risk mitigation options are well understood
• Cost/benefit assessments are heavily employed, helping senior management mitigate high-risk activities first
• Results can be expressed in management-specific language (e.g. monetary value and probability) 
• Quantitative approaches can be complex and time-consuming
• Historically only works well with a recognized  automated security management tool  and associated knowledge base
• Requires preliminary work to collect and quantify different risk information
• Generally not focused on the personnel level, security awareness training may be overlooked

What are the Obstacles to Effective Risk Management?

A common complaint from security management teams is that they do not have the time to do in-depth risk assessments. 

Even for those that do, they often struggle with where to start. This is because there isn't one industry standard that everyone accepts as best practice.

Moreover, most guidelines like ISO 27001 and NIST Security Self Assessment Guide for Information Technology Systems, SP 800-26 are general in nature and don't provide enough details about how to conduct a proper risk assessment.  

This has led to many organizations outsourcing the risk management process to external vendors who have expertise in conducting proper risk assessments. They can also help your organization create effective policies like a  vendor management policy  and  third-party risk management framework .

However, as organizations grow in size and complexity and the number of third-party vendors grow, it becomes expensive to outsource. You also don't want your organization to become reliant on an external vendor to make important business and risk mitigation decisions.  

This is why more and more organizations are insourcing their risk management and  vendor risk management  programs. 

Cyber security ratings tools  can help scale your risk management team by automatically monitoring and assessing first, third and fourth-party security posture . This allows your risk management team to focus on the most high risk, high impact fixes first and exponentially increases the number of  third-party vendors  one person can manage. 

Vulnerability assessments allow small teams to scale up and understand  third-party risk  and  fourth-party risk  in real-time. 

If your organization lacks risk management expertise or just wants to scale their risk management team, consider investing in a tool that can  automate vendor risk management , provide  vendor risk assessment questionnaire templates  and monitor for  first-party risk and leaked credentials .

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Basics of the NIST Risk Assessment Framework

In the same way businesses have security measures for their physical locations, every business needs to shore up its cyberdefenses. With cybercrime on the rise, and hackers often outpacing even the strongest and smartest cybersecurity systems, it’s extremely important to keep all architecture and practices up to date. To that end, the NIST risk assessment framework is one of the best ways to understand exactly what risks are posed to your business, as well as how to mitigate and manage them.

That’s why you need to be thinking seriously about assessment.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology , also known as NIST, is an agency within the broader United States Department of Commerce. It’s responsible for establishing many requirements and precedents for the operation of technology, including rules and regulations regarding the assessment and management of risk.

Over the course of the following sections, we’ll cover the following NIST frameworks and protocols in detail:

• NIST Risk Assessment Guidelines
• NIST Risk Management Framework
• NIST Cybersecurity Framework

But first, let’s get into why any of this even matters.

Why is NIST Risk Assessment Important?

It’s important because risk assessment is an essential part of your institution’s overall cybersecurity practices. Plus, it may be a requirement for your business.

Businesses in the private sector may or may not need to follow the controls in the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF). But all companies in business with the Department of Defense (DoD) need to follow NIST Risk Management Framework (RMF) principles, including risk assessment, due to the Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA).

Let’s go over what the risk assessment protocols are, then dive deeper into the overall requirements of both the RMF and the CSF.

NIST Risk Assessment 101

The NIST risk assessment methodology is a relatively straightforward set of procedures laid out in NIST Special Publication 800-30: Guide for conducting Risk Assessments . In this guide, NIST breaks the process down into four simple steps:

• Prepare assessment
• Conduct assessment
• Share assessment findings
• Maintain assessment

Let’s take a closer look at each, beginning with the preparation step:

Preparing the Assessment

This first step is key to the overall success of your risk assessment—and therefore your entire risk management . Preparation is heavily influenced and shaped by the framing stage of your risk management, which the RMF 101 section below covers in more detail.

In order to prepare for a full-fledged risk assessment, you need to:

• Identify purpose for the assessment.
• Identify scope of the assessment.
• Identify assumptions and constraints to use.
• Identify sources of information (inputs).
• Identify risk model and analytic approach to use.

Across these various identification processes, you’ll set yourself up for a successful implementation by knowing exactly what you’re studying, why, and how.

Download Our Comprehensive Guide to NIST Implementation

Conducting the Assessment

This step is the main focus of the entire risk assessment process; it entails putting your plan into action. The assessment comprises two main sub-processes.

The first is further identification, and the second involves analysis of data uncovered:

• Identification – You need to define what particular threats exist, what their sources are, and what potential events could occur as a result of vulnerabilities being exploited.
• Determination – Once you have identified the threats, you need to determine all possible negative impacts they could have on all parties involved, as well as the relative likelihood of each possible scenario.

Once all this data is compiled, it’s time to put it to use.

Sharing Assessment Findings

The next step entails gathering the information generated from the assessment and communicating it to all parties who could be impacted by the risks and scenarios plotted.

This stage is more straightforward than the previous two. It’s virtually the same for all organizations that undertake it, with the caveat that major differences in scope and scale of both the company and the risk assessment are reflected in how this stage functions.

Maintaining Assessment

The final part of NIST risk assessment methodology entails setting yourself up for continued, ongoing assessment over the long term. This stage comprises a combination of detailed monitoring of all previously identified risk factors, as well as scanning for new ones.

In addition, you also need to constantly update your communication and other risk management practices based on new findings. It’s important that assessment is not an isolated one-time occurrence. Rather, it needs to be an element of your company’s overall culture.

NIST Risk Management Framework 101

NIST Special Publication 800-37 , titled “Risk Management Framework for Information Systems and Organizations: A System Life Cycle Approach for Security and Privacy,” is the document that details the specific procedures required for risk management.

As the name makes explicit, the RMF is comprehensive and long term, spanning the “life cycle” of a company. The seven steps detailed throughout the guide are:

• Preparation
• Categorization
• Implementation
• Authorization

Now, let’s take a close look at each in order to better understand how they relate to risk assessment and overall management:

Step 1: Prepare

Just like the microcosm of NIST cybersecurity assessment framework , the broader macro level of RMF begins with a solid foundation of preparation. However, unlike the equivalent of this stage in the above scheme, preparing for RMF is a much less particular and granular process.

Rather than a specific set of items that need to be identified for study, preparation for company-wide risk management involves gathering all data possible that could pertain to risk. That includes information about all stakeholders in the company, as well as detailed breakdowns of the company’s assets and business practices.

This stage is all about compiling as much information as possible.

Step 2: Categorize

Once you have the information, it’s time to mobilize it for future analysis and processing by implementing strong indexing and categorization.

NIST publishes several documents to aid in the schematic categories various risk-related information may fall into:

• Overall potential impact on system
• Specific resources and personnel impacted
• Confidentiality
• Availability

This step, coupled with the first, completes the framing portion of risk management.

Step 3: Select

This step works in conjunction with the next; selection refers to the determination of any and all particular security controls that will be implemented in order to address the risks identified previously. Selection will depend upon the cybersecurity architecture deployed by the company, as well as any relevant compliance requirements.

Step 3 is also informed by Steps 1 and 2 in that the particular practices and measures selected pertain to the categorization of risks identified.

Step 4: Implement

Implementation comprises actually putting into place any and all controls and practices selected in the previous step. This can be an arduous process, and is by far the most involved and high-stakes portion of the entire RMF.

Some examples of what implementation may look like include:

• Adoption of pre-shared key identity authentication, per SP 800-77 , “Guide to IPsec VPNs,” for companies migrating to or otherwise dealing with VPN issues.
• Corrections to bring inventory and other practices up to date according to the requirements detailed in SP 1800-23A , “Energy Sector Asset Management.”

The particular controls put in place will vary widely, depending on the specific risks being dealt with, as well as the needs and means of the organization.

Step 5: Assess

This step involves assessing the efficacy of all practices and measures implemented in the previous step. In particular, assessment seeks to identify success and failure rates (as well as outcomes and side effects) of the implementation step.

While it shares a name with the risk assessment procedure detailed above, it’s unrelated. This form of assessment does suss out whether risks are present, but that’s not the primary focus. Instead, you’re looking to see if your risk management practices worked.

The ultimate aim of assessment, as part of the RMF? Getting back to normal.

Step 6: Authorize

This is the stage where that stamp of normalcy is set—or isn’t. Authorization involves deciding whether or not some portion of your overall systems impacted by risk (or all systems) are fit to return to business as normal. A few of the most likely outcomes include:

• Full authorization to operate, subject to monitoring (see below)
• Indefinite or definite suspension of authorization to operate
• Full removal of authorization, pending radical recovery

This is ultimately the final payoff of all preceding steps – where you finally know whether your risks have been addressed well enough to return to normal.

But that doesn’t mean you’re done yet…

Step 7: Monitor

Finally, the last step in RMF involves an extension of the assessment process (step 5) over a longer period of time. Namely, in order to ensure proper authorization into the future, you need to monitor any impacted systems at regular intervals (once every 3 years, etc.) to ensure that no new threats have developed, nor have any previously addressed threats resurfaced.

NIST Cybersecurity Framework 101

Aside from the rigid RMF that DoD contractors must follow, NIST also publishes more generalized security guidelines applicable to businesses in any sector. The Cybersecurity Framework is detailed in the publication Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity , version 1.1 of which was published in 2018 to update 2014’s initial v.1.

The CSF is a risk-based approach that centers around a deep understanding of the risks themselves. It ultimately breaks down into three major components:

• Framework Core
• Framework Implementation Tiers
• Framework Organizational profiles

As we did for the RMF above, let’s take a closer look at each part of the CSF here:

Component 1: Framework Core

The CSF Framework Core is the main logical underpinning of all cybersecurity architecture based on CSF. It gives shape to the various practices and procedures meant to deliver outcomes—namely, privacy and security.

All in all, the CSF Core is composed of five main functions:

• Identify – Identifying and documenting all resources, assets, risks, etc.
• Protect – Developing safety measures designed to keep critical services operating
• Detect – Recognizing and preparing for response to abnormal events
• Respond – Undertaking immediate practices to mitigate and eliminate risks
• Recover – Planning resilience and pathways to recoup compromised assets

The outcomes each core function aims at depend upon successful implementation of the practices each comprises.

Component 2: Implementation Tiers

The tiers of implementation within the CSF designate the scope of an organization’s particular approach to risk management with respect to how robust and rigorous their practices are. There are four tiers in total, with ascending levels of rigor:

• Tier 1: Partial
• Tier 2: Risk Informed
• Tier 3: Repeatable
• Tier 4: Adaptive

Importantly, while the tiers do reflect the relative strength of an organization’s dedication to risk management, they are not indicators of maturity. A company doesn’t need to move “up” the tier ladder to be more safe. Many companies at Tier 1 operate safely enough for their needs.

Component 3: Organizational Profiles

Profiles, similar to the tiers above, provide descriptions of the state of cybersecurity and risk management at a company. In particular, they are detailed descriptions of various cybersecurity activities. Just as a tier provides a picture of what risk management looks like at a company, a profile provides a smaller-scale picture of what an individual part of the whole system looks like.

Companies may choose to create several profiles for any individual activity. Each profile takes into consideration various factors concerning an activity, including all risks associated and information about the institution’s tier and approach.

Professional Risk Assessment and Cybersecurity Solutions

Here at RSI Security, our mission is to help companies of all shapes and sizes get the cybersecurity protection they need. A key component of that, as we’ve established above, is generating a cyber risk assessment report that breaks down your:

• Network vulnerability
• Web vulnerability
• Dark web presence

RSI provides these premium services free of cost .

Beyond assessment according to the NIST risk assessment framework , RSI Security can also help you build up your cyberdefenses, mitigating or even eliminating certain risks. We’re your first and best option for all cybersecurity. Get in touch to see how safe you can be!

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RSI Security

RSI Security is the nation’s premier cybersecurity and compliance provider dedicated to helping organizations achieve risk-management success. We work with some of the world’s leading companies, institution and governments to ensure the safety of their information and their compliance with applicable regulation. We also are a security and compliance software ISV and stay at the forefront of innovative tools to save assessment time, increase compliance and provide additional safeguard assurance. With a unique blend of software based automation and managed services, RSI Security can assist all sizes of organizations in managing IT governance, risk management and compliance efforts (GRC). RSI Security is an Approved Scanning Vendor (ASV) and Qualified Security Assessor (QSA).

Guide to Password Management in Network Security

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A network security risk assessment allows a company to view its infrastructure from a cybercriminal’s perspective and helps spot network security issues so they can be addressed. 

When conducting a risk assessment, start by prioritizing your assets to test, then choose the most appropriate type of network security assessment. From there, per form the assessment and improve any deficiencies you find. Luckily, there is software available to help you do it right.

See below to learn all about how to conduct a network security risk assessment to help improve a company’s network security:

1. Identify And Prioritize Assets

2. choose a type security assessment type, 3. perform the network security assessment, 4. set up and implement to network security, is there software that can help with a network security risk assessment, why should you do a network security risk assessment, bottom line.

A company’s important assets can include their infrastructure, network, internal data, and customer data. When conducting a network security risk assessment, begin by prioritizing the assets you want to assess. 

To do so, first identify your assets and classify them as low, medium, or high sensitivity. From there, start your risk assessment with the most sensitive assets. Typically, assets with public access are the lowest sensitivity and internally protected data is the highest.

Let’s take a look at some examples of low, medium, and high sensitivity assets:

Common Asset  Classification Terms

• Public: This classification is similar to low sensitivity. Public access is available without security controls. This information is not a large concern.
• Internal: Similar to medium sensitivity, this classification is meant for internal use only. However, if this information is exposed, it will not be detrimental to the business.
• Confidential: This classification is between medium and high sensitivity. The data needs to be confidential. If the data is exposed, the company may deal with negative results. 
• Restricted: Similar to high sensitivity, if this data is leaked, it is detrimental to a company. If leaked, it can cause a loss of customers and money and lead to legal, and regulatory consequences.

Once the data is classified, IT teams can move on to assessing the data.

See more: 5 Top Data Classification Trends

Choosing a security assessment type can be based on classification of data, industry, and the company’s preference. A vulnerability assessment is the most popular assessment, due to its ability to find vulnerabilities within an infrastructure, but IT audits, IT risk assessments, and penetration testing are helpful as well. 

A business must pick their assessment based on what they want from it. While vulnerability assessments show vulnerabilities, IT audits can help assess whether a network meets essential requirements.

Here are examples of what the assessments can help with in the business:

Network Security Assessment Types

• Vulnerability assessment: cybersecurity software that helps identify vulnerabilities within a company’s IT infrastructure. See more: How to Conduct a Vulnerability Assessment: 5 Steps toward Better Cybersecurity  
• IT audit: helps assess if a network’s configuration matches the essential standards. See more: Creating a Network Audit Checklist
• IT risk assessment: identify, analyze, and evaluate a company’s security risk levels. See more: Checklist: Security Risk Assessment  
• Penetration testing: an intentional cyberattack against a company’s network and infrastructure to find their vulnerabilities. See more: Guide to Penetration Testing vs. Vulnerability Scanning

Each assessment can offer comfort in a business’s cybersecurity. Using assessments can help an IT team make the correct decisions for a business. It is vital to map out and see vulnerabilities to prevent future attacks.

Factor To Consider with Assessment Types

• What categories the data is in
• See financial cost and risk
• Customer information safety
• Industry-based risk attacks

Because security risks are varied, a company should conduct multiple assessments for the best results.

See more: 5 Top Security Assessment Trends

Once the company decides what assessment works best, it is time to perform the assessment. Here are the steps based on the assessment that a business selects:

Vulnerability Assessment Steps

Vulnerability scanning is software that finds cybersecurity vulnerabilities in a company’s infrastructure, network, and software. This assessment is useful for finding and patching vulnerabilities that are detrimental to a company.

• Decide what a business needs to test the most: Start by identifying your most important assets and categorizing them as low, medium, or high. Then, prioritize your assets to test, starting with the most critical.
• Vulnerability identification: The vulnerability assessment will then scan every part of an infrastructure and network to find every vulnerability.
• Analyze the vulnerabilities: Vulnerability assessments offer a range of risks. How serious a vulnerability is, the risk of cyber attacks, and which are the most important to patch.
• Treat vulnerabilities through patching: When a vulnerability is detected, a company should go into the system and patch the vulnerabilities they see fit to feel safe within their network.

IT Audit Steps

The IT audit is a necessary part of maintaining a network, especially in companies working with a variety of hardware, software, operating systems, data sets, and users.

• Plan for the audit: A company should immediately establish what the objective of the audit is. Once the objective has been established, a business should make a plan on how to achieve the safety they need.
• Do preparations for the audit: At this point in the process, it is helpful to have an IT audit checklist to go off of. Addressing the weaknesses and the vital systems to check.
• Perform the audit: Usually a company will hire an auditor to complete the audit. This is an effective way to ensure the information a company receives is accurate.
• Report the company’s findings: Once the audit is completed, a company will receive the findings of the audit and what needs to be done to fix any problems.

IT Risk Assessment Steps

A security risk assessment identifies risks in a company’s vital assets to ensure that the company can fix and ensure the system will be safe.

• Identify the problems in a company’s system: A company must identify the risks and vulnerabilities their company has, and what security requirements and objectives need to be fulfilled. 
• Decide what may be harmed and how it would happen: The problems might affect customers, the company’s network, or even employees. Investigating the risk of cyberattacks, damage to a company, or losing customer trust.
• Analyze the risks detected: Analysis may include finding risks that are connected, what can happen if these risks occur, and how they can be avoided.
• Record what a business finds and implement it: Documenting what a business finds and how it can be prevented is a vital part of the process. The security controls must be implemented as well as tools and processes to heal the network.

Penetration Testing Steps

A penetration test is an intentional cyberattack against a company’s network and computer infrastructure to find their vulnerabilities. This shows companies how easy it might be to access their data.

• Plan for the test: For this step, a company must determine their test goals and gather further information to see what must be helped.
• Scan to find vulnerabilities: A company must then scan to determine how the target might react to an intrusion. 
• Gain access to vulnerabilities and security: Imitation of an ethical hacker to see if a vulnerability can be used to maintain access for cybercriminals.
• Analyze findings: The ethical hacker must then process results, configure the possible problem or vulnerability, and test again.

Once the vulnerabilities are identified and solved, it is time to set up prevention controls.

Implementing prevention and security controls is the next vital step. When a company receives its results from a network security risk assessment, it is important to see what the priorities are and see how the problems can be solved. This can reduce risks and vulnerabilities within a company’s infrastructure and network.

Factors For Setting Up Prevention Control Plan

There are many ways to implement security solutions for a network or infrastructure: including firewalls , virtual private networks (VPNs) , antivirus and anti-malware software , encryption , and automatic updates

Setting up prevention measures requires monitoring both the network and the security systems to make sure they continue to do their job for the company.

See more: What is a Technology Control Plan?

Network security risk assessment software solutions are used by companies to analyze their networks and address security weaknesses. The software must monitor the company’s network, applications, and infrastructure to identify vulnerabilities. The software can then provide recommendations to use different security practices or solutions. 

To qualify for a top network security risk assessment software a product must:

• Analyze a company’s security network and tools
• Inform companies of known vulnerabilities or risks in their security plan
• Provides recommendations to create better security planning across security systems

See below for some vendors offering network security risk assessment software:

• Vigilant Software’s vsRisk : VsRisk is a top cloud-based information security risk assessment tool by Vigilant Software, an IT service and IT consulting company in Ely, Cambridgeshire.
• LogicManager Cybersecurity Risk Management Program : The Cybersecurity Risk Management Program is a standardized cybersecurity risk assessment that helps companies understand the risks that IT asset, policy, procedure or control holds, made by LogicManager, a computer software company in Boston, Massachusetts.
• SolarWinds Cybersecurity Risk Management and Assessment tool : SolarWinds Cybersecurity Risk Management and Assessment tool is an IT risk assessment software that helps cybersecurity policies with automated assessments. SolarWinds is a computer software company based in Austin, Texas.

Other vendors and tools include:

• ConnectWise Identify
• Sphera Security and Vulnerability Analysis (SVA)

Network security risk assessments have the potential to help a company reduce the risk of being a victim of cybercrime. 

• Improve security awareness: Within an organization, vulnerabilities can go undetected for long periods, and cybercriminals can steal information. When a network security risk assessment is completed, a company will have more knowledge of which areas need attention. 
• Protection against data breaches: Data breaches are not uncommon, and they can come at a high cost, expose private information, and hurt the trust in a company. Network security risk assessments can assist in identifying network vulnerabilities before a breach can occur. See more: Average cost of data breach surpasses $4 million for many organizations
• Educate employees on security measures: Finding the vulnerabilities in a network can help employees understand specific security issues. By learning what needs to be prevented, a security team can better discover ways to keep data secure. See more: How to improve security awareness and training for your employees

With networks being a key cybersecurity risk area and breaches on the rise, network security risk assessments should be a vital part of a company’s network security strategy.

A network security risk assessment allows a company to see their infrastructure and network from a cybercriminal’s perspective and enables security pros to find the right solutions to security problems.

See more: Automating Security Risk Assessments for Better Protection

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Mastering Network Security Assessment: A Guide

Network Security Assessment is crucial for organizations to evaluate and enhance their network security. It involves identifying vulnerabilities, analyzing risks, and providing recommendations. The process includes initial analysis, risk assessment, vulnerability scanning, data analysis, and reporting.

Network Security Assessments have become increasingly important for businesses due to the rising cyber threats and attacks that they face. Businesses are more interconnected than ever before, which also means that they are more susceptible to various cyber threats. Cyber threats such as malware, ransomware, phishing attacks, and data breaches have become a major concern for organizations of all sizes. These threats can result in financial loss, damage to reputation, legal consequences, and disruption of business operations.

In addition, they also play a vital role in ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements. Many industries have specific regulations and standards, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). These require organizations to have adequate security measures in place. Regular assessments help businesses identify any compliance gaps and take appropriate actions to meet these requirements.

What is a Network Security Assessment?

Network Security Assessment is a comprehensive IT security audit of an organization’s network security measures. It involves a detailed analysis of the network infrastructure, systems, and policies to identify potential vulnerabilities and risks. By conducting a Network Security Assessment, you can gain a better understanding of the current security posture and take proactive steps to enhance it.

There are two main types of Network Security Assessments:

Internal assessments

They focus on evaluating the internal network infrastructure. These include servers, workstations, and other devices within the network. This type of assessment helps identify any vulnerabilities or misconfigurations that may exist within the internal network, which could be exploited by malicious actors.

External assessments

These involve evaluating the security of an organization’s network from an external perspective. This includes assessing the security of the perimeter defenses. These include firewalls and intrusion detection systems. Also testing web applications for any potential vulnerabilities.

Overall, a Network Security Assessment seeks to prevent unauthorized access, data breaches, and other security incidents that could compromise the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of an organization’s data and network resources. It aims to identify weaknesses in the network security infrastructure, policies, and procedures and provide recommendations to mitigate these risks.

The Steps to Conduct a Network Security Assessment

Step-by-step guide to how we conduct a typical network security assessment:

1. Initial Analysis

The first step is to conduct an initial analysis of the organization’s network infrastructure. This involves gathering information about your network architecture, systems, and policies in place. The goal is to gain a comprehensive understanding of the current security measures and identify any potential vulnerabilities.

2. Risk Assessment

Once the initial analysis is complete, the next step is to assess the risks associated with the network. This involves evaluating the potential impact and likelihood of different threats and vulnerabilities. By quantifying the risks, you can prioritize security efforts and allocate resources.

3. Vulnerability Scanning

After identifying the risks, the next step is to conduct vulnerability scanning. This involves using automated tools to scan the network for known vulnerabilities and misconfigurations. The scanning process helps uncover any weaknesses that could be exploited by attackers.

4. Data Analysis

Once the vulnerability scanning is complete, the collected data needs to be analyzed. Our experts help review the scan results, identify vulnerabilities, and assess their severity. The data analysis helps in understanding the overall security posture of the network and prioritizing the remediation efforts.

5. Recommendations and Reporting

The final step provides recommendations and reporting. Based on the findings from the data analysis, our expert security assessment team prepares a detailed report. The report outlines the vulnerabilities, risks, and recommended actions. Including actionable steps to address the identified weaknesses and enhance network security.

The recommendations and reporting phase is crucial as it provides a roadmap to improve your network security posture. It helps understand the areas that need immediate attention. And guides you in implementing the necessary security measures.

Regular assessments are essential to stay ahead of evolving threats and protect sensitive data.

Benefits of Conducting Network Security Assessment

Conducting a Network Security Assessment offers several benefits that are crucial for overall security and success. Let’s delve deeper into these benefits:

Protection from Cyber Threats

One of the primary benefits of a Network Security Assessment is the enhanced protection it provides against a wide range of cyber threats. By identifying vulnerabilities and risks within the network infrastructure, you can take proactive measures to mitigate these risks and strengthen defenses. This includes implementing robust security measures, such as firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and data encryption, to prevent unauthorized access, data breaches, malware infections, and other cyber attacks.

Compliance with Regulatory Requirements

Many industries have specific regulations and standards that they must adhere to, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). Regular Network Security Assessments help identify any compliance gaps. Appropriate actions are put in place to meet these requirements. By ensuring compliance, you not only avoid financial penalties but also demonstrate your organization’s commitment to protecting sensitive data and customer privacy.

In addition to industry compliance, the SEC implemented new cyber security regulations effective December 15, 2023 that require public companies to comply with cybersecurity government procedures. Also, they must disclose cybersecurity incidents that are determined to be material by the company.

Improvement in Security Posture

A Network Security Assessment allows you to evaluate your company’s current security posture and identify areas that need improvement. By understanding the weaknesses in the network infrastructure, policies, and procedures, you can take proactive steps to enhance the security posture. This includes implementing security best practices, updating software and firmware, training employees on cybersecurity awareness, and establishing incident response plans.

Business Continuity Assurance

Network Security Assessments play a vital role in ensuring business continuity. By identifying potential vulnerabilities and risks, you can proactively address these issues and implement appropriate safeguards. This helps minimize the impact of security incidents. It also ensures that critical business operations can continue uninterrupted. In the event of a cyber-attack or breach, having effective security measures in place can significantly reduce downtime. It also mitigates financial losses associated with such incidents.

Customer Trust Enhancement

Customers are increasingly concerned about the security of their personal information. By conducting regular assessments, organizations show their commitment to protecting customer data and building trust. When customers trust that their sensitive information is secure, they are more likely to maintain long-term relationships. Enhancing customer trust can give your organization a competitive edge in the market.

Top Network Security Challenges

Constantly shifting cyber threat landscape.

A primary obstacle we seen in network security is the incessant evolution of cyber threats. With technology advancing at a swift pace, malicious actors continually devise innovative techniques to breach and exploit networks. This dynamic landscape mandates companies to perpetually reinforce and update their defense mechanisms to safeguard their network assets.

Widening attack surface

This further complicates network security. Given that every network user plays a crucial role in maintaining security, devising a universally adherent security strategy becomes daunting. The situation becomes even more complex when there is a need to consistently revise and adapt this strategy to counter newly emerging threats.

BYOD Policies and Remote Work Complications

The incorporation of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies results in an intricate and distributed network, consequently enlarging the attack surface. Each device brought into the network under such policies necessitates individual protection.

Moreover, with a surge in remote working practices, securing wireless connections has become paramount. Employees working from varied locations often connect to crucial corporate resources and sensitive data through public networks. These networks are inherently insecure, making wireless security a significant concern.

Challenges in Cloud Security

When you decide to operate workloads and offer services via the cloud, the responsibility of ensuring security is often shared. While cloud service providers are tasked with providing a secure environment, the onus of protecting data and applications predominantly lies with the organizations themselves. Hence, organizations need to be vigilant about all network access points and establish a cohesive security strategy that seamlessly integrates with their hybrid environments.

Key Components of Network Security Assessment

The essential elements in the network security assessment process include:

Network Discovery

Network discovery is the initial phase of the process. It involves scanning the network to identify all devices, systems, and endpoints connected to it. This step helps create a comprehensive inventory of the network infrastructure. And provides visibility into potential entry points for attackers. Network discovery can be done through various methods, such as network scanning tools, network mapping, and device profiling.

Risk Identification and Analysis

Once the network is discovered, the next step in the process is to identify and analyze the risks associated with it. This involves assessing the potential threats and vulnerabilities that could compromise the network’s security. We perform risk identification and analysis through several techniques like threat modeling. This involves analyzing the network’s architecture, data flow, and potential attack vectors. Next, you focus your security efforts and allocate resources.

Vulnerability Assessment

A vulnerability assessment is a crucial component of network security assessment. It involves scanning the network for known vulnerabilities and weaknesses. Automated vulnerability scanning tools check for common vulnerabilities in network devices, software, and configurations. The assessment helps identify vulnerabilities that could be exploited by attackers. It also provides insights into the network’s overall security posture.

Penetration Testing

Penetration testing, also known as ethical hacking, is a systematic process of probing the IT systems, networks, and applications for security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by cybercriminals. Cyber attacks are simulated in a controlled environment, aiming to evaluate the security of a system, understand its weaknesses, and determine how it responds to different types of cyber threats. This practice is vital in preventing data breaches and ensuring the digital assets are well-protected.

During a penetration test, the mindset and techniques of malicious hackers are utilized. But operated with the intent to secure rather than harm. The purpose is to identify and exploit vulnerabilities. After, a detailed report of the findings and recommended improvements are provided. Through penetration testing, you can preemptively discover and rectify security weaknesses before they are exploited by unauthorized entities.

Threat Modeling

Threat modeling is a proactive approach to network security assessment. It involves identifying and analyzing potential threats that could exploit vulnerabilities and compromise the network’s security. Threat modeling helps understand the motivations and capabilities of potential attackers. Thus, prioritizing security measures accordingly. This process involves considering various attack scenarios. Then evaluating the impact of each threat, and determining appropriate countermeasures.

Reporting and Documentation

Reporting and documentation are essential elements of the network security assessment process. After conducting the assessment, a detailed report is prepared that summarizes our findings, vulnerabilities, risks, and recommended actions. The report provides actionable steps to address the identified weaknesses and enhance network security. Additionally, documentation is maintained throughout the assessment process to ensure transparency, accountability, and future reference.

Choosing a Network Security Assessment Provider

When it comes to selecting the right network security assessment service provider, there are several important factors to consider. The security of your network and sensitive data depends on choosing a reputable and experienced provider. Here are some tips to help you make the right choice:

Credentials

Look for service providers that have relevant certifications and credentials in the field of network security. Certifications such as Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) or Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) demonstrate a provider’s expertise and commitment to maintaining industry standards.

Consider the experience and track record of the service provider. Look for providers that have a proven history of conducting successful network security assessments for organizations in your industry. A provider with experience in your specific sector will have a better understanding of the unique security challenges you may face.

Methodologies

Inquire about the assessment methodologies used by the service provider. The provider should follow recognized industry standards and best practices in conducting network security assessments. Ask for details about their approach, tools, and techniques to ensure they align with your organization’s needs and requirements.

Customization

Every organization has unique security needs, so it’s important that you choose a service provider that offers customized assessment solutions. Avoid providers that offer a one-size-fits-all approach and instead look for those that take the time to understand your specific network infrastructure, policies, and goals.

Reputation and Reviews

Research the reputation of the service provider in the industry. Look for reviews, testimonials, and case studies from their previous clients. This will give you insight into their level of professionalism, expertise, and customer satisfaction.

Ongoing Assessments and Monitoring

Network security is not a one-time activity. It requires continuous monitoring and regular assessments to stay ahead of evolving threats. Choose a service provider that offers ongoing support and monitoring services. This ensures that your network security remains up-to-date and effective in mitigating emerging risks.

By considering these factors and following these tips, you can select a network security assessment service provider that meets your organization’s needs. Also, helps you maintain a robust security posture. Remember, the security of your network is crucial for protecting your sensitive data and ensuring the overall success of your organization.

Example Case Study: Financial Services

Challenge faced.

A financial investment firm sought to bolster its security framework while devising a strategic operational roadmap addressing existing IT challenges. With a lean IT team overwhelmed by daily operational demands and apprehensive about implementing major shifts given the sensitive nature of the IT assets, the firm was in search of a vendor that would relieve the IT team of some of its burdens and also ensure transparent operations.

Strategic Solution Employed

Given the client’s hesitation towards significant operational changes, The approach taken was transparent and collaborative during the integration phase of new technology and processes.

A comprehensive Cybersecurity suite was implemented encompassing Vulnerability Scanning and Assessment, paired with Advanced Software Patching. Additionally, the incorporation of ServiceNow for onboarding and workstation deployment, configured as a cloud-based client portal, granted the client real-time network insights and facilitated the streamlined creation, routing, and resolution of IT support tickets.

The comprehensive Office 365 infrastructure and cybersecurity bundles implemented create a future-proofed, compliant, and secure environment to accommodate the company’s new growth. The firm also leverages expert consultants to assist at every stage of the investment lifecycle.

In conclusion, these assessments are crucial due to rising threats and attacks. They help identify vulnerabilities, comply with regulations, improve security, and enhance customer trust. By investing in regular assessments, you can proactively protect the networks and data from cyber threats. Also, avoid financial penalties and showcase your commitment to safeguarding customer information.

Network Security Assessments also allow you to evaluate and enhance security measures. This ensures business continuity and reduces the impact of security incidents. By prioritizing network security, your organization will build trust among customers. Further, it provides a competitive edge in the market. Invest in regular Network Security Assessments to secure your organization’s future.

What are the specific costs associated with conducting a network security assessment for different sizes of organizations?

The specific costs associated with conducting a network security assessment can vary widely depending on the size and complexity of an organization's network, as well as the depth of the assessment desired. Factors such as the number of servers, the variety of software applications in use, and the need for specialized assessments for compliance purposes can all influence the final cost. It's important for organizations to get quotes from service providers based on their unique needs.

How does the frequency of network security assessments affect their effectiveness in identifying and mitigating new security threats?

The frequency of network security assessments plays a crucial role in maintaining a secure IT environment. Regular assessments help organizations identify and mitigate new security threats more effectively. As cybersecurity threats evolve rapidly, periodic assessments ensure that security measures are up to date and vulnerabilities are promptly addressed. The ideal frequency may vary, depending on the organization's size, industry, and the sensitivity of the information it handles.

What are the three 3 basic network security measures?

The three basic network security measures include the use of firewalls, antivirus software, and intrusion detection systems (IDS). Firewalls act as a barrier between your network and external threats, controlling traffic based on predetermined security rules. Antivirus software helps in detecting, preventing, and removing malware threats, while intrusion detection systems monitor network traffic for suspicious activity and potential security breaches. These foundational measures are crucial for creating a secure network environment, providing layers of defense against a variety of cyber threats.

Related Resources:

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What is a Network Security Assessment?

In today’s rapidly evolving threat landscape, the top priority for an organization is securing critical IT assets and systems while fulfilling end-user and regulatory demands. However, the focus of protecting an IT infrastructure is no longer merely on maintaining existing defenses but on keeping up…

In today’s rapidly evolving threat landscape, the top priority for an organization is securing critical IT assets and systems while fulfilling end-user and regulatory demands. However, the focus of protecting an IT infrastructure is no longer merely on maintaining existing defenses but on keeping up with the increasing frequency and level of sophistication of cyberattacks. That’s where performing regular network security assessments comes into play. A network security assessment helps organizations gain a comprehensive understanding of network changes and hidden vulnerabilities in their IT infrastructure. This empowers organizations to promptly manage and address new vulnerabilities and threats, thereby effectively reducing the risk of a data breach.

In this blog, we’ll grasp the fundamentals of network security assessment, including its definition, why it’s important, the different types and how often an assessment should be conducted.

What is a network security assessment?

A network security assessment is a meticulous evaluation of an organization’s IT network infrastructure, protocols and configurations. The aim of network security assessments is to uncover hidden vulnerabilities, assess the level of risk and suggest an actionable plan for remediation. It equips an organization with key insights to incorporate robust security controls and reduce exposure to internal and external threats while ensuring adherence to compliance requirements.

Why are network security assessments important?

Network security assessments are essential to protecting the integrity of an organization’s sensitive data and intellectual property from potential cyberattacks. By scrutinizing an organization’s security posture, network security assessments enable IT teams to detect, assess and minimize loopholes or entry points that cybercriminals could exploit. Likewise, network security assessments help ensure an organization meets industry regulations and standards, such as GDPR , HIPAA and ISO 27001 , that require implementing best practices for protecting sensitive data. In a nutshell, by conducting network security assessments, organizations are safeguarding their reputation, building a solid foundation for data security and avoiding significant expenses associated with data breaches, including hefty fines and legal fees.

If you’re running an organization, the goal of a network security assessment is to help you answer questions like:

• Which critical systems and data assets will likely be breached?
• What are the potential attack vectors for cybercriminals?
• What impact would a cyberattack have on a specific asset?
• How should sensitive data, such as personally identifiable information or protected health information, be stored and protected to avoid a data leak?
• How to proactively mitigate a particular type of attack?

What are the two types of network security assessments?

At its core, there are two types of network security assessments: vulnerability assessment and penetration testing. Both are great methods to evaluate the effectiveness of an organization’s IT network defenses and the potential impact of a cyberattack on specific assets. Let’s see what each method entails and how they assist in the process.

Vulnerability assessment

As its name suggests, vulnerability assessment is the process of identifying, classifying and prioritizing vulnerabilities in an organization’s network that cybercriminals can exploit. It provides an overview of the weaknesses, misconfigurations, open ports, malware and other security issues using automated tools. Once the scan is complete, the results are analyzed to assess which areas of the system need to be addressed and strengthened for their overall security.

The benefits of vulnerability assessment include the following:

• Uncover common vulnerabilities and anomalies, such as weak passwords, encryption protocols, misconfigured access controls and unpatched systems, to gain a clear understanding of potential entry points.
• Prioritize remediation efforts based on the level of risk identified threats pose.
• Minimize the window of opportunity for cybercriminals to attack by making informed cybersecurity decisions.

Penetration testing

On the other hand, penetration testing, also known as pen testing or ethical hacking, is the practice of simulating a cyberattack on an organization’s network and applications to identify hidden vulnerabilities and weaknesses. Unlike vulnerability assessments that merely highlight potential threat vectors, penetration testing goes a step further by using the same techniques and tools malicious actors employ to assess an organization’s current security posture. It’s manually performed by skilled security professionals who follow a controlled methodology to actively probe systems, outline the potential impact of threats and help establish countermeasures.

The benefits of penetration testing include the following:

• Identifies vulnerabilities and weaknesses that may not be discovered by automated scans.
• Provides a comprehensive assessment of an organization’s vulnerabilities and incidence response measures in a real-world scenario.
• Equips you with valuable insights and recommendations to fine-tune the implementation and effectiveness of security controls and policies.

In summary, vulnerability assessments and penetration testing are valuable tools for proactive cybersecurity. By conducting these network security assessments, organizations will gain an in-depth understanding of the threats they face so they can implement appropriate measures to address them.

Network security assessment methodology

A network security assessment is integral to any security life cycle, providing organizations with valuable insights to ensure their networks and data are protected and adhered to regulatory policies.

The following is a sample of a six-step methodology for performing a comprehensive network security assessment:

1. Document and prioritize network assets

The fundamental prerequisite step of a network security assessment, before IT teams test for vulnerabilities and weaknesses, is to take inventory of critical IT resources (networks, endpoints, data and other vital assets). This documentation is used to establish a complete map of an organization’s IT environment and its security controls.

2. Examine and assess vulnerabilities

Once a map of an organization’s IT environment is established, IT teams can start scanning for vulnerabilities and weaknesses. A thorough assessment of vulnerabilities should include the following:

• An assessment of both internal and external weaknesses of the organization.
• A comprehensive evaluation of security configurations and patch levels in systems and devices.
• Assessment of database security settings, permissions and configurations.
• A review of information security, third-party access and employee behavior policies.

Network administrators should prioritize and plan remediation efforts based on the potential impact of vulnerabilities and weaknesses on an organization’s security. This includes external risks, bottlenecks, unused or underutilized resources and other areas requiring optimization.

3. Test security controls and defenses

At this point, organizations must actively test their security controls and defenses to ensure they have correctly assessed their vulnerabilities. This can be done via manual penetration testing or automated ethical hacking tools. Conducting these simulation tests is a valuable method to assess the efficacy of an organization’s security controls and risk mitigation techniques in a real-life scenario.

4. Document and communicate results

The scans and tests help organizations gain valuable insights into their security posture, but to maximize the impact, organizations need to document and communicate the findings effectively. It includes creating summarized reports that categorize and prioritize these threats to drive informed decision-making.

5. Plan and implement remedies

The next step is turning the insights into actionable plans, such as implementing a range of controls, leveraging technological solutions and creating robust security policies, to optimize network performance without compromising security and future growth.

6. Monitor and review continuously

IT security experts know that continuous monitoring is the only way their organization can navigate through today’s threat landscape. The simple truth is that there is a never-ending threat of new vulnerabilities rising because an organization’s internal and external software tools and other aspects of its systems are constantly being updated and modified. Beyond this, continuous monitoring also helps comply with security standards, such as ISO 27001, GDPR and SOC 2 . In the case of many of these security standards and certifications, organizations need continuous monitoring to be compliant.

How often should you perform network security assessments?

A periodic and thorough IT security assessment provides an up-to-date snapshot of an organization’s security posture. This helps IT teams establish best practices and policies that identify, assess and prioritize vulnerabilities and weaknesses early on before they snowball into more significant threats. It’s important to understand that carrying out a network security assessment ranges from a straightforward IT infrastructure audit to a customized project that spans for months and aims to target every area of risk in a network.

The frequency of network security assessments depends on an organization’s nature, size, industry regulations and risk tolerance. As a best practice, it’s often suggested that network security assessments must be conducted at least annually or whenever there’s a significant change in an organization’s IT infrastructure. However, in heavily regulated industries, organizations have greater accountability for conducting regular network security assessments. For example, healthcare organizations in the U.S. need to comply with HIPAA. Generally, organizations need to strike a balance between staying vigilant and allocating resources to determine the appropriate frequency.

Conduct automated network security assessments with RapidFire Tools

In today’s threat landscape, managing network security can be daunting unless you have a complete picture of an organization’s vulnerabilities and weaknesses and can properly measure the risk of each issue. That’s why a recurring network security assessment is so crucial. They help you take a complete “snapshot” of your organization’s IT infrastructure at various points in time, allowing you to quickly identify trends and changes, as well as prioritize the severity of new vulnerabilities.

RapidFire Tools offers a suite of discovery tools that, together, deliver a layered approach to risk management. Our products —  Network Detective Pro , VulScan , Cyber Hawk and Compliance Manager GRC — offer IT security professionals the ability to effectively identify and score hidden risks and vulnerabilities. They each function independently as separate “point solutions” or together as a complete risk management solution. All four tools help gather different sets of data, analyze what’s discovered, organize the issues by type and by risk, and feed the information to end users through dashboards, reports and compliance documentation.

Curious to know how RapidFire Tools simplifies risk management through network security assessments and robust compliance management? Schedule a demo today!

What to Look for in Network Assessment Software

With cybercrime becoming increasingly sophisticated, what you don't know can hurt your organization. In this buyer's guide, learn about the tools you need to implement an effective IT assessment strategy to identify threats.

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Cybersecurity Risk Assessment Methodology

by Trava, Cyber Risk Management

Learn how an effective cybersecurity risk assessment can benefit from a systematic and repeatable methodology.

Cybersecurity matters to companies, from big corporations to small businesses and everyone in between. Data breaches, ransomware, phishing schemes, and more can wreak havoc on a company’s success. And cybersecurity risks are on the rise. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received almost three times the number of reported cybercrime in 2021 than it did just five years earlier in 2017 (from 301,580 to 847,367).

But it’s not all doom and gloom. As hackers and cyber criminals get more advanced, so do the methods of protecting your business from an attack. Conducting a cybersecurity risk assessment is the first step in ensuring you’re covered. Knowing where you stand and which areas are your biggest weaknesses allows you to prioritize the most important changes to keep your business safe.

In this article, we’ll address:

The basics of cyber risk assessment methodology

The 5 main types of risk assessment methodologies most common for businesses

Some helpful risk assessment methodology example cases

How a cybersecurity risk assessment framework can be important for compliance in certain industries

What Is a Risk Assessment Methodology?

Risk assessment in general entails judging the possible risks inherent in a project. More specifically, a risk assessment methodology is the systematic way in which you carry out this evaluation. In cybersecurity, this means the system that’s in place for looking at how your company interacts with the internet and the threats inherent in that interaction from cybercrime.

To create a strategic methodology for risk assessment, you need to have a firm idea of what the risks in cybersecurity are. A handy way to think about risks is with the formula: risk = threat + vulnerability. Let’s break this down a little more.

Threats are the things out there online that can harm your business. They can be thought of in two main categories:

Intentional threats, including things like hackers, phishing, malware, and ransomware.

Unintentional threats, which are almost universally caused by human error. This includes things like employees creating weak passwords, forgetting to update antivirus software or falling prey to a phishing attempt.

Vulnerabilities are the areas of weakness in your company’s IT. They are the gaps in a business's software, hardware, or internal processes that could allow a threat to get in. If there were no chinks in the armor, even the strongest threat wouldn’t have a chance to penetrate. At the same time, if there were no external threats, weak points wouldn’t cause a problem because there would be nothing to defend against. Risk is the way these two elements come together to create the potential for harm to your business assets.

Now that we've explained what a risk assessment is, let's discuss the methodology for implementation. For a business to create their risk assessment methodology, they will need to establish a set of practices for systematically identifying threats to their assets and weaknesses in their security that create potential risk. To be effective, this methodology should be baked into business operations so that it can be consistently applied to keep up with changing risk.

What Are the Five Security Risk Methodologies?

There are different methodological options you can take for risk assessment, the five most common include:

Qualitative

Quantitative

Threat-based

Vulnerability-based

Asset-based

Each method uses a different approach or priority for determining which risks are most pressing. It is not possible to completely avoid all risks, it would be too time and resource intensive to prioritize all risks and continue to run a successful business. Instead, these risk assessment methodologies aim to help systematically identify the most likely or potentially damaging risks, so managing those biggest threats can be prioritized. This means that each methodology will include tradeoffs—known risks that are not prioritized because they are deemed less likely or less costly.

Qualitative Risk Assessment Methodology

Qualitative assessments use your staff’s subjective impressions of how well they could do their jobs if specific parts of the IT infrastructure were to go offline due to a cybersecurity breach. Assessors design questions to avoid bias as much as possible. They then use the answers to rank risks based on how impactful the breaches would be. Each risk is then given a score of high, medium, or low based on these findings.

Quantitative Risk Assessment Methodology

Quantitative assessments rely on calculating monetary values for business assets and the risks that may jeopardize them. This methodology has the benefit of being easy to present and clearly relevant to the finances of a company—making it appealing for presentations to key stakeholders. However, it can be very challenging to calculate exact dollar values for each variable, and often involves a fair amount of subjectiveness, even as it strives for objectivity.

Threat-Based Risk Assessment Methodology

Threat-based assessments look at the ways in which cybercrime happens and prioritize risks based on how common or harmful each type of threat might be to the business's operation. For instance, if social engineering threats like phishing or baiting are deemed the most harmful, a threat-based assessment would prioritize staff training and awareness above hardware or software upgrades.

Vulnerability-Based Risk Assessment Methodology

Vulnerability-based assessments rely on identifying known weaknesses within the company and making changes to those weak spots first. For example, if there is a known unpatched firewall issue, a vulnerability-based methodology would recognize that as a top priority.

Asset-Based Risk Assessment Methodology

Asset-based assessments inventory each asset (hardware, software, infrastructure, and data) for threats and vulnerabilities. This methodology often aligns well with IT departments, since it systematically categorizes each specific area of concern. However, it can overlook many of the human elements of cybersecurity since it only focuses on assets and doesn’t take processes, staff, and policies into account.

What Are the Steps in a Risk Assessment Methodology?

From our discussion above of the different methodologies available for risk assessment, there isn’t just one identical set of steps that will work for everyone. But there are some high-level trends you can expect to see as you work through your methodology.

Let’s look at a cybersecurity risk management example to see what sort of steps you would expect. We’ll use a hypothetical small SaaS marketing business to see what each of the high-level steps might look like in a real business.

Assessing - This marketing company inventories their current cybersecurity protections along with their major hardware, software, and data assets. They also research the biggest cybersecurity threats to small businesses in their industry, so they know what they’re up against.

Identifying - They realize that their cloud computing systems are under-protected, and that spoofing attacks (bad actors pretending to be someone else as a way to get login data) are a common threat they haven’t trained their staff on.

Planning - They plan for external help from a cybersecurity technology company, like Trava , to implement needed cloud computing protections. They also plan monthly staff training or check-ins to ensure everyone stays up-to-date on the risks.

Executing - They start working with their external security team and incorporate ongoing support into their budgeting going forward. They allot bandwidth to staff to carry out needed training, so everyone continues to understand and protect against risk.

Monitoring - This marketing company builds regular reviews of their cybersecurity into their workflow and company culture. They continue to look for vulnerabilities and changing threats over time.

Compliance and Security Risk Assessment Methodology

Making sure your business is protected online is important for your own internal workings and peace of mind. But for many businesses, it is also a requirement by various compliance agencies. The International Organization of Standardization ( ISO ) oversees business cybersecurity worldwide, and in the United States, the National Institute of Standards and Technology ( NIST ) is the government agency most often involved.

Risk Assessment Methodology ISO 27001

ISO 27001 is a voluntary compliance regulation that many businesses choose to follow as it helps instill customer trust and ensures the use of best practices for cybersecurity. The main requirements are addressed in six clauses (4.1-10.2) that cover business practices like:

4.1 - Understanding the Organization and its Context

5.3 - Organizational Roles, Responsibilities & Authorities

6.2 - Information Security Objectives & Planning to Achieve them

7.5 - Documented Information

8.1 - Operational Planning & Control

9.1 - Monitoring, Measurement, Analysis, and Evaluation

10.1 - Nonconformity and Corrective Action

What Is a NIST Risk Assessment?

The NIST cybersecurity risk assessment is a template to give businesses a set of best practices for protecting themselves from cybersecurity threats. It has the same overarching aim as the ISO standards discussed above, but it is put out by the US government instead of an international organization.

A common question around these NIST-based criteria is “What are the 5 areas of the NIST cybersecurity framework?” The answer is:

Identifying risks that could compromise a business's ability to function

Protecting key assets from these risks

Detecting attacks and determining how severely assets were affected

Responding to these attacks quickly to limit the damage done

Recovering lost assets and planning prevention of possible future attacks

How Do You Write a Risk Assessment Methodology?

How you write the document that lays out your business’s risk assessment methodology will depend completely on who you are writing this document for. Each official organization that issues certifications will have very specific submission guidelines and formatting rules. Find those on the website for the relevant compliance agency, like here for the ISO and here for the NIST.

If you are preparing documentation for internal use, to present to staff or executives, you will likely want to write it differently. It may need to be formatted as a cybersecurity best practices handbook for staff training. Or it might live as a presentation, updated and given quarterly at review meetings for the c-suite. When you are trying to determine the best formatting for these types of situations, it can be helpful to ask for a risk management methodology example to better understand expectations. Alternatively, you can consider developing a template for preferred formatting.

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• 5-Step Security Risk Assessment Process

Vulnerability Assessment

• Vulnerability Management: 4 Steps to Successful Remediation
• What Is Vulnerability Assessment? Benefits, Tools, Process
• What Is Common Vulnerabilities & Exposures Glossary (CVE)?
• Vulnerability Management System

What is Security Risk Assessment?

A security risk assessment identifies security risks in a computing system, evaluates and prioritizes those risks, and suggests security controls that can mitigate the risks. Another aspect of security risk assessments is vulnerability assessment —the process of identifying and remediating vulnerabilities across the organization. 

Performing a risk assessment can provide organizations with a complete view of the exploitability of their infrastructure and application portfolio. It helps administrators make informed decisions about resource allocation, tools, and implementation of security controls. Therefore, conducting an assessment is an essential part of an organization's risk management process.

In this article:

What is the Difference Between Risk Management and a Security Risk Assessment?

Who should perform a cyber risk assessment, systems included in a security risk assessment.

• Determine the Scope of the Risk Assessment
• Threat and Vulnerability Identification
• Analyze Risks and Determine Potential Impact
• Prioritize Risks
• Document All Risks

Security risk assessments provide comprehensive evaluations of a company, department, or specific IT project. It aims to locate security gaps and weaknesses before threat actors exploit them by reviewing and testing systems and people. Identified security issues are ranked according to the risk they pose. 

A security risk assessment report identifies properly secured systems and those with issues, providing specific technical recommendations, such as firewall configuration and network scanning.

Risk management is the ongoing effort to identify and fix all the known issues. It involves monthly or weekly identification of risks and issues. Each risk is ranked, and stakeholders discuss how to ensure security continues to hold. The goal is to continually improve the organization’s security posture and eliminate risks as they emerge.

Organizations can set up a dedicated in-house team for risk assessments or contract third parties. It requires organizational transparency, typically provided by internal teams. However, not all organizations can afford or staff an in-house team.

An in-house team typically includes an IT team with a thorough understanding of the organization’s digital and network infrastructure and executives versed in information flows and relevant proprietary organizational knowledge. Organizations with no skilled personnel can outsource risk assessment to a third party. 

A security risk assessment typically includes one or more of the following:

• Facility analysis —evaluates physical security of the organization’s buildings. For example, checking whether the organization has reliable power backup for emergencies, and how locks, cameras, and alarm systems prevent physical intrusion.
• Server analysis —evaluates security of servers and other mission critical computing systems for issues like server redundancy, malware protection, authentication, and authorization.
• Network analysis —evaluates internal and external networks, switches, routers, and other network equipment, network segmentation, firewalls, and wireless networks.
• Data security analysis —evaluates how the organization stores sensitive data, how it is classified, how it is encrypted, and access is granted to that data.
• Company policy —evaluating security procedures, IT policies including Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies, disaster recovery plans, business continuity plans, and risk management policies.
• Third-party security analysis —evaluating all of the above for each third party that has access to the company’s systems.

5-Step Risk Assessment Process

1. determine the scope of the risk assessment.

The first step is determining the cope of the risk assessment. The cope can encompass an entire organization or specific business units, locations, or certain components like payment processing. 

Once you determine the scope, you need to get all relevant stakeholders on board, particularly those whose activities fall within the scope of the assessment. Their input is essential to identifying the relevant processes and assets, locating risks, assessing impacts, and defining risk tolerance levels. 

All stakeholders involved in the assessment process should learn the relevant terminology, including likelihood and impact. It helps standardize risk and ensure accurate communication. Additionally, organizations should review frameworks like NIST SP 800-37 and standards like ISO/IEC 27001 for guidance and clarity on effective security controls.

2. Threat and Vulnerability Identification

A threat is any event that can cause damage to an organization's assets or processes. Threats can be internal or external, malicious or accidental. 

A vulnerability is a flaw that exposes a company to potential threats. Vulnerabilities can be identified using many methods including automated scanning, auditing, penetration testing, vendor security advisories, and application security testing (AST) techniques.

Your analysis should cover not only technical flaws but also physical and process flaws. For example, a data center that does not have physical access control is vulnerable to physical intrusion, while a server that does not have malware protection is vulnerable to cyber threats.

Related content: Read our guide to vulnerability scanning

3. Analyze Risks and Determine Potential Impact

The next step is to determine how the risk scenarios you identified can impact the organization. In cybersecurity risk assessment, potential risk (the probability that a particular threat can exploit a vulnerability) is based on several factors:

• Discoverability of the security weakness
• Ease of exploitability
• Reproducibility of threats (some threats are one-time and some are continuous)
• Prevalence of the threat in the industry or similar companies
• Historical security incidents

4. Prioritize Risks

A risk matrix can be used to classify each risk scenario. It is important to define a risk tolerance ratio and specify which threat scenarios exceed this threshold. Based on the risk matrix you can determine one of three actions:

• Avoid —if the risk is low and it is not worthwhile to mitigate it, it might be best to take no action.
• Transfer —if the risk is significant but difficult to address, it is possible to share the risk by transferring responsibility to a third party. This can be done by taking cyber insurance or contracting an outsourced security service.
• Mitigate —risks that are significant and within the operational scope of the internal team should be mitigated. You can do this by deploying security controls and other measures to reduce their occurrence and potential impact.

Any risk assessment program must recognize that there is a certain level of residual risk that will be missed, or will not be fully addressed. This must be formally accepted by senior stakeholders as part of an organization's cybersecurity strategy.

5. Document All Risks

It is important to document all identified risk scenarios. This information should be reviewed and updated regularly to provide visibility of the current risk portfolio. 

Risk documentation should include details of the risk scenario, date of identification, existing security controls, the risk level, plan for mitigating the risk, current progress, and the residual risk expected after mitigation. Every risk category should have a risk owner—the person or team responsible for keeping the threat to an acceptable level.

Because cybersecurity risk assessment is a large and ongoing effort, it requires time and resources. As new threats emerge and new systems and activities are introduced, the organization must iteratively discover and address these new threats. Hopefully, a robust initial assessment will provide a good basis for subsequent assessments.

In this article, we explained the importance of a security risk assessment and described some of the key organizational systems covered in a risk assessment: physical facilities, servers, networks, data, policies, and third party relationships. 

Finally, we presented a 5-step process for conducting risk assessments:

• Determine scope —identify which parts of the organization and which systems need to be assessed.
• Threat and vulnerability identification —scanning the relevant systems to identify vulnerabilities and security weaknesses.
• Analyze risks —determine the business impact of each vulnerability if it were exploited.
• Prioritize risks —identify the order in which vulnerabilities should be handled and the most appropriate strategy for each—avoid, transfer responsibility to a third party, or mitigate.
• Document all risks —create a detailed report of the risks identified and the proposed risk management strategy.

Home / Resources / ISACA Journal / Past Issues / 2010 / Performing a Security Risk Assessment

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Performing a Security Risk Assessment

Enterprise risk management (ERM) 1 is a fundamental approach for the management of an organization. Based on the landmark work of the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) 2 in the 1990s, its seminal Enterprise Risk Management— Integrated Framework , 3 has become a primary tool for organizational risk management. Regulators in the US have recognized the value of an enterprise risk approach, and see it as a requirement for the well-controlled organization. Two primary examples of this are compliance with the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act 4 and the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), 5 both of which require a periodic risk assessment.

Although regulations do not instruct organizations on how to control or secure their systems, they do require that those systems be secure in some way and that the organization prove to independent auditors that their security and control infrastructure is in place and operating effectively. The enterprise risk assessment methodology has become an established approach to identifying and managing systemic risk for an organization. And, more and more, this approach is being applied in such diverse fields as environmental Superfund, 6 health 7 and corporate ratings. 8

Classically, IT security risk has been seen as the responsibility of the IT or network staff, as those individuals have the best understanding of the components of the control infrastructure. Moreover, security risk assessments have typically been performed within the IT department with little or no input from others.

This approach has limitations. As systems have become more complex, integrated and connected to third parties, the security and controls budget quickly reaches its limitations. Therefore, to ensure best use of the available resources, IT should understand the relative significance of different sets of systems, applications, data, storage and communication mechanisms. To meet such requirements, organizations should perform security risk assessments that employ the enterprise risk assessment approach and include all stakeholders to ensure that all aspects of the IT organization are addressed, including hardware and software, employee awareness training, and business processes.

IT enterprise security risk assessments are performed to allow organizations to assess, identify and modify their overall security posture and to enable security, operations, organizational management and other personnel to collaborate and view the entire organization from an attacker’s perspective. This process is required to obtain organizational management’s commitment to allocate resources and implement the appropriate security solutions.

A comprehensive enterprise security risk assessment also helps determine the value of the various types of data generated and stored across the organization. Without valuing the various types of data in the organization, it is nearly impossible to prioritize and allocate technology resources where they are needed the most. To accurately assess risk, management must identify the data that are most valuable to the organization, the storage mechanisms of said data and their associated vulnerabilities.

Reasons/Rationale for Performing a Security Risk Assessment

Organizations have many reasons for taking a proactive and repetitive approach to addressing information security concerns. Legal and regulatory requirements aimed at protecting sensitive or personal data, as well as general public security requirements, create an expectation for companies of all sizes to devote the utmost attention and priority to information security risks. An IT security risk assessment takes on many names and can vary greatly in terms of method, rigor and scope, but the core goal remains the same: identify and quantify the risks to the organization’s information assets. This information is used to determine how best to mitigate those risks and effectively preserve the organization’s mission.

Some areas of rationale for performing an enterprise security risk assessment include:

• Cost justification —Added security usually involves additional expense. Since this does not generate easily identifiable income, justifying the expense is often difficult. An effective IT security risk assessment process should educate key business managers on the most critical risks associated with the use of technology, and automatically and directly provide justification for security investments.
• Productivity —Enterprise security risk assessments should improve the productivity of IT operations, security and audit. By taking steps to formalize a review, create a review structure, collect security knowledge within the system’s knowledge base and implement self-analysis features, the risk assessment can boost productivity.
• Breaking barriers —To be most effective, security must be addressed by organizational management as well as the IT staff. Organizational management is responsible for making decisions that relate to the appropriate level of security for the organization. The IT staff, on the other hand, is responsible for making decisions that relate to the implementation of the specific security requirements for systems, applications, data and controls.
• Self-analysis —The enterprise security risk assessment system must always be simple enough to use, without the need for any security knowledge or IT expertise. This will allow management to take ownership of security for the organization’s systems, applications and data. It also enables security to become a more significant part of an organization’s culture.
• Communication —By acquiring information from multiple parts of an organization, an enterprise security risk assessment boosts communication and expedites decision making.

Enterprise Security Risk Assessment Methodology

The enterprise risk assessment and enterprise risk management processes comprise the heart of the information security framework. These are the processes that establish the rules and guidelines of the security policy while transforming the objectives of an information security framework into specific plans for the implementation of key controls and mechanisms that minimize threats and vulnerabilities. Each part of the technology infrastructure should be assessed for its risk profile. From that assessment, a determination should be made to effectively and efficiently allocate the organization’s time and money toward achieving the most appropriate and best employed overall security policies. The process of performing such a risk assessment can be quite complex and should take into account secondary and other effects of action (or inaction) when deciding how to address security for the various IT resources.

Depending on the size and complexity of an organization’s IT environment, it may become clear that what is needed is not so much a thorough and itemized assessment of precise values and risks, but a more general prioritization. Determination of how security resources are allocated should incorporate key business managers’ risk appetites, as they have a greater understanding of the organization’s security risk universe and are better equipped to make that decision.

Each organization is different, so the decision as to what kind of risk assessment should be performed depends largely on the specific organization. If it is determined that all the organization needs at this time is general prioritization, a simplified approach to an enterprise security risk assessment can be taken and, even if it already has been determined that a more in-depth assessment must be completed, the simplified approach can be a helpful first step in generating an overview to guide decision making in pursuit of that more in-depth assessment.

If one is unsure what kind of assessment the organization requires, a simplified assessment can help make that determination. If one finds that it is impossible to produce accurate results in the process of completing a simplified assessment—perhaps because this process does not take into account a detailed enough set of assessment factors—this alone can be helpful in determining the type of assessment the organization needs.

The assessment approach or methodology analyzes the relationships among assets, threats, vulnerabilities and other elements. There are numerous methodologies, but in general they can be classified into two main types: quantitative and qualitative analysis. The methodology chosen should be able to produce a quantitative statement about the impact of the risk and the effect of the security issues, together with some qualitative statements describing the significance and the appropriate security measures for minimizing these risks.

Security risk assessment should be a continuous activity. A comprehensive enterprise security risk assessment should be conducted at least once every two years to explore the risks associated with the organization’s information systems. An enterprise security risk assessment can only give a snapshot of the risks of the information systems at a particular point in time. For mission-critical information systems, it is highly recommended to conduct a security risk assessment more frequently, if not continuously.

The objective of a risk assessment is to understand the existing system and environment, and identify risks through analysis of the information/data collected. By default, all relevant information should be considered, irrespective of storage format. Several types of information that are often collected include:

• Security requirements and objectives
• System or network architecture and infrastructure, such as a network diagram showing how assets are configured and interconnected
• Information available to the public or accessible from the organization’s web site
• Physical assets, such as hardware, including those in the data center, network, and communication components and peripherals (e.g., desktop, laptop, PDAs)
• Operating systems, such as PC and server operating systems, and network management systems
• Data repositories, such as database management systems and files
• A listing of all applications
• Network details, such as supported protocols and network services offered
• Security systems in use, such as access control mechanisms, change control, antivirus, spam control and network monitoring
• Security components deployed, such as firewalls and intrusion detection systems
• Processes, such as a business process, computer operation process, network operation process and application operation process
• Identification and authentication mechanisms
• Government laws and regulations pertaining to minimum security control requirements
• Documented or informal policies, procedures and guidelines

The project scope and objectives can influence the style of analysis and types of deliverables of the enterprise security risk assessment. The scope of an enterprise security risk assessment may cover the connection of the internal network with the Internet, the security protection for a computer center, a specific department’s use of the IT infrastructure or the IT security of the entire organization. Thus, the corresponding objectives should identify all relevant security requirements, such as protection when connecting to the Internet, identifying high-risk areas in a computer room or assessing the overall information security level of a department. The security requirements should be based on business needs, which are typically driven by senior management, to identify the desired level of security protection. A key component of any risk assessment should be the relevant regulatory requirements, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, the US Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and the European Data Protection Directive.

The following are common tasks that should be performed in an enterprise security risk assessment (Please note that these are listed for reference only. The actual tasks performed will depend on each organization’s assessment scope and user requirements.):

• Identify business needs and changes to requirements that may affect overall IT and security direction.
• Review adequacy of existing security policies, standards, guidelines and procedures.
• Analyze assets, threats and vulnerabilities, including their impacts and likelihood.
• Assess physical protection applied to computing equipment and other network components.
• Conduct technical and procedural review and analysis of the network architecture, protocols and components to ensure that they are implemented according to the security policies.
• Review and check the configuration, implementation and usage of remote access systems, servers, firewalls and external network connections, including the client Internet connection.
• Review logical access and other authentication mechanisms.
• Review current level of security awareness and commitment of staff within the organization.
• Review agreements involving services or products from vendors and contractors.
• Develop practical technical recommendations to address the vulnerabilities identified, and reduce the level of security risk.

Mapping threats to assets and vulnerabilities can help identify their possible combinations. Each threat can be associated with a specific vulnerability, or even multiple vulnerabilities. Unless a threat can exploit a vulnerability, it is not a risk to an asset.

The range of all possible combinations should be reduced prior to performing a risk analysis. Some combinations may not make sense or are not feasible. This interrelationship of assets, threats and vulnerabilities is critical to the analysis of security risks, but factors such as project scope, budget and constraints may also affect the levels and magnitude of mappings.

Once the assets, threats and vulnerabilities are identified, it is possible to determine the impact and likelihood of security risks.

Impact Assessment

An impact assessment (also known as impact analysis or consequence assessment) estimates the degree of overall harm or loss that could occur as a result of the exploitation of a security vulnerability. Quantifiable elements of impact are those on revenues, profits, cost, service levels, regulations and reputation. It is necessary to consider the level of risk that can be tolerated and how, what and when assets could be affected by such risks. The more severe the consequences of a threat, the higher the risk. For example, if the prices in a bid document are compromised, the cost to the organization would be the product of lost profit from that contract and the lost load on production systems with the percentage likelihood of winning the contract.

Likelihood Assessment

A likelihood assessment estimates the probability of a threat occurring. In this type of assessment, it is necessary to determine the circumstances that will affect the likelihood of the risk occurring. Normally, the likelihood of a threat increases with the number of authorized users. The likelihood can be expressed in terms of the frequency of occurrence, such as once in a day, once in a month or once in a year. The greater the likelihood of a threat occurring, the higher the risk. It can be difficult to reasonably quantify likelihood for many parameters; therefore, relative likelihood can be employed as a ranking. An illustration of this would be the relative likelihood in a geographical area of an earthquake, a hurricane or a tornado, ranked in descending order of likelihood.

A systems example is the high likelihood of an attempt to exploit a new vulnerability to an installed operating system as soon as the vulnerability is published. If the system affected is classified as critical, the impact is also high. As a result, the risk of this threat is high.

For each identified risk, its impact and likelihood must be determined to give an overall estimated level of risk. Assumptions should be clearly defined when making the estimation. This two-dimensional measurement of risk makes for an easy visual representation of the conclusions of the assessment. See figure 1 for an example risk map.

Organizational Value

Institutionalizing a practical risk assessment program is important to supporting an organization’s business activities and provides several benefits:

• Risk assessment programs help ensure that the greatest risks to the organization are identified and addressed on a continuing basis. Such programs help ensure that the expertise and best judgments of personnel, both in IT and the larger organization, are tapped to develop reasonable steps for preventing or mitigating situations that could interfere with accomplishing the organization’s mission.
• Risk assessments help personnel throughout the organization better understand risks to business operations. They also teach them how to avoid risky practices, such as disclosing passwords or other sensitive information, and recognize suspicious events. This understanding grows, in part, from improved communication among business managers, system support staff and security specialists.
• Risk assessments provide a mechanism for reaching a consensus as to which risks are the greatest and what steps are appropriate for mitigating them. The processes used encourage discussion and generally require that disagreements be resolved. This, in turn, makes it more likely that business managers will understand the need for agreed-upon controls, feel that the controls are aligned with the organization’s business goals and support their effective implementation. Executives have found that controls selected in this manner are more likely to be effectively adopted than controls that are imposed by personnel outside of the organization.
• A formal risk assessment program provides an efficient means for communicating assessment findings and recommending actions to business unit managers as well as to senior corporate officials. Standard report formats and the periodic nature of the assessments provide organizations a means of readily understanding reported information and comparing results between units over time.

Ultimately, enterprise security risk assessments performed with measurably appropriate care are an indispensable part of prioritizing security concerns. Carrying out such assessments informally can be a valuable addition to a security issue tracking process, and formal assessments are of critical importance when determining time and budget allocations in large organizations.

In contrast, taking a haphazard approach to security concern prioritization can lead to disaster, particularly if a problem falls into a high-risk category and then ends up neglected. IT-specific benefits of performing an enterprise security risk assessment include:

• Providing an objective approach for IT security expenditure budgeting and cost estimation
• Enabling a strategic approach to IT security management by providing alternative solutions for decision making and consideration
• Providing a basis for future comparisons of changes made in IT security measures

Pitfalls/Lessons Learned

One of the key dangers of performing an enterprise security risk assessment is assuming where all the risks lie. It is important when structuring an enterprise security risk assessment to include as many stakeholders as possible. In one recent assessment, only IT management was to be interviewed, with the exception of a few internal audit organization members. While they certainly had many valid concerns, the group did not have the breadth of experience to form a complete picture of risk within the organization. By including a wider selection of operational, finance and human resources management, high-risk potentialities can be identified in areas such as research and development, HIPAA compliance, and sales management.

It is important to include personnel who are not only experienced in the complexities of systems and processes, but also have the ability to probe for areas of risk. A checklist is a good guideline, but is only the starting point in the process. With an experienced interviewer, the process can be as educational for the interviewee as it is for identifying risks.

Organizational executives have limited time, and it is often difficult to get on their calendars. There are three key steps to ease this part of the process:

• Request that the executive sponsor directly address the interviewees by announcing the purpose of the risk assessment and its importance to the organization.
• Within 48 hours of that communication, have the sponsor’s office schedule the initial interview.
• Send a tailored checklist to the executive prior to the interview and ask him/her to review it. This last step is to prepare him/her for the subject areas of the risk assessment, so that any apprehensions or reservations are allayed as he/ she understands the boundaries of the interview.

It is important not to underestimate the value of an experienced facilitator, particularly for the higher-level interviews and the process of determining the ranking of risk likelihood. The use of experienced external resources should be considered to bring even more objectivity to the assessment.

An information security framework is important because it provides a road map for the implementation, evaluation and improvement of information security practices. As an organization implements its framework, it will be able to articulate goals and drive ownership of them, evaluate the security of information over time, and determine the need for additional measures.

A common element in most security best practices is the need for the support of senior management, but few documents clarify how that support is to be given. This may represent the biggest challenge for the organization’s ongoing security initiatives, as it addresses or prioritizes its risks.

Specifically, an enterprise security risk assessment is intended to be suitable for the following, which could be specific to any organization:

• A way to ensure that security risks are managed in a cost-effective manner
• A process framework for the implementation and management of controls to ensure that the specific security objectives of an organization are met
• A definition of new information security management processes
• Use by management to determine the status of information security management activities
• Use by internal and external auditors to determine the degree of compliance with the policies, directives and standards adopted by the organization
• For implementation of business-enabling information security
• To provide relevant information about information security to customers

Overall, an organization must have a solid base for its information security framework. The risks and vulnerabilities to the organization will change over time; however, if the organization continues to follow its framework, it will be in a good position to address any new risks and/or vulnerabilities that arise.

1 The COSO Enterprise Risk Management—Integrated Framework , published in 2004, defines ERM as a “…process, effected by an entity’s board of directors, management and other personnel, applied in strategy setting and across the enterprise, designed to identify potential events that may affect the entity and manage risk to be within its risk appetite, to provide reasonable assurance regarding the achievement of entity objectives.” 2 COSO is a voluntary private-sector organization, established in the US, dedicated to providing guidance to executive management and governance entities on critical aspects of organizational governance, business ethics, internal control, enterprise risk management, fraud and financial reporting. 3 COSO, Enterprise Risk Management—Integrated Framework Executive Summar y, September 2004, www.coso.org/Publications/ERM/COSO_ERM_ExecutiveSummary.pdf 4 US Congress, Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, section 404, “Assessment of Internal Control,” USA, 2002 5 US Congress, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996, Title 2, “Administrative Simplification,” USA, 1996 6 US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), “What Is Risk Assessment?,” USA 7 Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, “A Guide to Health Risk Assessment,” California Environmental Protection Agency, http://oehha.ca.gov/pdf/HRSguide2001.pdf 8 Standard & Poor’s, RatingsDirect® Global Credit Portal, www.standardandpoors.com/ratingsdirect , 7 May 2008

Ron Schmittling, CISA, CIA, CPA/CITP is a manager in the Risk Services practice at Brown Smith Wallace LLC, where he leads the IT security and privacy practice. Schmittling’s more than 16 years of experience also include more than five years in senior-level technical leadership roles at a major financial services firm, as well as positions in IT audit, internal audit and consulting for several international organizations.

Anthony Munns, CISA, CIRM, CITP, FBCS, NCC -UK coleads Brown Smith Wallace’s risk services practice. Prior to joining the firm, he led Arthur Andersen’s St. Louis (Missouri, USA)- based risk consulting practice and led the Great Plains (USA) regional business systems audit practice. His specialty is bringing major company practices to small and medium-sized companies. In his more than 20-year career, Munns has managed and audited the implementation and support of enterprise systems and processes including SAP, PeopleSoft, Lawson, JD Edwards and custom client/server systems.

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OWASP Risk Rating Methodology

Over the years there has be lots of debate about the OWASP Risk Rating Methodology and the weighting of Threat Actor Skill levels. There are other more mature, popular, or well established Risk Rating Methodologies that can be followed:

• NIST 800-30 - Guide for Conducting Risk Assessments
• Government of Canada - Harmonized TRA Methodology
• Risk Assessment Summary
• Rapid Risk Assessment (RRA)

Alternatively you may with the review information about Threat Modeling, as that may be a better fit for your app or organization:

• https://owasp.org/www-community/Threat_Modeling
• https://owasp.org/www-community/Application_Threat_Modeling
• OWASP pytm Pythonic framework for threat modeling
• OWASP Threat Dragon threat modeling tool

Lastly you might want to refer to the references below.

Note : Edits/Pull Requests to the content below that deal with changes to Threat Actor Skill will not be accepted.

Introduction

Discovering vulnerabilities is important, but being able to estimate the associated risk to the business is just as important. Early in the life cycle, one may identify security concerns in the architecture or design by using threat modeling . Later, one may find security issues using code review or penetration testing . Or problems may not be discovered until the application is in production and is actually compromised.

By following the approach here, it is possible to estimate the severity of all of these risks to the business and make an informed decision about what to do about those risks. Having a system in place for rating risks will save time and eliminate arguing about priorities. This system will help to ensure that the business doesn’t get distracted by minor risks while ignoring more serious risks that are less well understood.

Ideally, there would be a universal risk rating system that would accurately estimate all risks for all organizations. But a vulnerability that is critical to one organization may not be very important to another. So a basic framework is presented here that should be ‘‘customized’’ for the particular organization.

The authors have tried hard to make this model simple to use, while keeping enough detail for accurate risk estimates to be made. Please reference the section below on customization for more information about tailoring the model for use in a specific organization.

There are many different approaches to risk analysis. See the reference section below for some of the most common ones. The OWASP approach presented here is based on these standard methodologies and is customized for application security.

Let’s start with the standard risk model:

• Risk = Likelihood * Impact

In the sections below, the factors that make up “likelihood” and “impact” for application security are broken down. The tester is shown how to combine them to determine the overall severity for the risk.

Step 1: Identifying a Risk

The first step is to identify a security risk that needs to be rated. The tester needs to gather information about the threat agent involved, the attack that will be used, the vulnerability involved, and the impact of a successful exploit on the business. There may be multiple possible groups of attackers, or even multiple possible business impacts. In general, it’s best to err on the side of caution by using the worst-case option, as that will result in the highest overall risk.

Step 2: Factors for Estimating Likelihood

Once the tester has identified a potential risk and wants to figure out how serious it is, the first step is to estimate the “likelihood”. At the highest level, this is a rough measure of how likely this particular vulnerability is to be uncovered and exploited by an attacker. It is not necessary to be over-precise in this estimate. Generally, identifying whether the likelihood is low, medium, or high is sufficient.

There are a number of factors that can help determine the likelihood. The first set of factors are related to the threat agent involved. The goal is to estimate the likelihood of a successful attack from a group of possible attackers. Note that there may be multiple threat agents that can exploit a particular vulnerability, so it’s usually best to use the worst-case scenario. For example, an insider may be a much more likely attacker than an anonymous outsider, but it depends on a number of factors.

Note that each factor has a set of options, and each option has a likelihood rating from 0 to 9 associated with it. These numbers will be used later to estimate the overall likelihood.

Threat Agent Factors

The first set of factors are related to the threat agent involved. The goal here is to estimate the likelihood of a successful attack by this group of threat agents. Use the worst-case threat agent.

Skill Level - How technically skilled is this group of threat agents? No technical skills (1), some technical skills (3), advanced computer user (5), network and programming skills (6), security penetration skills (9)

Motive - How motivated is this group of threat agents to find and exploit this vulnerability? Low or no reward (1), possible reward (4), high reward (9)

Opportunity - What resources and opportunities are required for this group of threat agents to find and exploit this vulnerability? Full access or expensive resources required (0), special access or resources required (4), some access or resources required (7), no access or resources required (9)

Size - How large is this group of threat agents? Developers (2), system administrators (2), intranet users (4), partners (5), authenticated users (6), anonymous Internet users (9)

Vulnerability Factors

The next set of factors are related to the vulnerability involved. The goal here is to estimate the likelihood of the particular vulnerability involved being discovered and exploited. Assume the threat agent selected above.

Ease of Discovery - How easy is it for this group of threat agents to discover this vulnerability? Practically impossible (1), difficult (3), easy (7), automated tools available (9)

Ease of Exploit - How easy is it for this group of threat agents to actually exploit this vulnerability? Theoretical (1), difficult (3), easy (5), automated tools available (9)

Awareness - How well known is this vulnerability to this group of threat agents? Unknown (1), hidden (4), obvious (6), public knowledge (9)

Intrusion Detection - How likely is an exploit to be detected? Active detection in application (1), logged and reviewed (3), logged without review (8), not logged (9)

Step 3: Factors for Estimating Impact

When considering the impact of a successful attack, it’s important to realize that there are two kinds of impacts. The first is the “technical impact” on the application, the data it uses, and the functions it provides. The other is the “business impact” on the business and company operating the application.

Ultimately, the business impact is more important. However, you may not have access to all the information required to figure out the business consequences of a successful exploit. In this case, providing as much detail about the technical risk will enable the appropriate business representative to make a decision about the business risk.

Again, each factor has a set of options, and each option has an impact rating from 0 to 9 associated with it. We’ll use these numbers later to estimate the overall impact.

Technical Impact Factors

Technical impact can be broken down into factors aligned with the traditional security areas of concern: confidentiality, integrity, availability, and accountability. The goal is to estimate the magnitude of the impact on the system if the vulnerability were to be exploited.

Loss of Confidentiality - How much data could be disclosed and how sensitive is it? Minimal non-sensitive data disclosed (2), minimal critical data disclosed (6), extensive non-sensitive data disclosed (6), extensive critical data disclosed (7), all data disclosed (9)

Loss of Integrity - How much data could be corrupted and how damaged is it? Minimal slightly corrupt data (1), minimal seriously corrupt data (3), extensive slightly corrupt data (5), extensive seriously corrupt data (7), all data totally corrupt (9)

Loss of Availability - How much service could be lost and how vital is it? Minimal secondary services interrupted (1), minimal primary services interrupted (5), extensive secondary services interrupted (5), extensive primary services interrupted (7), all services completely lost (9)

Loss of Accountability - Are the threat agents’ actions traceable to an individual? Fully traceable (1), possibly traceable (7), completely anonymous (9)

Business Impact Factors

The business impact stems from the technical impact, but requires a deep understanding of what is important to the company running the application. In general, you should be aiming to support your risks with business impact, particularly if your audience is executive level. The business risk is what justifies investment in fixing security problems.

Many companies have an asset classification guide and/or a business impact reference to help formalize what is important to their business. These standards can help you focus on what’s truly important for security. If these aren’t available, then it is necessary to talk with people who understand the business to get their take on what’s important.

The factors below are common areas for many businesses, but this area is even more unique to a company than the factors related to threat agent, vulnerability, and technical impact.

Financial damage - How much financial damage will result from an exploit? Less than the cost to fix the vulnerability (1), minor effect on annual profit (3), significant effect on annual profit (7), bankruptcy (9)

Reputation damage - Would an exploit result in reputation damage that would harm the business? Minimal damage (1), Loss of major accounts (4), loss of goodwill (5), brand damage (9)

Non-compliance - How much exposure does non-compliance introduce? Minor violation (2), clear violation (5), high profile violation (7)

Privacy violation - How much personally identifiable information could be disclosed? One individual (3), hundreds of people (5), thousands of people (7), millions of people (9)

Step 4: Determining the Severity of the Risk

In this step, the likelihood estimate and the impact estimate are put together to calculate an overall severity for this risk. This is done by figuring out whether the likelihood is low, medium, or high and then do the same for impact. The 0 to 9 scale is split into three parts:

Informal Method

In many environments, there is nothing wrong with reviewing the factors and simply capturing the answers. The tester should think through the factors and identify the key “driving” factors that are controlling the result. The tester may discover that their initial impression was wrong by considering aspects of the risk that weren’t obvious.

Repeatable Method

If it is necessary to defend the ratings or make them repeatable, then it is necessary to go through a more formal process of rating the factors and calculating the result. Remember that there is quite a lot of uncertainty in these estimates and that these factors are intended to help the tester arrive at a sensible result. This process can be supported by automated tools to make the calculation easier.

The first step is to select one of the options associated with each factor and enter the associated number in the table. Then simply take the average of the scores to calculate the overall likelihood. For example:

Next, the tester needs to figure out the overall impact. The process is similar here. In many cases the answer will be obvious, but the tester can make an estimate based on the factors, or they can average the scores for each of the factors. Again, less than 3 is low, 3 to less than 6 is medium, and 6 to 9 is high. For example:

Determining Severity

However the tester arrives at the likelihood and impact estimates, they can now combine them to get a final severity rating for this risk. Note that if they have good business impact information, they should use that instead of the technical impact information. But if they have no information about the business, then technical impact is the next best thing.

In the example above, the likelihood is medium and the technical impact is high, so from a purely technical perspective it appears that the overall severity is high. However, note that the business impact is actually low, so the overall severity is best described as low as well. This is why understanding the business context of the vulnerabilities you are evaluating is so critical to making good risk decisions. Failure to understand this context can lead to the lack of trust between the business and security teams that is present in many organizations.

Step 5: Deciding What to Fix

After the risks to the application have been classified, there will be a prioritized list of what to fix. As a general rule, the most severe risks should be fixed first. It simply doesn’t help the overall risk profile to fix less important risks, even if they’re easy or cheap to fix.

Remember that not all risks are worth fixing, and some loss is not only expected, but justifiable based upon the cost of fixing the issue. For example, if it would cost $100,000 to implement controls to stem $2,000 of fraud per year, it would take 50 years return on investment to stamp out the loss. But remember there may be reputation damage from the fraud that could cost the organization much more.

Step 6: Customizing the Risk Rating Model

Having a risk ranking framework that is customizable for a business is critical for adoption. A tailored model is much more likely to produce results that match people’s perceptions about what is a serious risk. A lot of time can be wasted arguing about the risk ratings if they are not supported by a model like this. There are several ways to tailor this model for the organization.

Adding factors

The tester can choose different factors that better represent what’s important for the specific organization. For example, a military application might add impact factors related to loss of human life or classified information. The tester might also add likelihood factors, such as the window of opportunity for an attacker or encryption algorithm strength.

Customizing options

There are some sample options associated with each factor, but the model will be much more effective if the tester customizes these options to the business. For example, use the names of the different teams and the company names for different classifications of information. The tester can also change the scores associated with the options. The best way to identify the right scores is to compare the ratings produced by the model with ratings produced by a team of experts. You can tune the model by carefully adjusting the scores to match.

Weighting factors

The model above assumes that all the factors are equally important. You can weight the factors to emphasize the factors that are more significant for the specific business. This makes the model a bit more complex, as the tester needs to use a weighted average. But otherwise everything works the same. Again it is possible to tune the model by matching it against risk ratings the business agrees are accurate.

• Managing Information Security Risk: Organization, Mission, and Information System View
• Industry standard vulnerability severity and risk rankings (CVSS)
• Threat Modeling Web Applications
• Threat Modeling
• A Platform for Risk Analysis of Security Critical Systems
• Model-driven Development and Analysis of Secure Information Systems
• Value Driven Security Threat Modeling Based on Attack Path Analysis
• Risk Rating Template Example in MS Excel

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A novel integrated urban flood risk assessment approach based on one-two dimensional coupled hydrodynamic model and improved projection pursuit method

• Rong, Hongwei
• Yang, Weichao
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Urban flood risk assessment is a complex task, as it requires extensive knowledge about hydrological features of the catchment, hydraulic characteristics of the drainage network and social characteristics of residential areas. How to accurately and efficiently quantify regional risk has always been a challenge in this field. To solve the problem, this study is developed to propose a novel integrated urban flood risk assessment approach based on one-two dimensional coupled hydrodynamic model and improved projection pursuit method. Two open source software like urban storm flood management model (SWMM) and TELEMAC-2D are introduced to build the one-two coupling hydrodynamic model through proprietary programming, which can accurately simulate urban inundation process. Based on the simulation results of hydrodynamic model and literature review, a set of urban flood risk assessment index system containing physical mechanism and statistical mechanism related index is established, including a total of 12 indicators covering three dimensions like hazard factor, exposure factor and vulnerability factor. Then an Improved Projection Pursuit (IPP) method coupling k-means clustering algorithm is proposed to determine the index weight. The novel integrated urban flood risk assessment approach is implemented in Suyu district, China. The results demonstrate that the accuracy and efficiency of evaluation urban flood risk assessment are greatly improved by the integrated approach. In conclusion, this research offers a novel methodology for urban flood risk assessment and contributes to decision-making in environmental management.

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