What is cyber security risk management, and why your business needs it?

Implementing cyber security solutions is just the first step to protecting your data from devious IT geeks and hackers.

What is cyber security risk management?

Most Australian businesses (whether big or small) treat cyber security as a set-and-forget solution. That is an ideal scenario in a perfect world, but unfortunately, sticking to this fantasy will cost your business thousands and sometimes even millions in damages. We see far too many businesses come to us for help because they’ve been breached, and most of them even have cybersecurity assets in place.

IT is an ever-evolving landscape. As we adapt to newer technology to achieve business efficiency, this also opens you to higher and far more dangerous risks – being vulnerable to cyber threats. One of the ways to reduce the risk of any data breach and maintain your data integrity, aside from implementing IT security solutions, is a continuous cyber security risk management process.

Cyber security management follows a process that overlooks and fights threats that may damage your business. It’s important to note that no business is safe from cyberattacks. One way or another, you will be vulnerable to one or two even with the most sophisticated anti-virus software and security training. But you can find those risks through cyber security risk management. With it, you’ll continuously find flaws in your IT security and patch them up to prevent threats from breaching your system.

The purpose of cyber security is to protect your data by reducing the risk of data breaches and other security risks. Consistent system monitoring, evaluation, and creating mitigation tactics is the key to further strengthening your security and reducing your risk to cyber threats at a business-standard level.

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Importance of risk management in cyber security

No one is immune to cyber risks or data breaches. Believing you are 101% safe from it is your first and biggest mistake.

Cyber attacks have brought small businesses to multinational corporations on their knees with the amount of damage they can cause. Even with good cyber defence at the ready, you also have to be proactive with your IT security strategy to keep up with the ever-rising number of cyber dangers out there in the wild.

You will need to include and implement risk management in your cyber security to mitigate risks and eliminate possible cyber threats before they even come your way. This process will help you understand the threats that might attack your IT, identify your weaknesses, and how to patch them up.

A smart business owner/decision maker eliminates potential problems hindering their success.

Why wait for cyber disasters to happen when you can stop them before they even happen?

That’s the importance of risk management in cyber security.

What goes on in a cyber security risk management process?

The cyber security risk management process will guide you to develop the best solutions against any detected IT vulnerabilities.

Spotting cyber security risks

There has been a spike in cyberattacks and incidents to Australian businesses ever since the COVID-19 pandemic started, and many shifted to hybrid or remote work. This outcome resulted in increased security vulnerabilities.

But how can you fight something if you don’t know your enemy?

Knowing your enemy gives you the advantage of developing the best defence tactics against it.

Looking for vulnerabilities and identifying risks is the first step in the risk management process. Talk to your IT team or your Managed Cyber Security Service Provider about their risk management methodology and how often they run security scans and tests.

The goal of this process stage is to look for any potential risks that can damage your business in various operational aspects, whether that be in reputation, sales, and deals.

Assessing cyber security risks

After identifying cyber risks comes assessing. This stage of the cyber security risk management process involves understanding any found vulnerabilities in your IT environment and addressing them with the appropriate solution to lessen its chances of bringing damaging impacts to your business.

This process stage will help create long-term solutions and overcome security vulnerabilities. To execute this process successfully, you should:

• Gather an inventory of your assets and prioritise them by importance
• Consistent communication and cooperation within the team
• Determine how likely you are to be hit by a cyber threat
• A process where you examine consequences and possible costs

Creating a cyber security risk mitigation plan

Now that you’ve identified and assessed the risk, now what? What are you going to do with your newfound discovery? How will you use that data to create a cyber security risk mitigation plan? And how about the remaining risk outside its scope?

Remember that the goal of a mitigation plan is to guide you on the best possible action against security risk. This stage of the cyber security management process starts by exploring all your options and using the best methods (such as data encryption, automation, or firewall) to reduce business impacts.

Once set, create a mitigation plan with a specific set of instructions explaining what the assigned person/team in your business should do in case of cyber security incidents like ransomware attacks, phishing, and data leaks.

This stage in the cyber security risk mitigation process is critical because it will streamline any IT security procedure, ultimately improving recovery time, limiting business impacts, and minimising security risks.

As a business owner, you should be aware of any risks and security measures so you’re always up to date with your incident response plans which might be your saving grace from business disasters.

Monitoring cyber security risks

Nothing is constant in the IT world. Everything is constantly changing for the better, but we don't feel that way about cyber security risks.

Make it a point in your business to monitor security risks. Consistently run threat detection scans and attack simulations to discover hidden vulnerabilities that might pose a risk to your business soon. The key is to find these cyber threats first before they find you.

Again, cyber security should never be treated as a set-and-forget solution. Even the most sophisticated security software has a vulnerability or two. And the only way to mitigate them is to consistently monitor vulnerabilities that your IT team may have overlooked or newer cyber threats you were not prepared for.

Yes, shifting your business to a modern workplace will bring tremendous benefits to your productivity and customer reach. But this also opens you to a new set of cyber threats that continue to evolve yearly. Although your current security solution might provide some protection against well-known threats, it will be less than useless against newly developed attacks. Threat monitoring will help you elude these attacks and further strengthen your security.

Why do you need cyber security risk management?

One thing is for sure: fighting cyber risks is getting harder by the day. As technology evolves, so do the challenges that go along with it, and it doesn’t just stop with digital threats. Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic turned the world up in its head, it created more opportunities for hackers to develop more intricate malware. This problem raised the attention of IT teams worldwide to further strengthen security across their networks.

IT security doesn’t just stop with security software on your computer and cyber awareness. Treat it as an ongoing process of identifying, evaluating, mitigating, and monitoring your current system to reduce your risks further. With new threats made daily, a smart business owner would invest in cyber security risk management to see potential cyber problems and lay out the best approach when struck with them.

Just because you have cyber security in place doesn’t mean you’re out of the woods. Having a cyber security risk management system means being equipped to fight whatever cyber monster is out there on the World Wide Web. The best cyber security risk management strategy is to know what you’re up against to use the best security defence protocols against them. Unfortunately, this isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. There are many types of cyber risks, and you must have different mitigation plans against them, especially the newer and more sophisticated threats.