Regular cybersecurity risk assessments can save organizations significant trouble. There is a continuing need to identify, quantify, and prioritize risks in light of today’s rapidly evolving threat landscape. Risks don’t just have financial impacts; they can destroy an organization’s brand and reputation. A cyber security risk assessment checklist can serve as a guide for identifying and addressing action items for businesses. It highlights key areas that they often overlook and can work as a benchmark for future strategic implementation.
This guide provides an overview of the contents of a cyber security risk assessment checklist. You will understand the key elements of a good checklist and know the steps to follow them effectively.
Understanding Cyber Security Risk Assessment
Before we even get to our checklist, let’s understand why cybersecurity risk assessments work so well. Do you recall the SolarPower European report that was recently published? As energy infrastructure attacks increased in Europe, EU policymakers addressed critical cybersecurity risks by following the guidelines outlined in the checklist. It implemented new regulations that restricted the free control of solar systems, thereby preventing numerous system hijacking incidents and improving power usage efficiency.
Thomson Reuters’ legal team believes that a comprehensive cyber security risk assessment checklist is essential for the ongoing well-being of an organization. We’re all aware that cyberattacks have doubled since the pandemic. So, where are we going with this? Let’s discuss more below.
Importance of Security Risk Assessment
The FBI reports that the United States loses billions of dollars annually due to notorious cybercriminal activities. While most losses can result from investment-related scams, perpetrators often use email to target individuals associated with organizations. Poor cyber hygiene practices can lead to people being unaware of what’s happening. Sometimes, it’s a clueless employee who just “didn’t know any better.”
Data privacy violations are another concern, and employees don’t know what not to share. A casual post on social media sharing details about their work life can quickly spiral into a financial or data disaster. A cyber security risk assessment checklist can keep everyone on track and accountable. Any policy rules contained in it can shed light on what information to classify as sensitive or not. It’s not just practices; it’s a comprehensive roadmap of action items that everyone can review and follow. And since it’s presented linearly, it can be convenient to follow.
Cybersecurity risk assessments are essential because they question the technologies and vendors in place. These assessments help determine if things are working correctly. If any flaws, vulnerabilities, or security gaps are identified, they will be addressed immediately.
Cyber Security Risk Assessment Checklist
No company should believe that it has formidable cyber defenses, because cybercriminals will continually find new ways to hack them. One of the most dangerous aspects of AI anywhere is the use of automation tools to create deepfakes, malware, and official-looking email messages. Employees can be called, impersonated, and tricked into disclosing sensitive information.
There is a shortage of skilled cybersecurity professionals within companies, and IT layoffs persist. Organizations often fall short for this reason and lack sufficient resources to combat these threats. A talent shortage can compel companies to downsize and narrow their focus on detecting emerging threats.
Time and restraint concerns are the biggest reasons why they can’t stop these emerging threats in their tracks. Organizations are not fast enough to respond to them. These are reasons why they should focus on building robust cyber risk management plans and prioritize them. Here are some steps to take to create a practical cyber security risk assessment checklist:
Step 1: Find and Identify Potential Threat Actors
The first step is to identify what you’re working with and who poses a significant risk to your organization. You will catalog all potential risks associated with every application. This will include web applications, cloud services, mobile applications, and any other systems and third-party services with which your organization interacts. Once you have mapped out your application-level architecture and other assets, you are ready to move on to the next step.
Step 2: Conduct an AppSec Assessment
Do an Application Security Risk Assessment to identify application security risks and various factors. These risks can range from configuration weaknesses and dependency management flaws to external issues and regulatory problems. You will need to understand relevant practices, laws, regulations, and policies that govern how your application handles and transmits data.
Step 3: Make a Risk Assessment Inventory
Create an inventory of your associated risks once you’ve identified them. You should factor in APIs used by your apps and services at this stage. You should also decide which apps and risks take higher priority and assign an appropriate level of severity to them.
Step 4: Analyze and Evaluate Vulnerabilities
Make a vulnerability assessment of your entire network infrastructure. This involves scanning all apps, systems, and devices for potential security gaps that hackers could exploit. You can utilize automated vulnerability scanning solutions, such as SentinelOne, to streamline this process. Security professionals also conduct manual testing to identify issues that automation tools may overlook. It’s usually best recommended to combine both worlds.
You should also look for common vulnerabilities, such as missing patches, outdated software, misconfigured systems, and weak authentication mechanisms. SentinelOne’s advanced threat detection capabilities can help address these issues and categorize your vulnerabilities.
Step 5: Identify Risk Probability and Impact
For each of the risks that you’ve included, you need to consider two key factors: how likely it is to happen and how severe the damage to your business would be if it did happen. You can either use a crude scale (low, medium, high) or a more elaborate numerical scale.
When determining impact, consider financial loss, operational disruption, the cost of a data breach, regulatory fines, and reputational damage. Together, likelihood and impact will create a clear picture of which risks need to be addressed immediately.
Step 6: Calculate Risk Ratings
You will need to combine the scores for likelihood and impact to devise an overall risk rating for each threat. You can accomplish this using a risk matrix that plots these two parameters against each other. The resulting risk rating will enable you to prioritize the problems, allowing you to address the most serious ones first.
High-risk items must be addressed immediately, while medium-risk items can be managed within a reasonable timeframe. Low-risk items can be tracked or accepted depending on your organization’s risk tolerance levels. This rating system enables you to prioritize your security resources where they will be utilized the most.
Step 7: Develop Risk Response Strategies
You can select one of four main strategies to reduce each risk:
- Accept the risk (if the cost of mitigation is higher than the probable impact)
- Eliminate the vulnerable asset or procedure to avoid damage.
- Pass on the risk (through insurance or third-party service)
Decrease the risk (by implementing controls to reduce the probability or magnitude). For most critical risks, you will typically choose mitigation through the use of security controls. You should create detailed response plans that are tailored to your resources, technical capabilities, and business priorities.
Step 8: Create a Risk Treatment Plan
You need to formulate an overall risk management plan and specify clearly how you will address each risk. It should include:
- A description of each risk
- Your selected response strategy
- Specific controls to be applied
- Highlight capital and resources required, including responsible individuals or groups.
- Defining implementation timelines and success indicators
Your treatment plan will serve as a template for your security improvement project. Ensure that it aligns with your security policies and business objectives.
Step 9: Apply Security Controls
These controls are divided into three broad categories:
- Preventive controls: Stop threats from occurring (firewalls, access controls, encryption)
- Detective controls: Detect threats as they occur (intrusion detection, log monitoring)
- Corrective controls: To minimize damage and do a data backup for added protection.
Your security controls should enable you to roll back unauthorized changes and restore to factory settings in the event of a data breach. Test them thoroughly.
Step 10: Document Your Assessment Findings
You should create comprehensive documentation of your entire risk assessment process and findings. This documentation will:
- Show evidence of your compliance requirements and highlight if your company is meeting them
- Help communicate key risks to stakeholders
- Create a baseline for future cyber risk assessments
- Support decision-making for security investments
Your documentation should include the scope of the assessment, the methodology used, identified risks, risk ratings, treatment plans, and any other relevant recommendations. Keep it secure but accessible only to authorized personnel.
Step 11: Security Training and Awareness
Security training and awareness are crucial for maintaining the ongoing safety of your organization. Creating a risk assessment checklist is essential, but it won’t be effective if the people implementing it don’t follow or apply it.
Your level of security will depend on how your team members can gauge metrics, measure the effectiveness of these plans, and implement the action items on the checklist. Therefore, it’s essential to verify who knows what, how they handle cybersecurity issues, and ensure your security training is completed. Incorporate strong security programs during the onboarding process and test your employees regularly. Craft in-depth training modules and mandate verification by your management. Lower-level risks may require training on a case-by-case basis, while dealing with higher-level risks will involve or require a certain level or percentage of competence.
Our current cyber security risk assessment checklist consists of 11 action steps. But some organizations may have anywhere between 8 to 12 steps. It will depend on the size and scale of your organization. The checklist we made is a general guideline. Feel free to customize these steps as needed. Modify and apply them according to your specific requirements.
Conclusion
Now that you know the potential pitfalls of not creating cyber security risk assessment checklists and what goes on behind them, you can start working on a new one. Create a cyber security risk assessment checklist and conduct a security audit to assess your organization’s current security posture. It will help your organization find compliance gaps and address potential policy violations. Get your users onboard, be proactive, and think from the mindset of adversaries. Take the necessary steps to close the security loopholes and gaps identified in the results of your assessment.
If you need assistance or don’t know how to get started, contact SentinelOne.
FAQs
A cybersecurity risk assessment checklist is a valuable tool for identifying and quantifying risks to your systems and data. It includes steps such as asset identification, threat analysis, and vulnerability assessment. You will need to list all your valuable assets first, like servers and client data. The checklist helps you check off security tasks one by one. If you follow it correctly, you will catch most of your security gaps before attackers do.
Cyber risk assessments reveal where your security is vulnerable. They will help you stop attacks before they happen and save you money from data breaches. Your business can incur significant costs if you skip this step. You can use the results to target your security spending where it matters most. Risk assessments also help you comply with regulations such as GDPR and HIPAA. Your customers will trust you more when they know you regularly check your security.
Yes, small businesses need risk assessments badly. Hackers target small companies because they think they have weak security. A basic checklist helps you set up firewalls, backups, and ransomware protection. You should also train your staff, as they’re often the entry point for attackers. If you have limited IT resources, a checklist gives you a clear path to follow. There are simple 10- to 12-step lists specifically designed for small businesses.
Many businesses fail to understand what risk means for them. They will miss threats or not check their systems often enough. You can make the mistake of doing one assessment and never updating it as new threats appear. Another significant error is poor communication about risks to your team. If you don’t continuously monitor risks, you’ll miss new dangers. Poor risk plans also occur when you fail to test your backups or recovery methods regularly.