Do you feel confident that you allocate enough time and resources to your business's security infrastructure? With a cyber-attack attempt taking place every 39 seconds and over 73% of UK businesses being affected by a ransomware attack each year, conducting IT audits and risk assessments have never been so important.
Read this blog to get a deeper look at why you should conduct IT risk assessments and how we can make your IT expansions/changes easy.
What is An IT Risk Assessment?
IT security risk assessments are used to identify the threats facing your information systems, networks, and data, and assess the potential consequences you'd face should these increasingly common cyber-attacks occur. Risk assessments should be conducted on a regular basis, and whenever a major change is planned within your business.
Not only is IT risk assessment important for protecting your business and establishing your security investment needs, but it may also be mandatory. Some information security frameworks, such as ISO 27001 and CMMC, require risk assessments to be conducted in specific ways and documented on paper in order for your organisation to be considered "compliant".
At entrust IT we take our customer's information security very seriously. That's why we invested to obtain and maintain ISO 27001 accreditation and why all European customer data is stored in UK-based data centres, with their own ISO 27001 accreditation.
Why You Need An IT Risk Assessment
Cyber-security stats reveal that SMEs invest less than £500 on cyber-security on average!
IT risk assessments focus on identifying the threats facing your information systems, networks, and data, and assessing the potential consequences your business may face. Taking the time to conduct a risk assessment is essential for any of the following changes in your business, acquisition, merger, and re-organisation when a leader decides to implement new technology when employees go from working in the office to home, just as we saw happen in the recent pandemic and almost any other large IT related change.
Identifying and Addressing Vulnerabilities
A vulnerability is any potential weak point that could allow a threat to cause damage. As an example, using outdated antivirus software on even one of your devices can be the crux that causes a malware attack to succeed. Vulnerabilities are far from limited to just digital threats, having hardware kept in basements or other unsafe location make it more liable to real-life natural threats or even having disgruntled employees who cause internal damage. All of this and more is taken into account when conducting a risk assessment.
Cost Efficiency
An It risk assessment gives you a reliable list of risks you can take to upper-level management and leadership to illustrate the need for additional resources and a budget to tally up your information security process and productive tools. Showing them the results of an information security risk assessment is a way to drive home that the risks to your sensitive information are always changing and evolving, so you must evolve with them.
Productivity
If you consistently perform risk assessments, you will always know where your information security team should dedicate their time. and you will be able to use that time more effectively. Instead of waiting for a problem. Instead of always reacting to a problem after it has caused a security event, you’ll spend that time fixing vulnerabilities in your security practices and processes so you can avoid the issue in the first place. IT risk assessments also show you which risks require more time and attention, and which risks you can afford to divert fewer resources to.
An IT risk assessment gives you a reliable list of risks you can take to upper-level management and leadership to illustrate the need for additional resources and a budget to tally up your information security process and productivity tools.
Inventorying IT and Data Assets
Unless you know what information assets you have and how important those assets are to your organisation, it’s almost impossible to make strategic decisions for IT security. With a complete, up-to-date inventory from your IT risk assessment, you can determine how to protect your most critical software data assets.
Complying with Legal Requirements
Most organisations must comply with the privacy and data security requirements of various regulations. Any company that does business with European residents, for example, has to regularly evaluate their risk to comply with the GDPR.
Conduct an IT Audit to Help Identify Risk
"Cyber-crime is the greatest threat to every company in the world" - Ginni Rometty, IBM Chair, President and CEO
Worryingly, there are an increasing amount of threats facing UK businesses. Your information systems, networks, and data all need to be protected. Addressing the potential risks your data will face is going to be vital to ensuring its safety. Conducting a detailed IT audit and risk assessment is a crucial step towards any good IT amendment.
Conducting an IT audit and risk assessment following a large change is essential. For many, knowing when to start can be the hardest part, and so we want to help. Understandably many business owners feel their time would be better spent focusing on their core roles and therefore decide to outsource their IT expansions to a trusted MSP. When we partner with a business we go further than most, we take the time to understand your business, its goals, strengths and weaknesses and then build a long-term plan accordingly.
If you are looking to technologically expand and want an experienced partner to make sure your business's growth goes smoothly it's worth us having a chat. Please feel free to get in contact on 0330 002 0045 or email enquiries@entrustit.co.uk to be put in contact with one of our experienced and friendly consultants.
