Cyberattacks caused by human error accounted for about 85% of breaches in 2021. In addition, phishing attacks accounted for 36%, and ransomware contributed to 10% of all attacks. Every GTA business needs to ensure that their cyber defenses are a top priority amid the current evolving threat landscape in order to protect their organization from threat actors.
It can be difficult for SMBs to create a rock solid cyber defense. It requires an ongoing effort with the right people, processes, tools and proactive strategies for it to work effectively. Even though there are many elements to a successful cyber defense, a critical part of this is risk management.
In this article, we will explain how to assess your current cybersecurity strategy, and hopefully afterward, your business will understand what it needs to be fully protected.
Simply put, a cybersecurity risk assessment is defined as the act of “understanding, identifying and managing cyber risks in your business’ infrastructure.”
The main purpose of conducting an assessment, is to help decision-makers identify all their risk factors. Ideally, an assessment will answer the following key questions:
The answers to these questions will help you keep track of security risks and mitigate them before disaster strikes.
Making ongoing cyber risk management a priority is vital, since a single cyber threat can destroy your entire business. Unfortunately, most organizations lack the capacity to transform their reports into actionable insights. This underutilization of data is one of the major roadblocks to making ongoing risk management possible. Here are six reasons why you need to take action and start proactively managing your cyber risk:
1: Keep cyberthreats at bay
An ongoing risk management strategy will help you keep threats, both prevalent and imminent, at a safe distance from your business.
Loss of business-critical data can impact your reputation and set your business back a long way. Ongoing risk management strategies can help you remain vigilant about any possible attempts at compromising your business data.
As a business owner, you would be amazed how staying on top of potential cybersecurity threats can reduce the risk of unplanned downtime. The assurance that hard work will not be lost forever or disappear into thin air will surely keep your productivity levels high.
Identifying potential vulnerabilities and mitigating them will help to prevent or reduce security incidents, which in turn can save your business a significant amount of money with a reactive response to cyber breaches.
Knowing what your security vulnerabilities are will help you keep a keen eye on other important aspects that need improvement.
By ensuring that you put up a strong defense against cyberthreats, you will automatically avoid hassles with respect to complying with regulatory standards (such as HIPAA, GDPR, PCI-DSS, etc.).
We are always here to help your business gauge all its areas of cyber risk. Book a meeting here to get your IT Assessment, and find out how we can help you mitigate all your major cybersecurity concerns.