IT security is the foundation of any organization that works with sensitive client data. Keeping this data safe and clean is a priority, but IT threats can make this difficult. That’s why businesses use IT security risk management to identify, eliminate, and prevent data breaches.
IT security risk management involves particular procedures that need to be followed to ensure safety within the organization. That includes identifying the risks, assessing their threat level, and adjusting the security features to prevent future threats.
In the article below, we go over the risk management process in detail, as well as ways to make it as efficient as possible.
What Is IT Security Risk Management?
IT security risk management refers to the identification and mitigation of risks within the IT infrastructure. It involves analyzing and assessing threats to the IT infrastructure, for example, in an online business.
The “management” part refers to the process in which we decide in what order we should assess and deal with each threat based on its damage potential.
Let’s look at a simple example. You have an e-commerce business with a heavy-laden website, a comprehensive payment system, and piles of customer data. Now, imagine if you didn’t monitor and handle IT threats regularly – it could lead to a data breach, revealing pages of sensitive information protected by laws and regulations, such as personal details and banking info.
By implementing risk management, you’re ensuring that threats like these are brought to a minimum. This can be done through data encryption, strict access controls, backups, etc.
What Are IT Threats?
IT threats are voluntary and involuntary actions that can harm an organization’s IT infrastructure. They can come from outside or within the organization – the former are usually purposeful attacks, while the latter are accidental (unless they’re malicious insiders).
In Q2 2024, Check Point Research reported a 30% YoY increase in IT attacks worldwide, which is around 1,636 attacks per organization per week. Because they’re so common, it’s important to be aware of the different types and how to prevent them.
The Most Common IT Threats
Here are some of the most common IT threats you should watch out for when doing risk analysis:
- Cyber threats: Cyber threats, including malware and phishing, require proactive solutions, which managed IT services often provide by implementing advanced security protocols. They usually involve malicious software that infiltrates the IT system and harms or steals data, overloads the system to the point of failure, or causes long-term damage.
- Insider threats: These are most often caused by human error, but malicious insiders are a possibility, too. While an employee may purposely steal or alter data, in most cases, the damage comes from employees mishandling data or falling for phishing scams.
- Physical threats: These can be voluntary in the case of physical data theft or simply unfortunate in the case of natural disasters, which include fires, earthquakes, floods, etc.
- System failures: These usually happen because of poor configuration of the IT infrastructure, leading to bugs and crashing of systems. In this case, the problem could be in the IT team or the software itself.
As you can see, there are many types of threats that can cause significant damage without proper data protection protocols in place. Let’s see how cybersecurity risk management can help secure your data and systems.
The Process of IT Security Risk Management
The process of IT security risk management typically involves four phases:
- Identifying risk: This is when a thorough system analysis is done to identify all possible vulnerabilities in the IT infrastructure.
- Assessing risk: Once you have a list of the most likely risks, it’s time to prioritize them according to their threat level. That doesn’t mean you’ll ignore some threats and mitigate others – it simply means some pose a greater risk to your organization and should be eliminated first. For example, if you have a cloud storage breach and you’re also dealing with outdated software, the logical step would be to fix the cloud storage first. This will immediately prevent data leaks, and you can later update the software.
- Controlling risk: This is the part where you focus on preventing such security attacks in the future. You implement new systems and update existing ones, you create new policies and rulebooks, and you do employee training.
- Reviewing controls: Finally, you’ll have to periodically review the changes to see if they’re successful. Once you notice new risks, you can add them to the list and update your systems accordingly.
What Is an IT Security Risk Management Framework?
An IT security risk management framework refers to the collection of practices organizations use for ongoing threat management, including solutions like backup and disaster recovery to safeguard critical data. These frameworks include the most common threats, ways to eliminate them, and procedures to prevent them in the future. The risk and network management process we described above could be referred to as an IT security framework.
Top 3 IT Security Risk Management Frameworks
If you can’t decide on the right IT security frameworks, these are the top three world-known risk management frameworks:
- ISO/IEC 27001:2022 is a globally accepted standard for information security management systems. It includes best practices for information security and privacy protection. It guides you through the entire process of handling sensitive customer data and intellectual property.
- The NIST Cybersecurity Framework helps businesses mitigate IT security risks by providing helpful resources. It’s up to the organization to come up with the most efficient IT security plan using NIST’s recommendations and best practices.
- SOC2 helps businesses manage customer data according to Trust Services Criteria. It’s primarily for cloud computing organizations in the healthcare, finance, and technology sectors, helping them stay compliant.
Best Practices for Cybersecurity Risk Management
Let’s look at some best practices for cybersecurity risk management to help keep data safe:
- Cybersecurity training: Each employee should receive IT training to get up close with the software used in your organization. This will help prevent user errors down the line.
- Regular software updates: Timely software updates can help prevent errors and malfunctions, reducing downtime and saving resources.
- Data backups: Without data backups, you risk losing critical information or having it altered by outside or inside sources. It’s best to implement a backup procedure to preserve data integrity.
- Privileged access management solutions: This helps set unique access controls for users within your organization. Privileged accounts like administrative or service accounts are highly controlled to keep all the information in them safe.
Frontline: Elevate Your IT Security with Expert Care
Frontline is an all-in-one risk management and cyber security solution in Los Angeles that offers:
- Ongoing IT security monitoring
- Threat and malware detection
- Immediate threat response
- Regular data backups
- Cloud security monitoring, and more.
We can do a cybersecurity risk assessment for your business and show you your biggest pain points and the best course of action to eliminate them. Have any questions? Contact us today for a free consultation on your IT infrastructure.