Tag Archives: Risk Management

Adopting a Risk Management Approach to Your Business

Doing business in today’s world doesn’t come without risk. Anything can happen, from a brief power failure resulting in two hours of downtime, to a days-long global technology outage precipitated by a CrowdStrike software update. How will you know what risks your business is most subject to, and how to mitigate those risks? Read on to find out what types of risks can threaten your company, and how to protect yourself.

 

Multiple Risks to Your Business

 

According to an article from CompTIA, risks come in various forms. Some are within a company’s control, and others come from outside. But all pose some threat to productivity, security or reputation–or all of these. Types of risk include:

 

    • Strategic: These have to do with deviations from a company’s strategy or model. Using automation, for example, can benefit operations, even facilitating software updates. However, problems can occur if human oversight isn’t part of the process. 
    • Competitive: negative consequences of a competitor’s actions, which can cause a loss of business for your organization. Even a competitor’s offering of a better product or service can negatively impact your business. 
    • Compliance: This involves failure to comply with government data security regulations, and can consist of data storage and even data breaches. 
    • Reputational: Events that can damage your image, and public perception of your brand. Perhaps a too-quick rollout of a product or service, a data breach, or a compromised website, can affect trust from customers and other stakeholders. 
    • Financial: This type of risk is anything that might cause loss of revenue. Loss of customers due to compromise of your company’s reputation, or downtime costs from even a brief system outage, can cause loss of earnings.
    • Operational: Anything that affects the operation of your business or other businesses that work with you. A faulty software update can have global consequences, as was seen recently. 
    • Global: Can include global conflict, supply chain disruption, or nation-state cyber attacks. 

 

Any or all of these have a potential impact on cybersecurity, though some are more likely. An outage can result in downtime (operational and financial risk), or a data breach (financial, compliance and reputational). Certain risks intersect, like financial, operational and reputational in the case of a data breach. Depending on how your company handles risk, your brand can weaken, or become stronger than ever.

 

How You Can Prepare

Assess and Document Your Biggest Risks

 

Prioritize risks most likely to affect your company’s operations, revenue or reputation. Your business may be more likely to be subject to risks of regulatory compliance failure than to global conflict. Any source of risk can impact your company, however unlikely it seems. 

 

Assemble a Strong Team

 

By including people from each department, your company gets different perspectives on what can happen and how it might affect your business. For instance, sales and marketing can point out risks posed by competitors. Your leadership personnel can watch for strategic risks. Anyone can be on the alert for social engineering (“phishing”) emails.

 

Prepare an Incident Response Plan

 

All the documentation and planning will go into an incident response plan. This plan comprises the most likely risks,  action plan for each, and the person or persons responsible for specific tasks. Such a plan will help you respond quickly and efficiently to possible disasters, or even keep a minor problem from becoming a major disaster. 

 

Risk management is becoming a more common stance in companies all over the world. To learn about evaluating risks and developing a response plan, contact your trusted technology advisor today. 

Taking a Proactive Approach to Cybersecurity

The state of cybersecurity seems to be getting better, though there’s always room for improvement. According to a recent report by CompTIA, “The State of Cybersecurity 2024”, more companies see the need to take a proactive approach and look at cybersecurity from a risk management standpoint. Read on to learn what this might mean to your efforts to protect technological assets.

 

Encouraging Signs, with Room for Greater Improvement

 

In recent years, businesses have made strides in adopting a proactive stance toward cybersecurity, according to the CompTIA report. Of the small to medium-size businesses surveyed, solid percentages have formal frameworks for cybersecurity (45% for small businesses, and 63% for medium-size companies. Many small companies are assessing their risk, but without a formal framework. Over the last year or so, general satisfaction about the state of cybersecurity has increased, as well as satisfaction of respondents with their own company’s cybersecurity. Even with these modest increases, progress is still somewhat slow.

 

In spite of said progress, data breaches still occur. The global average cost of a data breach is $4.45 million! In 2022,  96% of organizations had at least one breach, according to a report cited by CompTIA. The top of mind question is quite naturally “What is the cost of a cybersecurity incident?” What if organizations could also ask what the cost is not just in terms of money but in time and effort taken to prevent an incident? 

 

Constructing a Risk-Management Plan

 

Cybersecurity has often been considered a secondary factor in the past, but businesses are now shifting from a defensive posture to a proactive one. Risk management involves identifying the risks that come with doing business; assigning probabilities to specific risks relevant to the company; and proposing mitigation plans. A formal framework is helpful in considering all risks, including ones not normally connected with IT. One such risk comes from phishing schemes, where individuals are targeted with email containing links to ransomware. Many workers posting on social media sites could make their employers targets for these social engineering attacks. One concern cited by the cybersecurity report was whether new technology a company buys can introduce new cybersecurity concerns. 

 

Many factors need to be considered when analyzing and managing cybersecurity risks. For help with your company’s efforts, contact your trusted technology advisor today.