The Annual IT Security Assessment
Regular IT security assessments identify and address any weaknesses in networks, systems, and applications, to protect the organization from potential cyber threats.
Such assessments are essential for organizations of all sizes.
Why Are Security Assessments So Important?
Security assessments are crucial because they objectively evaluate the state of security of an organization identifying potential security flaws, weak points, risk areas, gaps in security measures and also help businesses develop cybersecurity plans to address such weaknesses.
By reviewing and assessing current security measures, organizations will ensure that their policies and procedures are optimal and security focused.
The annual cybersecurity assessment is a critical process for any business also because it can determine additional security measures that need to be implemented to keep all networks and systems secure.
Identify Vulnerabilities
The first thing that needs to be done is to try to identify all the risks that could affect your business based on industry. This will help the designated team to assess the likelihood of an attack, the reasons behind it, and the level of impact. Afterwards, the team will have to document and track all these vulnerabilities.
Identify Internal & External Threats
Many types of cyber threats can affect your organization at any given moment. Therefore, it is essential to identify which threats are more likely to affect your organization, both internal and external.
NOTE! By understanding the vulnerabilities and threats similar organizations are facing, you can improve the IT security posture of your organization.
Determine Potential Impact
Determining, based on analysis, the likelihood of each threat and the potential impact it could have on your business is mandatory. This can be assessed by studying the occurrence of certain types of cyberattacks and the impact each attack has had or could possibly have.
Prioritize Your Resources
Next, you should prioritize your resources accordingly by tracking how often each type of threat occurs. It is crucial to develop and implement a cybersecurity strategy to include the best solutions and mitigations based on the type of cybersecurity incident.
Review Privileged User Access
Privileged user access audit involves a systematic evaluation of the access rights and permissions granted to privileged users within an organization’s digital infrastructure.
Assess Security Services
There is a plethora of IT security services available. However, every business is different and there is no one-size-fits-all strategy for cybersecurity. A professional IT security team can evaluate your needs and vulnerabilities and suggest the appropriate solutions according to best practices.
Assess Backup Services
Prioritize a backup service that offers both reliability and security and the features your business needs at affordable rates.
MFA/Passkey Assessment & Recommendations
For long-lasting security, it is vital to implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) across all user accounts and devices. By utilizing a combination of different authentication factors like biometrics or one-time passcodes, you will create layers of security that will make it harder for hackers to gain unauthorized access.
Regularly monitoring and analyzing authentication logs for suspicious activities will provide an additional layer of protection.
Review Patch Management
Patch management tasks include deciding what patches are appropriate, ensuring that patches are installed properly, thoroughly testing systems after installation, documenting all associated procedures, etc.
A comprehensive cybersecurity assessment involves accurately determining your systems’ patch status.
Scan and Test Your Environment
Performing a vulnerability scan will help identify risk and attack vectors across networks, hardware, software, and systems. While a vulnerability scan uncovers risks, an internal and external network penetration test attempts to exploit those risks by trying to hack the network. Performing these scans and tests will help identify areas of improvement and investments needed to protect your infrastructure.
Don’t Settle For Good Enough
Unfortunately, cyber threats will never disappear, but by making cybersecurity a top priority, you will be able to safeguard your business assets both effectively and efficiently.
By identifying and documenting vulnerabilities, risks and likelihoods with regular cybersecurity assessments, you will be ahead of the game in protecting your organization from emerging cyber threats.
We can help you protect your sensitive data, implement proactive security maintenance as we perform vulnerability assessments and management to improve your IT security posture. Keeping your enterprise, your people, and your data safe is our commitment.
