Home > Articles

Why Risk Assessment

This chapter is from the book

Risk Assessment Best Practices

When you’re conducting a risk assessment, it is important to define what the goals and objectives are for the risk assessment and what that organization would like to accomplish by conducting one.

Risk and vulnerability assessments provide the necessary information about an organization’s IT infrastructure and its asset’s current level of security. This level of security allows the assessor to provide recommendations for increasing or enhancing that IT asset’s level of security based on the identified and known vulnerabilities that are inherent in the IT infrastructure and its assets.

There are many best practices or approaches to consider when conducting a risk and vulnerability assessment on an IT infrastructure and its assets. These best practices or approaches will vary depending on the scope of the IT infrastructure and its assets. To properly secure and protect an organization’s IT infrastructure and assets, a significant amount of design, planning, and implementation expertise is required to ensure that the proper level of security is designed and implemented properly. While preparing and conducting a risk assessment, the following best practices or approaches should be considered:

  • Create a Risk Assessment Policy—A risk assessment policy will define what the organization must do periodically (annually in many cases), how risk is to be addressed and mitigated (for example, a minimum acceptable vulnerability window), and how that organization must carry out a risk assessment for its IT infrastructure components and its assets. Creation of a risk assessment policy is usually done after the first risk assessment is conducted as a post-assessment activity. In some cases, organizations create a risk assessment policy and then implement the recommendations that the policy defines.
  • Inventory and Maintain a Database of IT Infrastructure Components and IT Assets—One of the most tedious but important first steps in conducting a risk or vulnerability assessment is to identify and inventory all known IT infrastructure components and assets. Without a complete and accurate inventory of IT infrastructure components and IT assets, an asset valuation, criticality, or importance evaluation cannot be performed.
  • Define Risk Assessment Goals and Objectives in Line with Organizational Business Drivers—Defining the risk assessment’s goals and objectives is the second step in conducting a risk assessment for your IT infrastructure components and IT assets. Aligning these goals and objectives with the organization’s business drivers will allow the organization to prioritize and focus on critical systems and assets first given the budget limitations that most organizations face.
  • Identify a Consistent Risk Assessment Methodology and Approach for Your Organization—Defining and selecting the risk assessment methodology and approach for your organization will be dependent on the organization’s ability to identify accurate IT infrastructure components and assets, the ability to identify asset value and/or asset importance/criticality to the organization, and how the organization makes business decisions. This will be further examined in Chapter 4, "Risk Assessment Methodologies."
  • Conduct an Asset Valuation or Asset Criticality Valuation as per a Defined Standard Definition for the Organization—Depending on the accuracy and availability of inventory documentation and asset valuation data (for example, capital dollars spent on hardware, software, integration, maintenance, staff salaries, G&A overhead), the organization should conduct an asset valuation or asset criticality (importance) assessment to prioritize and determine which IT infrastructure components and assets are most important to the organization (either in monetary value or importance value). This will be further examined in Chapter 4.
  • Define and/or Limit the Scope of the Risk Assessment Accordingly by Identifying and Categorizing IT Infrastructure Components and Assets as Critical, Major, and Minor—Depending on the scope of the risk assessment, an organization may or may not be faced with a limited budget to conduct a thorough risk and vulnerability assessment. In many cases, organizations have limited budgets to conduct a risk and vulnerability assessment and must limit the scope on the mission-critical IT infrastructure components and assets only. Although this solution exposes the organization to potential risks, threats, and vulnerabilities, a defense-in-depth approach to assessing and mitigating risks, threats, and vulnerabilities can still be pursued.
  • Understand and Evaluate the Risks, Threats, and Vulnerabilities to Those Categorized IT Infrastructure Components and Assets—After the IT infrastructure components and assets are identified and an asset valuation or asset criticality assessment is conducted, the next step in the risk assessment and vulnerability assessment is to assess the impact that potential risks, threats, and vulnerabilities have on the identified IT infrastructure components and assets. By aligning the potential risks, threats, and vulnerabilities to the prioritized IT infrastructure components and assets, management can make sound business decisions based on the value or criticality of that IT asset and the potential risk, threats, and vulnerabilities that are known.
  • Define a Consistent Standard or Yardstick of Measurement for Securing the Organization’s Critical, Major, and Minor IT Infrastructure Components and Assets—To properly categorize IT infrastructure components and assets, a consistent standard definition or yardstick of measurement needs to be defined. This standard definition refers to how the organization will define and categorize IT infrastructure components and assets to be Critical, Major, or Minor. This definition can be based on monetary value, requirement by law or mandate, or criticality or importance to the organization. The selection criteria or requirements for defining this standard definition should be defined by management and incorporated into the risk assessment policy when it is drafted and implemented.
  • Perform the Risk and Vulnerability Assessment as per the Defined Standard or Yardstick of Measurement for the Organization’s IT Infrastructure Assets—After the standard definition or yardstick of measurement is defined for IT asset categorization, the risk and vulnerability assessment can be aligned to the priorities as defined by the results of the standard definition for categorization of the organization’s IT infrastructure components and assets. This is important given that most organizations have a limited budget for implementing information security countermeasures and must prioritize how they spend funds on information security, especially if they are under compliance requirements with new laws, mandates, and regulations that require them to do so or be subject to penalties.
  • Prepare a Risk and Vulnerability Assessment Final Report That Captures the Goals and Objectives Aligned with the Organization’s Business Drivers, Provides a Detailed Summary of Findings, Provides an Objective Assessment and Gap Analysis of Those Assessment Findings to the Defined Standard, and Provides Tactical and Strategic Recommendations for Mitigating Identified Weaknesses—The risk and vulnerability assessment final report is the primary document that presents all the findings, information, assessments, and recommendations for the organization. The final assessment report becomes the instrument for management to make sound business decisions pertaining to the organization’s overall risk and vulnerability assessment and how that organization will mitigate the identified risks, threats, and vulnerabilities.
  • Prioritize, Budget, and Implement the Tactical and Strategic Recommendations Identified During the Risk and Vulnerability Assessment Analysis—After the findings, assessment, and recommendations are presented to management, it is important to prioritize them, create a budget, and have a tactical and strategic plan for implementing the recommendations presented in the final report. These recommendations may impact the entire organization and may take months, if not years, to fully implement. This prioritization of tactical and strategic recommendations will enable the organization to make sound business decisions with the defined goals and objectives of the risk and vulnerability assessment.
  • Implement Organizational Change Through an Ongoing Security Awareness and Security Training Campaign to Maintain a Consistent Message and Standard Definition for Securing the Organization’s IT Infrastructure and Assets—Implementing organizational change requires an education and security awareness training plan for all employees or authorized users of the organization’s IT systems, resources, and data. Mitigating risk requires all employees and users within the organization to abide by security awareness training.

Defining and implementing these risk assessment best practices does not come easily and requires careful analysis and decision making unique to the organization’s business drivers and priorities as an organization. For example, a bank or financial institution requires more stringent use of encryption technology to ensure confidentiality of privacy data, whereas an organization that is not subject to stringent confidentiality requirements may put less investment in encryption technology and more investment in other areas.

These risk assessment best practices allow an organization to consider the big picture of why that organization should conduct a risk and vulnerability assessment and how they should methodically approach the assessment. More importantly, these best practices align that organization’s business drivers and defined standards to the risk and vulnerability assessment to assist management in making sound business decisions based on available budgets, minimum acceptable vulnerability windows, and importance and criticality of IT infrastructure components and assets.

InformIT Promotional Mailings & Special Offers

I would like to receive exclusive offers and hear about products from InformIT and its family of brands. I can unsubscribe at any time.

Overview


Pearson Education, Inc., 221 River Street, Hoboken, New Jersey 07030, (Pearson) presents this site to provide information about products and services that can be purchased through this site.

This privacy notice provides an overview of our commitment to privacy and describes how we collect, protect, use and share personal information collected through this site. Please note that other Pearson websites and online products and services have their own separate privacy policies.

Collection and Use of Information


To conduct business and deliver products and services, Pearson collects and uses personal information in several ways in connection with this site, including:

Questions and Inquiries

For inquiries and questions, we collect the inquiry or question, together with name, contact details (email address, phone number and mailing address) and any other additional information voluntarily submitted to us through a Contact Us form or an email. We use this information to address the inquiry and respond to the question.

Online Store

For orders and purchases placed through our online store on this site, we collect order details, name, institution name and address (if applicable), email address, phone number, shipping and billing addresses, credit/debit card information, shipping options and any instructions. We use this information to complete transactions, fulfill orders, communicate with individuals placing orders or visiting the online store, and for related purposes.

Surveys

Pearson may offer opportunities to provide feedback or participate in surveys, including surveys evaluating Pearson products, services or sites. Participation is voluntary. Pearson collects information requested in the survey questions and uses the information to evaluate, support, maintain and improve products, services or sites, develop new products and services, conduct educational research and for other purposes specified in the survey.

Contests and Drawings

Occasionally, we may sponsor a contest or drawing. Participation is optional. Pearson collects name, contact information and other information specified on the entry form for the contest or drawing to conduct the contest or drawing. Pearson may collect additional personal information from the winners of a contest or drawing in order to award the prize and for tax reporting purposes, as required by law.

Newsletters

If you have elected to receive email newsletters or promotional mailings and special offers but want to unsubscribe, simply email information@informit.com.

Service Announcements

On rare occasions it is necessary to send out a strictly service related announcement. For instance, if our service is temporarily suspended for maintenance we might send users an email. Generally, users may not opt-out of these communications, though they can deactivate their account information. However, these communications are not promotional in nature.

Customer Service

We communicate with users on a regular basis to provide requested services and in regard to issues relating to their account we reply via email or phone in accordance with the users' wishes when a user submits their information through our Contact Us form.

Other Collection and Use of Information


Application and System Logs

Pearson automatically collects log data to help ensure the delivery, availability and security of this site. Log data may include technical information about how a user or visitor connected to this site, such as browser type, type of computer/device, operating system, internet service provider and IP address. We use this information for support purposes and to monitor the health of the site, identify problems, improve service, detect unauthorized access and fraudulent activity, prevent and respond to security incidents and appropriately scale computing resources.

Web Analytics

Pearson may use third party web trend analytical services, including Google Analytics, to collect visitor information, such as IP addresses, browser types, referring pages, pages visited and time spent on a particular site. While these analytical services collect and report information on an anonymous basis, they may use cookies to gather web trend information. The information gathered may enable Pearson (but not the third party web trend services) to link information with application and system log data. Pearson uses this information for system administration and to identify problems, improve service, detect unauthorized access and fraudulent activity, prevent and respond to security incidents, appropriately scale computing resources and otherwise support and deliver this site and its services.

Cookies and Related Technologies

This site uses cookies and similar technologies to personalize content, measure traffic patterns, control security, track use and access of information on this site, and provide interest-based messages and advertising. Users can manage and block the use of cookies through their browser. Disabling or blocking certain cookies may limit the functionality of this site.

Do Not Track

This site currently does not respond to Do Not Track signals.

Security


Pearson uses appropriate physical, administrative and technical security measures to protect personal information from unauthorized access, use and disclosure.

Children


This site is not directed to children under the age of 13.

Marketing


Pearson may send or direct marketing communications to users, provided that

  • Pearson will not use personal information collected or processed as a K-12 school service provider for the purpose of directed or targeted advertising.
  • Such marketing is consistent with applicable law and Pearson's legal obligations.
  • Pearson will not knowingly direct or send marketing communications to an individual who has expressed a preference not to receive marketing.
  • Where required by applicable law, express or implied consent to marketing exists and has not been withdrawn.

Pearson may provide personal information to a third party service provider on a restricted basis to provide marketing solely on behalf of Pearson or an affiliate or customer for whom Pearson is a service provider. Marketing preferences may be changed at any time.

Correcting/Updating Personal Information


If a user's personally identifiable information changes (such as your postal address or email address), we provide a way to correct or update that user's personal data provided to us. This can be done on the Account page. If a user no longer desires our service and desires to delete his or her account, please contact us at customer-service@informit.com and we will process the deletion of a user's account.

Choice/Opt-out


Users can always make an informed choice as to whether they should proceed with certain services offered by InformIT. If you choose to remove yourself from our mailing list(s) simply visit the following page and uncheck any communication you no longer want to receive: www.informit.com/u.aspx.

Sale of Personal Information


Pearson does not rent or sell personal information in exchange for any payment of money.

While Pearson does not sell personal information, as defined in Nevada law, Nevada residents may email a request for no sale of their personal information to NevadaDesignatedRequest@pearson.com.

Supplemental Privacy Statement for California Residents


California residents should read our Supplemental privacy statement for California residents in conjunction with this Privacy Notice. The Supplemental privacy statement for California residents explains Pearson's commitment to comply with California law and applies to personal information of California residents collected in connection with this site and the Services.

Sharing and Disclosure


Pearson may disclose personal information, as follows:

  • As required by law.
  • With the consent of the individual (or their parent, if the individual is a minor)
  • In response to a subpoena, court order or legal process, to the extent permitted or required by law
  • To protect the security and safety of individuals, data, assets and systems, consistent with applicable law
  • In connection the sale, joint venture or other transfer of some or all of its company or assets, subject to the provisions of this Privacy Notice
  • To investigate or address actual or suspected fraud or other illegal activities
  • To exercise its legal rights, including enforcement of the Terms of Use for this site or another contract
  • To affiliated Pearson companies and other companies and organizations who perform work for Pearson and are obligated to protect the privacy of personal information consistent with this Privacy Notice
  • To a school, organization, company or government agency, where Pearson collects or processes the personal information in a school setting or on behalf of such organization, company or government agency.

Links


This web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every web site that collects Personal Information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this web site.

Requests and Contact


Please contact us about this Privacy Notice or if you have any requests or questions relating to the privacy of your personal information.

Changes to this Privacy Notice


We may revise this Privacy Notice through an updated posting. We will identify the effective date of the revision in the posting. Often, updates are made to provide greater clarity or to comply with changes in regulatory requirements. If the updates involve material changes to the collection, protection, use or disclosure of Personal Information, Pearson will provide notice of the change through a conspicuous notice on this site or other appropriate way. Continued use of the site after the effective date of a posted revision evidences acceptance. Please contact us if you have questions or concerns about the Privacy Notice or any objection to any revisions.

Last Update: November 17, 2020