Why IT Risk Management Is Important for Your Business

Every business owner wants to ensure that their businesses are protected from attackers. An effective IT security plan will help you in identifying security risks. It will help you in mitigating these attacks. However, many people confuse cyber threat management with cybersecurity risk management. In this article, we are going to talk about the importance of IT risk management.

What is IT Risk management?

Risk management is very closely related to cyber threat management. You should understand the definition of these two terms. If you don’t know the definition of these two terms, then you can’t understand the difference between them. We are going to talk about these two terms first.

• Cyber Threats refers to the attack methods that attackers can use for attacking your business. They can use these strategies for attacking your network. You need to deal with both insider and outsider cyber threats.
• Cybersecurity Risks refers to the impact of these cyber threats. It will help you in determining the impact of the cyber threats that are present in your network. Thus, you can prioritize the cyber threats according to the threat level.

For example, you can consider phishing or ransomware attacks as a cyber threat. But, the impact of these attacks is known as the cybersecurity risk. You might lose a lot of data due to the ransomware attack.

Risk management is the practice of testing or assessing cybersecurity risks. It will help you in identifying the cyber threats that have the highest probability. Thus, you can create plans for mitigating these specific risks.

Importance of Managing Security Risks

Cybersecurity risk management will have a direct impact on your business’s long-term success. It is going to affect the long-term viability of your business. If you are using strict risk management controls, then it will act as insurance for your business. It will protect your business from the impact of various cyber threats.

Thus, you can minimize the impact of these cyber threats. You can avoid the worst impacts of these IT security breaches by creating a mitigation plan.

For example, suppose there are two different companies. The first company has already done some research. They know how to manage different security risks. Also, they have run a risk assessment and know about their weak points. Maybe they need to deal with phishing and ransomware attacks. The second company never did the risk assessment. Thus, they don’t know about the vulnerabilities present in their systems. If you don’t know about the vulnerabilities present in your systems, then you can never fix them

The first company will implement the best anti-ransomware measures for protecting their business. They will create a remote backup of their data. This will ensure that they can recover data in case of a ransomware device. Thus, they will always have a plan in case of an attack. The second company doesn’t know about the vulnerabilities. Thus, they will do nothing to prevent these attacks.

If both the companies are hit by a ransomware attack, then the first company can easily deal with the attack. Their servers will be down for some time. They will wipe their servers and reformat the entire drive. Thus, they will eliminate the malware from their server. After that, they will use the remote backup for restoring their data. They will start doing business again.

Second company servers will go down for days. They will waste their time in decrypting their servers. After that, they will pay the ransom to the attackers. They will lose some of their data even after they pay the ransom. Most ransomware will scramble some data.

The first company used IT risk management for mitigating its risks. Thus, they still have access to their data and application. However, the second company lost access to some of its data. Also, they ended up paying a huge ransom to the attackers.

How to manage IT security risks?

We are going to share some simple tips that will help you in managing the security risks present in your organization.

1. Find your important data and systems

You need to first define the data and devices that you need to protect. There are going to be some data that will be the backbone of your business. You need to protect this data in every case. This step will help you in prioritizing your risk management measures. Also, you can find the best measures for your important data and resources. If you need to follow regulatory requirements like HIPPA or PCI DSS, then you can follow their requirement list.

2. Create impact estimates

You should estimate the impact of different cyber threats. This will help you in understanding the scope of different cyber threats. For example, if hackers got access to your sensitive data, then you need to determine the impact on your business. You might need to deal with legal fines. Also, you need to deal with reputation loss. You should determine the impact of downtime on your business. It is important to know how much money you will lose for every hour of downtime. This will help you in prioritizing your efforts according to the impact of the attacks.

3. Estimate the probability of every cyber threat

You should also consider the likelihood of every cyber head. Most companies are using cyber threat intelligence feeds for identifying the most popular cyber attacks. These tools will help you in finding the attacks that attackers can use for targeting your business.

4. Tolerance for risk

You can’t create a perfect cybersecurity risk management strategy. It is impossible to protect your business from every cyber threat available. Thus, you should define an acceptable level of risk. It will be equal to the amount of impact that your business can handle. You should focus on first protecting your most important assets. This will help you in optimizing the ROI of your cybersecurity strategy.

Conclusion

These tips will help you in creating your IT security strategy. If you are an SMB, then you should also consider working with an MSP. Experienced MSPs like Bleuwire can help you in protecting your business from attackers. They will help you in creating an IT security strategy. You will get access to a large team of IT security professionals. Thus, you don’t need to worry about managing your IT security. If you need more information regarding IT security services, then you can contact Bleuwire.

Contact us today to learn about Bleuwire™  services and solutions in how we can help your business.