How Technology Is Radically Changing Risk Management

Risk management is the ongoing process where a business discovers, examines, and tackles a wide range of cyber risks, which might just materialize if their IT components do not work because of threats from inside and outside. Some of these risks are losing confidential and sensitive information, facing disruptions during everyday operations and damage to their reputation.

Cyber risk management makes it possible for security personnel to identify, assess, and analyze weaknesses in their enterprise information technology environment, which can be taken advantage of by an attacker. The applications and connected computers of it enable users to apply strategic methods to solve potential problems, thus enabling businesses to either minimize or shun the consequences of likely cyber risks. Several businesses struggle to effectively put cyber risk management into practice, though.

For instance, information concerning the pieces of hardware or software in their IT environment is located randomly around numerous sources, plus they should manually associate that info using threat and risk data. Consequently, it becomes a difficult process to measure and assess how much risk the piece of hardware or software presents to that business. However, it is possible to fix that and other issues with a technology that is meant to transform this ongoing process radically.

Offering Single Source of Truth (SSOT) for Risk Management

Nowadays, companies continue to pursue digital innovation and adopt growing and developing technologies for automating their business processes and operations. However, this could just make their data more vulnerable to the threats because there are exploitable weaknesses in these technologies. In other words, these are vulnerabilities which a cybercriminal can take advantage of to do their malicious stuff. Unsurprisingly, as per a Marsh and McLennan Agency’s study, cyber risk is one of the five main risks, which a wide range of businesses face at present.

Fortunately, businesses can also make the most of technology itself to manage cyber risks, regardless of from where they emerge, in an efficient and effective way. For example, risk management programs enable businesses to access data concerning information technology assets, up-and-coming threats, security control and cyber risks from one central location. This offers an SSoT for the risk management approaches of these businesses.

Making Both Security Control Implementation and Monitoring Better

A fine enterprise risk management system is one that enhances the process of not just enforcing security controls, but also that of monitoring these. Security controls are required for a business to confirm that it can reduce the impact of cyber threats or safeguard against these. With the help of a proper system, it is possible to easily allocate security controls to those responsible for implementing and keeping an eye on these.

Updates and information can be passed on to control owners with no need to depend upon email messages and telephone calls. Besides, risk management system enables keeping control owners in line with many different security frameworks and security directives a business should adhere to, no matter the department of control owners.

Allowing Dynamic Risk Reporting

Reporting is part of this ongoing process, and it plays a big role in assessing both the risk posture and profile of an enterprise. Information security professionals have to be equipped with the ability to show risk data in a clear and easy to understand manner to stakeholders, so that they can relate that data to company goals.

Reporting capabilities added to risk management systems allow the user to make reports, which these internal customers can understand in an easy way. These visual reports show every relevant detail and metric that stakeholders want, like risk scores.

Risk reports can be immediately generated from whichever data in the computer. You have to think about this dynamic risk reporting ability any time you use the money for a business intelligence (BI) solution.

Implementing a Hands-On Approach towards Vendor Risk

Cyber threats possibly emerge through vendor-side networks. Cybersecurity company Carbon Black looked into cyberattacks. The company’s recent “Incident Response Threat Report” shows that half of these attacks involved the use of the “island-hopping” method. In this cyber attack method, hackers gain access to a business’s network through their vendor partner’s network.

For this reason, there are features in risk management systems helping you to take a more hands-on approach towards evaluating and monitoring the risk of an attack. A feature is the potential to work together with those from outside the business to discover whether they have sufficient and effective security controls in place.

Supporting Other Kinds of Risks

Technology also facilitates risk management in project management, and many businesses seek its help given that they can encounter not just cybersecurity risks, but others too. So, businesses may face some unknown conditions or events right through their project’s life cycle that can have an impact on its objectives and results.

Risk management systems enable these organizations to carry out project risk assessment, in which it’s possible for them to discover the potential risks, and find out how likely these are to happen and what impact they could have.