Risks in business usually occur when there is uncertainty,
confusion and a lack of understanding of what risk is within an
organization. What I mean is this, if a
company does not fully understand a subject such as employee theft and does not
have a plan in place to educate, identify and control it, then the possibility
of loss will be greater and end up costing the company much more in the
end. Therefore, it is important that
every company have a clear and precise plan in place to educate and identify
what risks are present and how to mitigate or avoid them.
This isn’t always an easy endeavor though, businesses face ongoing
challenges and new (Potential) threats crop up every day as new vulnerabilities
get identified. Investing in a
comprehensive Risk Assessment will help keep the business and its stakeholders
calm during these times of tumult.
Businesses can’t avoid risks, as a matter of fact; risks are
inevitable and sometimes needed in a business plan, the more risk that a
company takes, the more reward or profit can be realized, but risks must be
clearly identified and understood before moving forward with the business plan.
Most Risk assessment plans will
prioritize the threats as Minor, medium and critical in order to put
significance to the vulnerability so actions plans can be put into play to deal
with them.
Risk Assessments ask;
What is the vulnerability?
How does it affect me?
What is the threat?
What is the impact of the
threat?
What severity does this threat
have?
Can we live with the threat?
Who needs to be involved and
notified?
What can we learn from this
threat.
What actions need to be put
into play in order to mitigate or manage the threat?
Threat modeling is a great way that businesses can answer these
questions. Threat modeling is a way to
identify vulnerabilities and then implement countermeasures to help lessen the
impact of the threats. A sad lesson we
have learned is that not all companies use this type of analytical approach to
deal with the issues they have within their networks..
