Top Five Most Prevalent Issues in Cybersecurity Risk Assessments

Blog / Top Five Most Prevalent Issues in Cybersecurity Risk Assessments

Organizations today must contend with a range of risks that call for a comprehensive cybersecurity plan. Addressing five basic areas in which companies of all kinds and sizes struggle—access management, vendor risk management, resilience, incident response, and asset management—helps one to establish a strong defense.

LBMC’s Cybersecurity Consulting team identified these five as the primary areas of concern based on data pulled from a sample of 30 different client risk assessments performed in 2023. Of this sample, 93% of organizations had at least one of these areas identified as a significant gap in their overall security posture. Moreover, 39% of the companies included two or more of the gaps on this list.

We will look at best practices in five areas.

1. Vendor Risk Management

The risk of cyberattacks expands beyond internal systems and people as businesses rely more on third-party vendors. With 59% of the clients citing Vendor Risk Management as a key issue, it is the most often occurring topic for major discrepancies among the 2023 Risk Assessments. VRM is a major issue since vendor connections could bring vulnerabilities unintentionally. Regular assessments and due diligence with suppliers help to detect and reduce often recognized weaknesses by means of which one can prevent them.

Additionally, good VRM relies on solid collaboration between your business and its suppliers. Protection of private data and avoidance of legal consequences depend on well-defined rules for data processing, storage, and transmission. Regarding security standards, incident response mechanisms, and reporting processes, companies should keep honest lines of contact.

Shared cybersecurity commitment with suppliers fosters proactive risk reduction and a culture of reciprocal accountability. One popular method is classifying vendors depending on the kinds of data they will be sharing in terms of the corporate tiering. For instance, it is doubtful that the vendor mowing the front lawn would be held to the same level as one disclosing protected health information (PHI).

2. Asset Management

Fundamental to cybersecurity is knowledge of and control over both digital and physical assets. Companies battle with precise asset counts, which makes tracking and securing all devices and data difficult. Creating an inventory of all assets, routinely auditing it, and putting security measures in place to guard these assets define effective asset management. This guarantees that companies know exactly their threat environment and can proactively protect their important resources.

Cybercriminals target both digital and physical assets especially, hence strong security measures are absolutely necessary. Enforcing uniform security policies over several assets presents difficulties for many companies. Additional important actions businesses should take to strengthen security controls and protect digital assets against developing threats are routinely upgrading and patching software, using encryption techniques, setting baseline configuration profiles, and installing firewalls.

3. Resilience

Cyberattacks are unavoidable, hence organizational resilience becomes a major issue. Beyond avoidance, companies have to concentrate on their capacity for quick incident or event recovery. Maintaining incident response plans, installing backup and recovery systems, and running frequent simulations to assess the resilience in the event of cyberattacks calls for this as well.

Critical key components of cyber resilience are also establishing strong data backup policies, verifying redundancy, and testing restoration techniques. These help to reduce the effects on operations even during a significant event. Maintaining well-defined Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery plans that lead businesses back to stability is another element of resilience that many firms find difficult. Often, these documents are first created to satisfy leadership or fulfill a compliance checklist box and then placed in a desk drawer. Review these plans often and adjust them following any major corporate or infrastructure development.

4. Incident Response

It is absolutely imperative to be able to identify, react to, and bounce back from cyber events. When a security breach happens, a well-defined incident response plan specifies a methodical, coordinated strategy. Minimizing damage and downtime depends on developing a thorough Incident Response strategy catered to the particular risks and assets of the company.

Many times, organizations fail by ignoring the preparatory stage or routinely testing the Incident Response strategy. Simulating cyberattacks lets teams improve their response plans, spot possible flaws, and guarantee a coordinated and successful reaction should a real-life catastrophe transpires. To maximize the response process and reduce the effect of cyber disasters, companies should create open lines of contact, assign incident response teams, and schedule frequent drills.

5. Access Management

Unauthorized access is still a major concern for companies; hence, strong access limits depending on job duties or responsibilities. Though it is the least often occurring of the five major problems, Access Management was mentioned in about 25% of the companies examined. To reduce the possibility of illegal access and data leaks, companies should routinely review and update user rights, enforce strong authentication measures, and track access logs. Giving people too great access can also unintentionally expose security flaws.

Access Management techniques should be guided by the least privilege principle, therefore guaranteeing that users only possess the rights required for their responsibilities. Review and update these user rights often to avoid overprivileged accounts acting as possible cyber attack access points. Many of our clients find it difficult to get their hands around staff moves. Although access management teams typically notice a ticket requesting new access the employee will require in their new role, they neglect to handle any prior access the person might no longer need.

Conclusion

These five fundamental areas must be part of a complete cybersecurity plan if we are to properly protect businesses from the changing threat scene. Organizations may build a strong defense against cyber risks and safeguard their digital assets by tackling Vendor Risk Management, Access Management, Resilience, Incident Response, and Asset Management.

Not sure how your business is managing these areas? Getting a Risk Assessment done to evaluate the completeness and maturity of the security-related policies inside your company is among the finest first actions. By means of a series of interviews with important stakeholders and subject-matter specialists as well as an examination of a few pertinent records, our team of security experts will assess the individuals, systems, and tools supporting the cybersecurity program of your company.

LBMC is pleased to talk about how you can strengthen your defense if your company finds it difficult to apply thorough security for any of the specified areas. Contact us to learn more about the services our experts can provide to protect your organization from potential cyber threats.

Content provided by LBMC Cybersecurity professionals, Jackson Grelier and Garrett Zickgraf.

1. Vendor Risk Management

2. Asset Management

3. Resilience

4. Incident Response

5. Access Management

Conclusion

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