Broward Sheriff’s RTCC
Online security risks and data compromises are more common than you may think and are becoming an increasingly prevalent concern for businesses and individuals worldwide.
Statistics show that 80% of these data breaches occur because of password compromises and a lack of security assessment. People do not necessarily consider security consulting and assessments a big concern until they find themselves the victim of such breaches or compromises.
Before diving into the details, let’s brush up on some basics about security risk assessment and some associated real-life problems.
What is Security Assessment?
A security assessment is a method of assessing, identifying, and implementing various security controls for one’s application. These assessments can help homeowners and businesses prevent security risks and make security risk management more convenient and practical.
Conducting a risk assessment lets the organization check the application from the threat perspective. It shows potential loopholes, weak access points, and system vulnerabilities that might lurk in plain sight. You can avoid many cyber security risks simply by performing routine security assessments.
These assessments can improve the organization’s existing risk management process. Companies can even use these assessments to create a risk checklist for better protection in the future.
How does Security Risk Assessment Work?
There are a variety of factors that impact the effectiveness of your security risk assessments. These factors commonly include:
- Resources
- Organization size
- Growth rate
- Asset portfolio
These factors can impact the depth and its effectiveness. Security checks other than security risk assessments do not provide details between:
- Assets
- Associated threats
- Identified risks
- Impact
- Mitigating control, etc.
You can quickly get in-depth information and secure your network and organization’s protection with a little extra effort. In many cases, security risk assessment is a smart approach to counter and prepare for potential security breaches.
There are many real-life situations where security risk assessment can help minimize damage. We have outlined the top 4 real-life problems security risk assessment can help solve.
1. Natural Disasters
Natural disasters are a big problem for various regions globally. It’s primarily because these natural disasters include various threats such as snow storms, floods, earthquakes, etc., which increase the chances of data and security compromise.
Moreover, these natural disasters can cause damage to equipment and data storage devices and cause the misplacement of important information.
For instance, if a natural disaster hits an airport, the systems will get disrupted, which poses a severe threat to security risks. Security breaches are much more susceptible in these circumstances because the airports’ protective layers under normal circumstances may not be fully deployed in case of a natural disaster. Fortunately, security risk assessment can help counter these problems more intuitively. For instance, the assessment can indicate the area within the airport that’s most susceptible to damage because of a natural disaster.
Most natural disasters have an advanced warning in place, so the airport management can prepare for the upcoming event to secure them.
2. Organized Attacks
Not all security breach attempts are random; instead, you might encounter an intentional and organized attack. Since these organized attacks are pre-planned, it can be more challenging for the victims to protect themselves against them. Fortunately, security risk assessment can help you counter these organized attacks before they are carried out.
Increasing the security protocol in your organization, re-evaluating all current security and surveillance systems, and reviewing all protective layers from a neutral perspective helps minimizes the overall challenges.
Only recently, in 2021, a full-fletched organized attack on LinkedIn put 500 million+ users at risk. This organized attack impacted more than 90% of the user base, and personal user information was exposed. Unfortunately, this isn’t the first cyber-attack that LinkedIn has suffered.
3. Criminal Acts
Like other data and security breach cases in the U.S. and other regions, criminal attacks are also prevalent. One of the most notable examples of these criminal acts was when over 50 million credit cards were compromised from Home Depot’s system back in 2014. The perpetrators started using a vendor’s name to access Home Depot’s system. Once they got onto the company computer, they installed malware on the POS (point of sale) system. Every time a customer swiped their card on these compromised POS units, all the transactions went to the criminal account. Moreover, the credit card information and details went straight to these hackers, which also put their customer’s finances at risk.
Unfortunately, Home Depot isn’t the only victim of such data breaches. Another famous example of these problems is the 2015 customer data compromise that impacted 79 million customers. The medical companies hacked during this attempt included the following:
- Premera Blue Cross
- CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield
- Anthem
The security assessment afterward showed that Anthem compromised the most significant chunk of information in this scenario. Since then, these health companies have added more security protocols to prevent such cases in the future.
4. General Accidents
While most of the data breaches and security compromises shown in the security risk assessment reports are because of planned attacks, there are some cases where general accidents led to security compromises for organizations.
In most of these cases, human error has been the leading cause that has put the organization’s security at risk. Accidents are a prevalent reason for security compromise, per most security assessment reports.
In February 2016, the popular social media platform Snapchat suffered a data breach. In this case, the personal protected info (PPI) of around 700+ employees was released, which still stands as a significant incident.
Bottom Line
A security assessment is an intelligent way of countering security risks. Organizations must practice these assessments for higher organizational protection.
With the proper assessments, you can protect yourself against accidents, criminal acts, organized attacks, and even natural disasters. We recommend you start setting up your own protection with the analysis and data received from your security assessment report.
If you are looking for a security consultation to secure your organization, we recommend you contact AT&I Security Systems for more information. Our experts will help you better understand security risk assessment and ensure superior protection.