Cyber Security Assessment Checklist

Free Cyber Security Assessment Checklist        

Cyber security assessment checklists are used to identify, evaluate, and prioritize your risks. Risks can threaten key components of your business such as employee or customer information, operations, and other assets. Often, this leads to both financial and reputational damage. Above all cyber security, assessments center around business continuity. Initially, we examine how your business makes money and what specific risks could result in large losses of revenue for your company. Then, we mitigate the biggest risks first. In many cases, organizations have unclear answers to critical questions around revenue loss and risk. If you aren’t sure which areas hold the most risk, then how can you build a cyber security plan? In other words, cyber security assessments are essential to reducing risks that could lead to critical financial losses.

If you want to skip the list and use our free assessment tool to get a report check it out here.

Below is our cyber security assessment checklist:

1. Create an asset list to identify, inspect, and document IT assets.
2. Perform a free cyber security assessment: determine which critical security features you have in place as well as identify the ones you are missing.
3. Identify which risks could lead to the largest financial losses.
4. Mitigate risks as part of an overall plan to strengthen your IT infrastructure.

However, unlike many other critical business issues, cyber security assessments are mostly about logic, not numbers. To keep it simple, the basic aspects of our cyber security assessment checklist revolve around three factors: the importance of the assets at risk, how critical the threat is, and how vulnerable the system is to that threat? In other words, a cyber security assessment can help you answer the following: How much is it going to cost? How big is the threat? And how likely is that threat to occur?

Specifically, you can think about it in ratings by answering the following questions:

• Is the asset in question critical to the business? (Rate from Low to High)
• Is the threat factor low or high? (Rate from Low to High)
• Is the vulnerability level low or high? (Rate from Low to High)

In further detail, if the asset is highly critical, the threat factor is high, and the vulnerability level is high. Subsequently, you know it is a risk you need to mitigate as soon as possible. However, if the threat factor and vulnerability level are both high, but the asset is worth nothing, then it may not be something you need to prioritize right away. Ultimately, regardless of the value of the asset, determining the stakes is essential to a strong security plan.

How to Build a Cyber Security Asset List:

To build an asset list, you can interview management, data owners, and employees, analyze systems and infrastructure, and review documentation.

1. Identify and rank assets

• Servers
• Website
• Customer data
• Partner documents
• Trade secrets
• Financial data

1. Identify loss potential

• Data loss
• System or application downtime
• Legal consequences
• Reputational damage
• Monetary loss

1. Identify threats and rank them

• Natural disasters
• System failure
• Human error
• Malicious human actors (cyber attacks, phishing campaigns, and malware injections)

1. Identify vulnerabilities and assess their likelihood

• Run a vulnerability scan
• Identify vulnerabilities
• Determine the likelihood of exploitation
• Assess: software design, old equipment, human factors (untrained employees)

1. Assess Risk

• Using data gathered from asset list, loss potential, threat rank, and vulnerability score, determine which risks lead to the largest monetary loss
• Rank all risks according to the logic: Risk = Asset * Threat * Vulnerability
• Develop a solution for newly prioritized risks as well as the estimated cost

1. Create a risk mitigation plan

• Assign a leader to manage a risk mitigation plan
• Build budget around cyber security risk mitigation
• Begin chipping away at resolving your list, beginning with your biggest threats and working your way down to the smallest

Try our free Cyber Security Assessment Tool.

Cyber Security Assessment Checklist

Following this methodology will enable you to create a customized cyber security assessment checklist. Consequently, the data uncovered throughout this process will allow you to identify, evaluate, and mitigate your biggest threats. However, if you need expert advice, feel free to contact us. Also, a great place to start is with our free cyber security assessment. It takes roughly 10 minutes to complete and provides you with a detailed list of risks and recommendations. Furthermore, if you have any questions or need assistance on any of the 6 steps above, then please feel free to contact us.  As always, we’re happy to assist in any stage of your risk mitigation process. Additionally, if you are looking for more information, then please check out our resource center. Finally, you can always find us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.