What is Risk Mitigation? How Is It Different from Cyber Risk Management?


Cyber risk mitigation is the process of identifying a company's critical assets and then ensuring them via risk management. Your organization must determine its risk tolerance before developing a risk mitigation strategy to mitigate such threats. Risk tolerance is divided into three categories: high, medium, and low. A risk management system will safeguard your company's assets from both internal and external threats while also saving money in other ways.

A cyber risk mitigation strategy allows you to reduce and eliminate threats. The application of security policies and practices to lower the total risk or effect of a cybersecurity attack is known as cybersecurity risk mitigation. Risk mitigation in cybersecurity may be divided into three categories: prevention, detection, and remedy. As hackers' approaches get more sophisticated, your company's cybersecurity risk mitigation strategies will need to evolve to keep up.

Risk Mitigation Strategies

Following are some of the risk mitigation strategies that cyber professionals use −

  • Assume/Accept − Recognize the presence of certain danger and make a conscious decision to accept it rather than engage in exceptional efforts to control it. Task or program pioneers must sign off on the project.

  • Change the Program's Prerequisites − To eliminate or reduce the danger, change the program's prerequisites or imperatives. This change may be necessitated by changes in funding, schedule, or specific requirements.

  • Control − Carry out efforts to reduce the risk's impact or probability.

  • Reassign Responsibility − Reassign authoritative responsibility, duty, and authority to a partner who is willing to accept the risk.

  • Watch/Monitor − Keep an eye on the environment for changes that might affect the nature or impact of the risk.

Steps for Risk Mitigation

Consider the following cybersecurity precautions −

  • Limiting the number of devices that have Internet access

  • Network Access Control (NAC) Installation

  • Access to admin credentials and control powers for each administrator is restricted.

  • Patches for operating systems that are automatically applied

  • Older operating systems have limitations (i.e., Windows XL or older; OS no longer supported)

  • Malicious traffic is monitored and blocked by firewalls.

  • Endpoint security and antivirus software

  • In order to acquire access to certain files and systems, two-factor authentication is required.

  • Examining the governance framework in order to guarantee that checks and balances are in place

  • Admin rights are being restricted.

Firewalls and antivirus software should be used

These technical protections provide an extra layer of protection for your computer or network. Firewalls operate as a barrier between the outside world and your network, giving you more control over inbound and outbound traffic.

Make a patch management plan

Many software vendors deploy fixes on a regular basis, and cybercriminals are well aware of this. As a result, nearly as soon as a patch is published, they can figure out how to exploit it. To build an efficient patch management plan, organizations should be aware of the normal patch release timetable among their service or software suppliers.

To detect vulnerabilities, do a risk assessment

Conducting a cybersecurity risk assessment, which may assist reveal any vulnerabilities in your organization's security policies, should be the first step in a cybersecurity risk mitigation approach. A risk assessment may assist your organization's IT security team in identifying areas of vulnerability that could be exploited and prioritizing which measures should be done first, providing insight into the assets that need to be safeguarded and the security policies presently in place.

Implement network access controls

To limit the danger of insider attacks, the next step is to establish network access restrictions. Many businesses are resorting to security technologies like zero trust, which evaluates user access credentials and trust.

What is Cyber Risk Management?

Cybersecurity assaults have the potential to undermine systems, steal data and other sensitive firm information, and harm a company's brand. As the number and severity of cyber assaults increase, so makes the demand for cybersecurity risk management. To safeguard an enterprise company, IT departments utilize a mix of tactics, technology, and user awareness training.

In cybersecurity risk management, traditional risk management techniques are applied to digital systems and infrastructure. It comprises examining your organization's risks and vulnerabilities, as well as taking administrative processes and executing comprehensive solutions to ensure that your firm is adequately protected.

In general, there are four steps in the cybersecurity risk management process −

  • Identifying risk entails assessing the organization's surroundings in order to detect present or potential threats to its operations.

  • Examining identified risks to determine how probable they are to have an impact on the company, as well as the magnitude of that impact.

  • Define strategies, processes, technology, or other steps that can assist the company in mitigating risks.

  • Controls are evaluated on a regular basis to assess how effective they are at managing risks, and new controls or adjustments are made as needed.

Deloitte suggests using the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) method for risk management, which has five levels −

  • Initial − The moment at which a new or undocumented repeat process is used for the first time.

  • Repeatable − The technique is adequately described to allow for several tries.

  • Defined − As a regular business procedure, the function has been defined and validated.

  • Managed − The procedure is governed by quantifiable and mutually agreed-upon parameters.

  • Process management − comprises purposeful process improvement as part of the optimization process.

Updated on: 20-Jul-2022

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