Information security risk management (ISRM) is the business of managing IT relevant risks. An ISRM process includes the identification, assessment, and treatment of risks. The process, on the other hand, should be governed by the CIA triad. The CIA triad, namely, confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
Moreover, the organization can not fully dissolve risks. That would just be inevitable. The business itself is a risk. However, effective ISRM shall help a company effectively deal with risks. For instance, there is a certain level of tolerable risk. However, businesses differ in this regard. So there is no clear cut for each risk level. But there are specific stages for this process.
Information Security Risk Management- In 4 Stages
Stage 1: Identification
The identification is broad. Under this stage, you will get another 4 stages. Namely, identification of assets, vulnerabilities, threats, and controls.
The following are as follows.
- Identification of Assets– what are the organization’s assets? You sure got lots of assets. But with this process, we are referring to those assets having a great impact on your company. You can say it is an asset if it brings value to the company.
- Identification of Vulnerabilities– vulnerability refers to the state of being exposed to an attack. So, identify your company’s processes, procedures, and practices. Upon identification, see if there are vulnerabilities underlying in between. Vulnerabilities can vary from one company to another. Moreover, this may both refer to your company’s physical and cyber state.
- Identification of Threats– can you see potential causes of any information breach? If there is, then that is a threat. A threat can be physical too. For example, a company may be situated in a disaster-prone area. Then that would count to a physical threat.
- Identification of Controls– this refers to the existing procedures in response to risks. So what are you currently doing for security? Do you see it enough? Or are there gaps that need to fill-in? This identification should help you further efforts for better security.
Stage 2: Assessment
In this stage, you’ll be fusing all the identification you had previously. But in doing so, you sure should have an equation.
Risk = [threat x vulnerability (probability x impact) x assets] – security controls
However, this simple equation should not be enough to assess everything. But this should give you a heads up for the whole assessment process.
Stage 3: Treatment
Now that you’ve assessed all the risks, you can now proceed to further steps. For instance, you can now better treat what’s necessary. This should be according to what your company needs.
The treatment stage also consists of the following procedures:
- Remediation
- Mitigation
- Transference
- Risk acceptance
- Risk avoidance
Step 4: Communicate & Repeat
Down to our last step: communicate, and repeat.
After doing all the identification, assessment, and treatment- you can now test. Test if the information security procedures are working as planned.
Into this, you need to communicate. There should be good communication existing between teams. This should foster better results through cooperation.
Also, remember that this is a continuous process. So do the assessment regularly. To do so, good management is vital.
