5 Benefits of a Security Risk Assessment

Uncover the benefits of a security risk assessment that would strengthen your overall security posture.  

In the ever-shifting landscape of cybersecurity, organizations require a comprehensive and proactive approach to safeguarding their critical assets. Security risk assessments offer a valuable tool that extends far beyond mere data protection. This article delves into five key benefits of conducting regular security risk assessments, including:

• Risk assessments help identify your assets.
• Risk assessments help meet industry compliance requirements.
• Risk assessments help allocate resources and prioritize your security measures.
• Risk assessments help prevent financial loss.
• Risk assessments offer a proactive approach to security.

Let’s examine the benefits of a security risk assessment and consider why regular risk assessments are so important.  

1. Risk Assessments Help Identify Your Assets

One can’t secure something if one doesn’t know it exists. That said, businesses must clearly understand what assets they have, their criticality, and where these assets are located to address risks associated with them. Resource inventory also helps categorize assets based on their business value and data sensitivity. The organization’s assets inventory and their categorization as per security risk assessment might include:

• Hardware: Computers, servers, mobile devices, network equipment, etc.
• Software: Operating systems, applications, databases, software code, etc.
• Data: Customer information, financial records, intellectual property, etc.
• Network Resources: IP addresses, firewalls, routers, etc.
• Systems and Applications: Systems and applications that store, process, or transmit data.

Asset inventory has never been easy, but with the rapid cloud adoption and BYOD policies, it has become even more challenging. Before cloud storage, organizations stored and processed their data within their on-premise networks so sensitive data remained within a controlled environment. Today, data can live on-premise, in the cloud, or in a hybrid environment. In 2023, 27% of organizations reported that more than half (60%) of their workloads were in the cloud, and more than three-quarters (79%) of organizations had more than one cloud provider. Resources can be provisioned, modified, or decommissioned rapidly in the dynamic cloud environment. Worse yet, many companies don’t know where their data is stored. So, asset inventory as part of the security risk assessment process greatly enhances businesses’ overall security posture.  

2. Risk Assessments Help Meet Industry Compliance

Security risk assessment helps organizations stay and remain compliant with data security laws, regulations, and standards. For example, the HIPAA Security Rule demands “conducting an accurate and thorough assessment of the potential risks and vulnerabilities to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of ePHI held by the covered entity.” The risk assessment under the HIPAA Security Rule is critical to HIPAA compliance since it helps organizations identify necessary ePHI security controls not explicitly provided in the Rule.  

The same goes for other laws, regulations, and standards, including PCI DSS, GLBA, and ISO 27001.  

Failure to conduct a security risk assessment falls under ​severe willful neglect in categories of HIPAA violations. Many of the largest HIPAA violation fines are attributable to the failure to conduct a proper risk assessment, among other things. These include a $5.5 million fine issued against the Advocate Health Care Network, a $6,5 million penalty against Primera Blue Cross, and the most recent one, a $4,75 million settlement issued against Montefiore Medical Center in 2024.  

Although these regulations and standards require organizations to conduct a security risk assessment, they don’t prescribe any specific risk assessment approach or methodology. Some of the most frequently used are the NIST SP 800-30 Guide for Conducting Risk Assessment and ISO 27005:2022 Information Security, Cybersecurity and Privacy Protection Guidance on managing information security risks.  

Read more about NIST risk assessment guidelines and risk assessments under the HIPAA Security Rule.  

3. Risk Assessments Help Allocate Resources and Prioritize Security Measures

Allocating people and financial security resources efficiently is yet another benefit of a security risk assessment. Let’s figure out why it is so.  

The risk assessment not only helps identify threats and vulnerabilities but also systematic weaknesses. This allows the organization to focus on the solution rather than an issue to prevent this issue from happening in the future. Many organizations struggle to fix vulnerabilities without properly understanding where they’re coming from. Trying to fix a single vulnerability is like patching a leaky pipe - a temporary fix. Sooner or later, the leak will happen somewhere in the other part of the pipe. A risk assessment helps identify the source of the leak and thereby prevent future leaks.  

Additionally, security risk assessments give a comprehensive view of the business and technological environment and systematize remediation prioritization. Not all systems and data are created equally, so they demand a comprehensive view of the entire technological and business landscape. By analyzing the impact of potential threats in combination with the criticality of systems in scope, the assessment helps prioritize remediation activities. Imagine you have weak access controls on a server containing sensitive customer data (a critical system). The risk assessment would highlight the access control issue and flag it as a high priority. On the other hand, weaker access controls on a printer used for internal reports (a non-critical system) would be flagged as a lower priority.

4. Risk Assessments Help Prevent Financial Losses

While a risk assessment is an investment, it can help you save money in the long run by preventing losses from a security breach or non-compliance. According to IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report 2023, the cost of a data breach has set a new high record, with average breach expenses reaching $4.45 million in 2023. The US remains the leading country in terms of data breach costs. This year, the average cost of a data breach in the U.S. reached $9,48 million.  

While the total cost may vary depending on business size and industry, any company faces reputational damages, downtime, and non-compliance issues if cybercriminals target their business. Experiencing these and other inconveniences, 51% of organizations plan to increase security investments due to a breach. However, if they invested these costs in a security risk assessment, they would be able to substantially reduce the risk of a data breach and prevent financial and other losses.

5. Risk Assessments Offer a Proactive Approach to Security

A risk assessment allows you to identify and address your weaknesses proactively instead of waiting for them to be exposed.  

An information security program based on a standard framework or compliance requirements would be very general and not consider the specifics of the company’s people, processes, and technologies. A risk assessment is necessary to proactively identify organizational weaknesses and risks and enhance the program so that it addresses the organization-specific risks.  

By proactively identifying these vulnerabilities, you gain a crucial advantage: the ability to address them before attackers can leverage them and develop strategies for preventing them from occurring in the future. This might involve establishing new policies, implementing new controls, and training workforce members. The specific actions will depend on the identified risks, but the proactive approach is key.

Conduct a Security Risk Assessment with Planet 9

The benefits and importance of a security risk assessment for businesses cannot be overestimated. Still, conducting the risk assessment can be burdensome for many organizations lacking expertise and resources.   With Planet 9 security risk assessment service, you can be sure your risk assessment will be conducted appropriately, timely, and in accordance with best practices and regulatory requirements.  

‍Contact Planet 9 to learn more about the risk assessment.