Everything You Should Know About Cyber Security Assessments

Do you want to know more about cyber security assessments? Keep reading and you will find out why it is so important for the whole security structure.

Cyber Security Assessments - Basic Information For Business Owners And Developers

Those who think that hackers and criminals are not following technological progress are wrong. These people are even more interested in new features even more than developers and businessmen. Statistics tell us that the average cost of a data breach in the USA in 2022 is $ 9,5 million, which means that hackers will spend as much as needed to get the job done. What to do in this case? Don’t panic. There is a solution, and this solution is called cyber security assessments. In this blog post, we will explain how the process goes and explain core details.

Cyber Security Assessments - Explanation

Cyber security assessments are complex operations with one goal: to examine the overall security infrastructure. During this operation, developers have an opportunity to light up all vulnerabilities and remediate them. It doesn’t mean you need to form a checklist according to the first available guide on Google.

How To Perform A Cyber Security Assessment?

Sometimes, when it comes to a specific check or, like we have, an assessment, people may think it could be complicated. It’s ok, especially when you are doing this for the first time. However, why not get a piece of advice? We prepared a short step-by-step guide about cyber security risk assessments.

1. Find out how huge the assessment is. The best thing you can do before launching the process is to see the whole picture. It will be bad if you will miss something and don't consider it while moving to the next step.
2. Determine the value. When you know how many assets are in your assessments, you may perform this operation. The specialists will work with each of the assets individually, and they should know how critical they are. This allows technicians to understand what possible risks may appear during the assessment.
3. Risk identification. This part is very important for those who will assess because they need to consider the impact of exploitation. By performing a proper identification you will understand how well your organization is prepared for a potential cyber attack.
4. Comparing the value. When you already know the cost of every asset, you can compare it with the cost needed for protection. If the cost of protection is too high, it may be an intelligent choice to think about an alternative method.
5. Establishing and continuously monitoring the situation. Once you’ve implemented the needed measures, consider monitoring the situation. With this move, you will understand how effective your methods are and what exactly should be changed.

Tools For Cyber Security Assessment

There is no need to make the process too complicated. You can go the opposite way and try to optimize everything with cyber security assessment tools. However, at this part, there could be a question: what tool to choose? Don’t worry, we already thought about this and prepared some options you can use.

ISO 27000

It’s not just a tool. It’s a framework that belongs to the large family of Information Security Management System Standards. It became popular among organizations worldwide, partly because it covers not only the corporation’s internal but third-party vendors as well. One of the biggest advantages of this framework is ongoing guidance that allows users to receive information about cyber security.

CMMC

Introduced in January 2020, Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification is a product created by the Department of Defense. After that, it was upgraded to version 2.0 with better optimization and some new features. Now, it could protect users against frequent and complex attacks. One of the features allows you to set priorities to choose which part of the information you want to protect (currently used by DoD). 

NIST Cybersecurity Framework

It’s a network of The National Institute of Standards and Technology that provides a set of best practices in cybersecurity. By using the available data and a set of functions, you can analyze, identify, protect, and perform other protecting activities.

Summing Up

As you can see, there is nothing extra complicated in cyber security assessment. All you need is to have the right instrument and a basic understanding of what should be done. However, if you don’t have an opportunity to do everything yourself, you can rely on MBSTech. Professionals will provide you with cyber security assessment services.