Not many people are aware of how to conduct an evolving IT risk assessment. So, IT risk assessment examples are a great way to see how it’s done, copy what you learned, and make changes as needed.
We know how to assess IT risks to identify potential threats and vulnerabilities that could compromise an organisation’s critical systems. But do we know how to do it?
For example, think about an Australian financial services company that’s integrating its old systems with new tech, which could leave it open to a lot of risks if it doesn’t have the right security measures in place.
Understanding and managing these risks is important to comply with the rules, to keep your stakeholders happy, and ensure your business keeps running smoothly. But how?
IT Risk Assessment Process Overview
Before discussing IT risk assessment examples further, we need to understand the risk assessment process first.
An IT risk assessment is basically a way of checking out an organisation’s tech setup to see where there might be weaknesses or threats.
The first step is to identify all the IT assets, including hardware, software, data and personnel.
The “Simple IT Risk Assessment Template,” from SmartSheet is one example of a handy way to keep track of your IT assets, making sure nothing gets missed.
Next, we’ll take a look at what could potentially compromise your assets.
These threats can come from outside, from people trying to hack in or spread malware, or from inside, like accidental data leaks or disgruntled employees.
As the Justine J template from SafetyCulture shows, even small mistakes, like an unlocked desktop or a laptop without a password, can lead to big problems.
Once we’ve identified the threats and vulnerabilities, we move on to looking at how serious they are and how likely they are to happen.
This means looking at how likely it is that something will happen and what effect it could have on the company.
We also look at things like how sensitive the data is, the potential financial loss, and the reputational damage that could result.
The Justine J template shows this with a “Consequence x Likelihood” matrix, where risks are rated, with “High” indicating the most critical.
Finally, it’s time to focus on taking proactive measures. It’s about putting together plans to deal with the risks that have been flagged.
This could mean beefing up your security with new controls, making sure your software is up to date, investing in employee training, or even transferring some risks through insurance.
The report makes some specific recommendations, like making passwords stronger and fixing physical security issues. This shows that you need to tackle risks in different ways.
What Should an IT Risk Assessment Include?
An IT risk assessment should cover all the main areas to make sure we’re looking at all the potential risks.
The assessment’s first step is to create a list of all the IT assets, including hardware, software, and data storage.
This inventory is the starting point for identifying which assets are critical to the company’s operations and, therefore, the most vulnerable to attack.
It’s also important to look at the security controls you already have in place.
This means looking at the current ways we protect our IT assets, such as firewalls, encryption protocols and access controls.
Priya Kanduri from Happiest Minds in “IT Risk Assessment,” says it’s not enough to just identify these controls – we also need to evaluate how effective and mature they are.
For instance, a healthcare facility might have IoT devices with the manufacturer’s original settings that lack strong encryption, which could be risky if not managed properly.
It’s also important to identify and analyse potential risks.
This involves spotting possible threats, such as cyberattacks, insider threats, or natural disasters, and assessing their likelihood and potential impact.
One example from the Justine J template shows how a laptop without a password could be risky.
There’s a high chance of it being stolen, and if sensitive data were accessed, it could have a big impact.
This example shows why it’s important to think about how often potential threats might occur and what the consequences could be.
Detailed IT Risk Assessment Example
Example 1: AEC Industry – Cloud-Based Project Management Platform
UrbanDesign AU – a fictional mid-sized Australian architecture firm – relies on a cloud-based project management platform to work with contractors, engineers, and clients.
The platform is a key part of their operations, handling things like blueprints, financial info, and project timelines.
Threat/Vulnerability
We’ve spotted a major security issue in the way the project management platform and third-party apps used by contractors communicate.
At the moment, the API uses basic authentication, which doesn’t have the same level of security as OAuth2.
This means there’s a risk of interception and replay attacks.
Furthermore, the data sent between the API and third-party apps isn’t encrypted with TLS, which makes it vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks.
In addition, the system doesn’t have proper audit logging, which makes it harder to spot when someone is trying to access the API without permission or when something unusual is happening.
Risk Assessment
There’s a medium chance this vulnerability will be exploited, especially given how sophisticated cyber-attacks on cloud services are getting these days.
The potential impact is pretty high, though. If the vulnerability is exploited, there’s a big chance of sensitive project data being leaked.
This could lead to financial losses, damage to our reputation and potential legal issues for breaching data protection laws.
Mitigation Recommendations
To make things safer, UrbanDesign AU should use OAuth2 for API authentication, which will help to keep the platform secure.
It’s also important to make sure TLS encryption is used for all data transfers between the platform and third-party apps to stop anyone from intercepting them.
Finally, setting up comprehensive audit logging and monitoring will help you spot and deal with any unauthorised access attempts.
For more insights, you can read “IT Audit Risk Assessment: The Small Detail that Could Save Your Business.”
Example 2: Financial Sector – Legacy System Integration
FinanceCorp, a fictional Australian financial services company, is currently in the process of integrating its legacy banking system with a new online banking portal.
The goal is to offer its customers a better experience with enhanced services.
While this integration is key to improving the customer experience, the legacy system still handles a lot of transactions and contains important financial data.
This reliance on an ageing infrastructure brings with it some pretty significant security challenges, particularly as the legacy system interacts with the modern portal.
Threat/Vulnerability
The main risk is that the old system’s security protocols are out of date and can’t be used with the new online banking portal.
The old system is currently running on old versions of SSL/TLS, specifically TLS 1.0, which is known to be vulnerable to a number of serious exploits, such as POODLE and BEAST attacks.
On top of that, the encryption keys used in the legacy system are pretty weak.
They rely on 1024-bit RSA, which is getting increasingly vulnerable to cracking, especially with the advancements in quantum computing.
On top of that, the legacy system’s web interface hasn’t been thoroughly tested for Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities.
This makes it vulnerable to attacks that could steal user data or allow unauthorized transactions.
Risk Assessment
Given how important financial systems are and how tempting they are for cybercriminals, there’s a good chance that FinanceCorp’s legacy system will be attacked.
If such an attack were to occur, the consequences would be pretty severe.
It could lead to unauthorised transactions, significant financial losses, a loss of customer trust and severe regulatory penalties.
We’ve assessed the impact of these risks as very high, which makes it really important to address these vulnerabilities as soon as possible.
Mitigation Recommendations
To deal with these risks, FinanceCorp should make it a priority to upgrade its old system to support the latest TLS versions (1.2 or higher) with strong cipher suites to make sure transactions are secure.
On top of that, the company should switch to using 2048-bit or stronger encryption keys to make data security even stronger.
It’s also important to test the legacy system’s web interface thoroughly to find and fix any existing XSS vulnerabilities.
Example 3: Healthcare Industry – IoT Device Security
The HealthPlus, a fictional hospital network in Australia, has recently started using a range of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in its facilities, including patient monitoring systems and smart medical devices.
The idea is these devices will make patient care better and make things run more smoothly.
However, this new tech also brings some big security issues, as the IoT devices are all connected and play a big part in the hospital’s most important systems.
Threat/Vulnerability
One of the main issues with these IoT devices is the lack of solid security controls.
Many of these devices run with the manufacturer’s default credentials, which are well known and can be easily exploited by malicious actors.
Also, the IoT devices already out there don’t have any way to check that the firmware updates are legit, so they’re vulnerable to being messed with.
This could let attackers put in malicious firmware, which might make the devices stop working properly.
What’s more, these devices aren’t properly separated from the hospital’s main network.
If one is compromised, attackers could move laterally within the network, gaining access to sensitive patient data and other critical systems.
Risk Assessment
With attackers targeting IoT devices increasingly, there’s a medium-high chance of an exploit within the HealthPlus network. If such an exploit were to occur, the consequences would be severe.
If an attack is successful, it could lead to a major breach of patient data, disruption of essential medical services and even pose a direct threat to patient safety.
These vulnerabilities show us just how important it is to have strong security measures in place.
Mitigation Recommendations
To address these risks, HealthPlus should prioritise changing the default credentials on all IoT devices and ensuring strong password policies across the network.
It’s also vital to use digital signatures and integrity checks for all firmware updates, so only authorised and verified updates are applied.
In addition, it’s essential to keep the IoT network separate from the main hospital network.
You can do this by using firewalls and VLANs to limit communication between IoT devices and critical hospital systems.
Now then, after looking over those three IT risk assessment examples, let’s get into some best practices. Because how you approach your IT risk assessments makes a big difference.
Best Practices for Effective IT Risk Assessments
First and foremost, we need to get everyone on the same page and get key stakeholders from across the organisations involved.
It’s not just down to the IT department to keep your digital assets safe.
It’s a good idea to get people from management, finance and legal involved, so you can get a full picture of the risks and how they could affect the business.
Tools like the IT risk assessment templates from SmartSheet or SafetyCulture can be really useful in this kind of collaborative effort.
It encourages you to focus on the most critical assets and vulnerabilities, rather than trying to address every possible threat.
It’s also worth thinking about how technology can help make the assessment process more efficient.
There are lots of tools out there to help you automate data collection, vulnerability scanning and risk analysis, freeing up your team to focus on making strategic decisions.
But, it’s important to find a good balance. As Priya Kanduri says in the Happiest Minds paper, manual intervention, such as penetration testing, is still important for finding deeper vulnerabilities that automated tools might miss.
Once the assessment is done, it’s got to be clear communication.
Make sure you present the findings in a way all stakeholders can understand, even if they’re not technical experts.
Everyone needs to know what they need to do to reduce risks and what the consequences of not doing so could be.
And don’t forget that IT risk assessment isn’t something you can just do once and forget about. The threats out there are always changing, so your assessments need to keep up.
So yes, please do a regular review and update your defences to make sure your organisation can handle new and emerging threats.
Priya Kanduri’s focus on turning assessment results into concrete steps and getting ongoing support from management shows how important it is to keep making improvements in IT risk management.
To gain a broader perspective, we recommend reading “IT Risk Management Framework: What It Is and Why You Need One ASAP.”
How Interscale Helps You in IT Risk Assessment & Management
Right, let’s get down to the facts and forget about all the marketing hype. We get it; in the crazy world of IT, the last thing you need is more jargon and buzzwords. Right, let’s get down to it.
You’re running a business, you are part of the IT department. So, you need your systems to work, your data to be safe, and your emails to get through.
That’s why we’re here to give you peace of mind.
We get how cyber threats are changing faster than a caffeinated kangaroo, and we’re here to make sure you’re not left behind.
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We use the same tech as the big guys, but we’ve made it accessible and affordable for businesses like yours.
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Is your software a bit out of date? Are your passwords up to scratch? We’ll find them and help you fix them before they become a headline on the evening news.
Now, we know we’ve thrown a lot of information at you, and it might be a bit overwhelming. Please, take a breather.
Then, kindly visit our Interscale Email Security Protection Service website, read a few case studies, and see how we’ve helped other businesses in your shoes.
And when you’re ready, let’s find a good coffee and croissant. We’re buying.
No pressure, no sales pitch. Just a friendly conversation about your IT challenges and how we can help you overcome them.
In Closing
So, in today’s fast-paced world of IT, risk is an unavoidable part of the picture.
But with the right approach and the help of experts like Interscale, you can manage these risks proactively and strengthen your digital defences.
It’s not just about providing an IT risk assessment example; it’s about making risk management part of your company’s DNA.
