Security Assessment

A security risk assessment identifies, assesses, and implements key security controls in applications. It also focuses on preventing application security defects and vulnerabilities. Carrying out a risk assessment allows an organization to view the application portfolio holistically—from an attacker’s perspective. It supports managers in making informed resource allocation, tooling, and security control implementation decisions. Thus, conducting an assessment is an integral part of an organization’s risk management process. 

Step 1: Identification

Determine all critical assets of the technology infrastructure. Next, diagnose sensitive data that is created, stored, or transmitted by these assets. Create a risk profile for each.

Step 2: Assessment

Administer an approach to assess the identified security risks for critical assets. After careful evaluation and assessment, determine how to effectively and efficiently allocate time and resources towards risk mitigation. The assessment approach or methodology must analyze the correlation between assets, threats, vulnerabilities, and mitigating controls.

Step 3: Mitigation

Define a mitigation approach and enforce security controls for each risk.

Step 4: Prevention

Implement tools and processes to minimize threats and vulnerabilities from occurring in your firm’s resources

  • Identify assets (e.g., network, servers, applications, data centers, tools, etc.) within the organization.
  • Create risk profiles for each asset.
  • Understand what data is stored, transmitted, and generated by these assets.
  • Assess asset criticality regarding business operations. This includes the overall impact to revenue, reputation, and the likelihood of a firm’s exploitation.
  • Measure the risk ranking for assets and prioritize them for assessment.
  • Apply mitigating controls for each asset based on assessment results.
 
  • Creating an application portfolio for all current applications, tools, and utilities.
  • Documenting security requirements, policies, and procedures.
  • Establishing a collection of system architectures, network diagrams, data stored or transmitted by systems, and interactions with external services or vendors.
  • Developing an asset inventory of physical assets (e.g., hardware, network, and communication components and peripherals).
  • Maintaining information on operating systems (e.g., PC and server operating systems).