Carrying out adequate risk and vulnerability management is totally necessary to guarantee the security levels of the information that depends on the company. This is the only way to identify the threats that can affect the vulnerabilities in order to establish the measures to solve the problems that may be created.

What is risk management

The first thing that must be taken into account to carry out good risk management is to identify the information assets that the company has, which are made up of:

Data.

Hardware.

Written documents.

Company workers.

On all these factors it is necessary to establish the threats, risks and vulnerabilities.

A threat is defined as any event that can damage information stored on company devices.

It is related to workers, technical failures and natural effects. We are talking about external computer attacks, company personnel errors, virus infections, storms, earthquakes or electrical problems that affect equipment.

Vulnerability is a risk that concerns information security.  If a threat materializes and we have a vulnerability that is affected, some kind of loss may occur for the company.

How to properly manage risks and vulnerabilities

The first thing is to assess the critical points of the company. The possibility of a risk and the impact that its materialization would entail is measured.

Several factors fit here:

Economic losses.

Business reputation, in that it can affect your image.

The damage that can occur on the loss of information.

In addition, control measures must be established   that are related to the type of threat and the risk it represents for the company. 

There are four ways to deal with irrigation:

Accept: Perform a monitoring on it.

Transfer: Take out some insurance that reduces the cost of an eventual loss.

Mitigate: Implement preventive or corrective measures to reduce the possibility of something bad happening or to minimize the impact if that happens.

Avoid the risk, eliminating those information files and the activity that they may entail.

A risk management and vulnerability must take into account the cost of control measures; the importance of certain information has for the company and how far reaching the critical points of risk that affects you, to achieve a balance between these three factors.

It is really necessary for the tranquility of the business to identify the risks to be able to act when they arise or try to prevent this from happening.