Internet Security Risk Assessment (ISRA/SRA)

A security risk assessment helps you understand where your organization is most vulnerable and where to focus limited resources. By systematically cataloguing assets, evaluating threats and vulnerabilities, and estimating the likelihood and impact of potential attacks, you can build a prioritized roadmap for improving your security posture.

Assessment Process

• Asset inventory & classification: Identify critical systems, data and third‑party dependencies, and categorize them by sensitivity and business value.
• Threat & vulnerability identification: Enumerate possible threat actors (e.g., hackers, insiders, nation states) and catalog known vulnerabilities through scanning and threat intelligence.
• Risk analysis & scoring: Assess the likelihood and impact of each threat exploiting a vulnerability and compute risk scores to prioritize remediation.
• Mitigation planning & remediation: Develop action plans to remediate or mitigate high‑risk items through technical controls, policy changes and training.

Benefits

• Gain visibility into your organization’s most critical assets and weaknesses.
• Prioritize security investments based on business impact and risk tolerance.
• Ensure compliance with regulatory frameworks and industry standards.
• Create a baseline for measuring improvement over time.

A risk assessment should be conducted regularly and updated whenever you introduce new systems or major changes. It informs your incident response planning, penetration testing and ongoing monitoring efforts.

Free Resources

• NIST SP 800‑30 – The NIST Guide for Conducting Risk Assessments outlines processes for identifying, assessing and prioritizing cybersecurity risks.
• NIST Cybersecurity Framework – A flexible framework of standards and guidelines for managing cyber risk through the functions of Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond and Recover.
• CISA Cyber Resilience Review – A free, voluntary assessment from CISA that helps organizations evaluate their operational resilience and cyber risk management practices.