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How To Do A Cybersecurity Assessment?

Why Doing A Cybersecurity Assessment Is Important?
As the world has become increasingly digitalized many corporate organizations have a huge threat of cyber attacks that can damage the normal functioning of their businesses. It can be seen on news that various businesses have suffered huge losses from these attackers and have paid a large amount of money to make it up for the loss. The organizations that are at a major threat from these attackers are small organizations. 43% of these outside attackers attack the systems of the small scale organizations. These attacks have become extremely popular as can be proved by the study conducted by the University of Maryland that found out that after every 39 seconds a system with the access to internet is at the risk of being attacked by an attacker.
The consequences of cyber attacks are already well known. The expenses following cybercrime can rise up to $6 trillion by the year 2021 as estimated by the experts. As small businesses have the highest threat, it is important as a small business to ensure your business processes, systems and networks are all safe and secure from these attackers. This makes the assessment extremely important.
What is Cyber Security Assessment?
Cybersecurity assessment is assessing, analyzing and knowing your data, devices, systems, processes, and networks to learn how they could be protected from the attackers and what level of safety and protection does the current system already offers. This involves analyzing how and in what ways a hacker could get the access to your system if he does get the access how can you retrieve the data, how likely your information is to be accessed by the outside attackers or how vulnerable you are as an organization, and how these attacks can be mitigated or avoided?
While it is possible to do your analysis yourself there are various companies in the market that charge a fee to do the assessment for you. Some industries require you to get your assessment done by a particular, certified, and reliable organization so you need to keep that in mind before making any arrangements. If your organization falls in the industry that requires a mandatory assessment from a particular entity then it is obligatory on you to get it done from the desired entity. It is also suggested that these small businesses get the assessment done one time in two years to ensure the safety of their businesses.

How To Do Cyber Security Assessment?
The following guidelines and tips can be used to do the assessment successfully:
* Collect all the relevant information: The first and the most important step are to know your business, processes, networks, and systems thoroughly. If you are familiar with your system then you can conduct the assessment yourself. However, if you are not familiar with your system you need to get in touch with the IT specialist to help and assist you in the process. Collecting the information means learning about the capacity of your system and knowing how well it already is in keeping off the attackers, and in what ways it lacks security from these attacks. It is important to do carry out this step properly because if you will try to save costs by not having the best team and resources in hand then you will eventually face a high expenditure in the long run as a result of the damage done by these attackers.
* System Mapping: Once the collection of important information is done the second step is to find out problems and deficiencies that already exist in your system. This involves finding out all the people who have access to the system and how are they using the information derived from the system. Once the deficiencies have been pointed out you need to rate them out on the basis of how big of a problem they are,what can be done to resolve the problem and what is already been done in this regard? System mapping involves considering all the devices that are connected to your system and can provide unauthorized access to your system for example cell phones, laptops, printers, and other connecting devices.
* Conduct penetration testing of your networks, applications, devices, and/or people to demonstrate the security level of your key systems and infrastructure.
* Checking The Human Errors: A lot of data breaches are a result of the negligence of the employees who haphazardly and unintentionally click on links, files and phishing emails that are harmful to your system. It is for this reason training the employees in Cybersecurity are extremely important to avoid the unauthorized access resulting from human negligence. The training includes giving them important tips to avoid the suspected phishing emails and to differ between the real and the fraudulent emails. There are various tools available on the internet that help you to find out if it is easy for the attackers to your system or not, for example, phishing simulator and Pentest tools.
* A thorough analysis of the risks, how likely it is for the risk to occur and how would it impact the organization: In this step ,you list down all the ways a potential attacker can attack your system whether it is malicious or not malicious and the likelihood of those attacks. One easy way of doing this is by following the template of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Guide for Conducting Risk Assessments. The document lists down all kinds of potential risks that a system can be exposed to and it can be very helpful in the assessment process.
Conclusion
Cybersecurity assessment is extremely important to ensure the safety of your system from the external attackers and in many industries is a mandatory practice that every business must do once in two years. The assessment can either be done by the company itself or by taking the help and assistance of an external entity. If you decide to do it yourself you might face a lot of problems in getting familiar with the process and it can be time- consuming. Taking the help of an external entity can be a faster and more reliable process.

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