Certified? Congratulations! Now What?
Why you need Risk Management
Now that you have your SOC 2, ISO 27001 certification, or if you’re maintaining any control requirements in your organization, you can improve your performance and better protect your assets with a risk-first approach.
Your knowledge, understanding, and prioritization of the types of risk that impact your organization, and where, is the real key to a successful, ongoing, compliance and/or security program.
I will even go so far as to say that well-managed risk can drive success in the business. After all, strategic risk decisions create agile business platforms.
Here are some important questions to consider for how risk and risk management can impact your business.
What are your controls accomplishing?
A primary role of security is the protection of the company's assets. If your controls are not tied to an asset and a risk, then you can quickly qualify their value. Is the cost of maintaining a control, where there is either little or no risk to the business, or to the core business assets, worth your time and money? Conversely, are you spending enough to protect the assets that are most valuable to your business?
How do you build your governance principles?
Governance principles certainly go beyond risk to help shape the operational culture of an organization, however, from a security perspective, the processes that sit under your governance principles can be valued based on impact to the organization. These are the processes that enable your organization to do business with little to no downtime, without being hacked without being compromised either deliberately or inadvertently.
How do you reduce uncertainty?
Uncertainty in any form is bad for business - again it speaks to customer confidence and brand reputation. Understanding the internal and external aspects of your business is an integral part of knowing how to protect it. The more knowledge you have about such factors, the lesser the threat posed by uncertainty to your business, which is where a thorough risk analysis can be invaluable.
Unexpected events arising from any of these areas can be damaging to your business. While you cannot entirely eliminate risk, being forewarned and forearmed is the main objective.
Again, the business profits here from risk management by building customer confidence in the safety and efficiency of your product offering.
How do you plan and change plans (quickly)?
Success in business requires ongoing planning and the ability to move and adapt quickly. If you ignore risk management entirely, everything that you do will carry with it a high chance of failure. Failing to identify the risks involved with doing business may quickly lead to failure. Risk management helps you identify your single points of failure and your areas of greatest risk exposure, which should equally minimize any likelihood of failure or attack.
How can you reduce expenses and losses?
The (obvious) final point is that risk management should reduce both expense and loss. It will enable you to eliminate costly processes that are not advancing or protecting the business; help maintain productivity;
AND one final point that is often overlooked, effective risk management will help build customer loyalty, even in the darkest of times. Today, it’s more a question of ‘when’ not ‘if’ the worst will happen. Your company's preparedness and ability to respond, repair and continue to do business could be the difference maker.
Governance, Risk, and Compliance do rely on each other, but at C1Risk, we always recommend a risk-first approach. It’s one step to get that compliance certification. It’s a whole other set of processes that are required to maintain it. It’s ongoing, requires continuous monitoring and it’s a lifeline for your business.
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About Us...
C1Risk offers subscription-based Software and Support Services that are specifically designed for small to mid-size organizations
Any size business can now take advantage of our subscription service to provide affordable access to cybersecurity management. When you subscribe to the C1Risk platform, you can build a risk-first cybersecurity program; track and value your assets, identify your risks, build your governance and compliance requirements and manage any issues or incidents in real-time on our fully automated, Rest API integrated platform.