Editor's note: The following is a sponsored blog post from Reciprocity.
Proactive IT risk management is crucial to maintain a successful business. This means implementing measures to identify and mitigate potential risks, continuously and reliably, before those risks can cause material (or worse, permanent) damage.
One way to do this is by implementing an information security compliance program. This post discusses proactive IT risk management and how information security compliance programs help keep your business safe and secure.
What Is Proactive IT Risk Management?
IT risk management enables organizations to identify, respond to, and manage risk events, and to mitigate their harm. Moreover, it helps to improve awareness of risk and the drivers of risk, to help companies minimize losses, avoid the costs associated with such events, and even achieve a competitive edge.
But to achieve these goals, traditional reactive risk management, which focuses on minimizing damage after the fact, is inadequate. Instead, you need a proactive approach that allows you to anticipate risk and plan appropriate solutions in advance.
One 2021 benchmark survey found that even in the high-risk COVID era, 65 percent of global tech companies manage risks reactively. That increases their risk exposure and leaves them vulnerable to costly data breaches.
Proactive IT risk management involves identifying current and potential risks, and acting early to mitigate them before they become actual problems. Compared to reactive IT risk management, it involves much more than simply responding to a risk. It also involves steps to prepare for risks, such as:
- Risk identification
- Risk assessment
- Risk mitigation
- Risk reporting
These activities allow organizations to understand their current IT risk posture, get a view into tomorrow's risk, and assess each risk's potential probability and impact. All that, in turn, allows a company to create IT risk management programs to minimize damage. Proactive IT risk management also helps organizations, their executives and their board of directors to deal with new challenges, make informed business decisions, drive the profitability of business units, and create greater value for stakeholders.
Examples of Proactive IT Risk Management
Your organization's proactive IT risk management program can help you effectively deal with many kinds of risk and minimize the potential for damage from each. Automation capabilities and integrated risk management tools such as the Reciprocity ROAR Platform can help track and manage these activities.
Cybersecurity Risk
If your organization functions in an expanding threat landscape, you need to be proactive about cybersecurity risk management. This means implementing strong internal controls to prevent cyberattacks and data breaches in addition to implementing response strategies to deal with events that have or may have already occurred.
Control examples include:
- Implement two-factor authentication (2FA) to strengthen access controls and prevent unauthorized access;
- Train employees on risk and security awareness and hygiene;
- Deploy user behavior analytics (UBA) and security information and event management (SIEM) systems to find and address security "red flags;"
- Install firewalls, antivirus software, and endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools to secure enterprise resources from threat actors;
- Continuously monitor the IT ecosystem to detect suspicious activities;
- Leverage threat intelligence to identify, assess, and address current and emerging threats.
Operational IT Risk
Operational risk is the potential for loss during day-to-day business activities resulting from inadequate or failed business processes, people, or systems. To prevent such risks and to minimize their impact, it's crucial to implement proactive strategies to achieve business goals, including:
- Perform regular risk assessments to identify and address new risks;
- Develop key risk indicators to identify potential risks and assess real-time impacts;
- Test processes to find risk areas that may lead to costly disruptions;
- Implement oversight to strengthen risk management through formal monitoring programs or tools.
Physical Risk
Physical risks could not only disrupt operations but also result in costly fines, legal action, and reputational damage to your organization. To avoid such situations, it's critical to implement proactive physical risk management controls, such as:
- Provide safety equipment to employees such as PPE (personal protective equipment);
- Install smoke/gas detectors, fire alarms, and fire protection systems;
- Insulate surfaces that may be prone to temperature extremes;
- Train employees to recognize, avoid, and report physical hazards;
- Perform regular safety inspections of the physical premises;
- Conduct safety drills to boost employees' safety awareness.
Regulatory Risk
For many industries, the regulatory landscape evolves at a fast pace. To maintain regulatory compliance, a proactive information security compliance management program is crucial. This program should include:
- Documented standards and procedures;
- Strong governance and assurance activities to assess compliance and find gaps;
- Clear and regular communication throughout the organization;
- Employee training;
- Reporting tools for evaluating non-compliance risk and providing recommendations for improvement.
Why Are InfoSec Compliance Programs Important for Organizations?
A formal information security compliance program gives organizations the structure and discipline to meet legal, regulatory and contractual requirements for protecting assets (e.g., systems, data) while conducting business. In addition to assuring compliance, the program reduces the likelihood of fines or penalties and protects the company's reputation. As a result, it can help to manage risk proactively and support the organization's goals, including minimizing financial losses.
Unfortunately, many organizations still have a reactive compliance program; something more like a “check-the-box” approach, involving:
- Reviewing an audit checklist;
- Scheduling an audit;
- Updating policies and procedures based on the audit's result;
- Repeating the process on a defined schedule.
The program only focuses on investigating and responding to control failures and implementing post-event remediations.
Although such programs seem more straightforward and cheaper, they can end up increasing your financial, legal, reputational and other risks. They also reduce transparency and increase the costs of non-compliance and risk management in the long run.
You need to evolve your compliance strategy to avoid these issues. Strengthen information security compliance and IT risk management with a proactive compliance program.
How Proactive InfoSec Compliance Programs Help with IT Risk Management
A proactive information security compliance approach means anticipating compliance risk and then implementing risk mitigation strategies based on your risk appetite.
Unlike reactive approaches, the proactive approach doesn't wait for an external audit to uncover problems. Instead, it enables you to discover issues as or before they occur and implement robust controls to mitigate their potentially damaging impact.
It will also allow you to capture and monitor risk and compliance data. This data enables you to observe emerging risk management trends and patterns, so you can correct existing and potential issues.
Most proactive compliance programs include these essential practices:
- Documented critical policies and procedures;
- Risk management practices appropriate to the organization's size and risk profile;
- Identification of risk factors, suitable remediation actions, and prevention controls based on risk appetite;
- Mechanisms to control violations and implement relevant interventions;
- Training employees on appropriate risk-averse behaviors and procedures.
How Reciprocity ROAR Platform Can Help You Proactively Manage IT Risk
There are many points to consider when choosing a compliance management tool. Visibility is crucial for proactive IT risk and information security compliance management.
The Reciprocity® ROAR Platform, which underpins Reciprocity ZenRisk and ZenComply, gives you the ability to see, understand and take action on your IT and cyber risks.
With a unified, real-time view of risk and compliance—framed around your business priorities—you'll have the contextual insight needed to easily and clearly communicate with key stakeholders to make smart, strategic decisions that will protect your enterprise, systems and data, earning the trust of your customers, partners and employees.
Schedule a demo to know how Reciprocity ROAR can help strengthen your IT risk management program.