Identify What's Putting Your Business at Risk with Security Assessments

Cyber threats are on the rise because of the rapid evolution rate attackers are sustaining each year. As they morph, new vulnerabilities are found, and it's paramount that businesses have a firm standard for cybersecurity practices. The best way to prepare? Security Assessments. This tactic, if performed a reoccurring intervals, provides a thorough scan of current vulnerabilities, if any, that could severely harm your business once exploited. It may seem small, but without visibility into your pitfalls, your chance of attack skyrockets. Are you as safe as you think? 

You guessed it, with the onset of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the past few years, opportunities for vulnerabilities are almost a guarantee, not just a possibility.  However, IT and security assessments help businesses to ensure that as the cyber landscape continues to evolve and the threat level continues to rise, they are well equipped to withstand whatever threats attempt to penetrate the environment. 

What is a security assessment?

A security assessment focuses on identifying, assessing, and implementing key security controls in applications. The main goal of a security assessment is to proactively identify and mitigate security flaws and vulnerabilities present in an organization's array of applications. By adopting the perspective of a potential attacker, IT professionals can verify the proper implementation of security controls, ensure their optimal functionality, and achieve the intended security outcomes.

You Should Conduct a Security Assessment If You: 

• Want to update or strengthen your security policies and procedures 
• Want to identify budgeting or training needs
• Want to ensure nothing is weakening your cyber security efforts
• Haven't done so in 2 or more years 

While a security assessment can provide crucial insight into your IT environment, it isn't a fix-all solution. If you are already aware of the security issues in your environment, it would be best to speak with an IT consultant to determine what solution would support your business the best.

Benefits of a Security Assessment 

Much like backups, security assessments need to happen on a routine basis. Whether you know which security assessment needs to be performed for your business or you seek the help of a thorough IT consultant to determine that for you, maintaining a security assessment schedule can benefit your business in a wide variety of ways, such as;

Staying Ahead of Security Threat Trends 

New cyber threats are developed every day. The best way to get in front of these threats is to ensure that your software and applications are up to date, your cyber security enforcements are well prepared for what could come, and your environment is free of easily exploitable weaknesses that would otherwise remain undetected without a security assessment. 

Keeping Up with Remote and In-Person Workforce Demands

No one could have predicted that a global pandemic would usher in the dependence on remote work as it did. No one could have predicted its rise in popularity even after the pandemic's peak. Remote workforce changes are bound to happen as life changes. This is why Employee Security Awareness Training is becoming equally as important as security assessments in ensuring a secure IT environment. The last thing you want is for your business to be an easy target for equally evolving threats to the remote workforce.

Meeting Compliance Requirements

In some industries, there are tight compliance requirements and restrictions when it comes to the IT environment. For others, there's no such thing. Organizations lose an average of $4 million in revenue due to a single non-compliance event. A security assessment helps you to align your business with compliance requirements which can save your business' time, money, and reputation.

The best way to secure this compliance is by partnering with a CMMC-AB Registered Provider Organization (RPO) that runs security assessments. This way, you're working with an organization that already knows what to look for in your environment and how to ensure you meet the compliance requirements in your industry.

Lifecycle Management 

With the use of several different programs, applications, and software, it can be hard to keep track of what expires and when. Security assessments help you to take a deep dive into your environment so you can catch these expirations before they cause any disruptions or bottlenecks in your day-to-day activities. Managing the lifecycle of your applications ensures your system is running smoothly and any defenses in place through your applications, software, or programs are providing around-the-clock security.

With ransomware, viruses, and other malicious software preying on weak entry points, application whitelisting plays a huge role in the overall lifecycle management of your environment. 

Cloud Migrations 

There's a continual increase in cyber-attacks targeted toward the cloud. While there are many benefits to transitioning to the cloud from a traditional IT environment, it's still important to ensure your cloud environment is secure. Running a security assessment aids with migration to the cloud, helping you to identify any additional tools that are needed to support security for your environment.

Roadmap for Operational Efficiency 

Not many IT consultants offer a full-blown blueprint of your IT environment. With it, however, you can gain a birds-eye-view of your environment to ensure operational efficiency in every corner. Here at Centre Technologies, we provide this to every customer during the onboarding of our Secure Managed Services. 

How Do I get a Security Assessment?

Luckily, a thorough scan of your environment is as simple as contacting our IT consultants here at Centre Technologies. We provide a full security assessment with full documentation that gives detailed insight into what problems exist and how to fix them.

We also provide a solution for those who want to skip the details and get to the action with our simplified IT security and infrastructure assessment that focuses strictly on action items. Ready to take the first step towards a secured environment? Contact us today!