Risk Intelligence monitoring - scans and statistics

Risk assessment and management software tools

Risk assessment software tools help MSPs and IT professionals provide meaningful and measurable steps to identify, assess, and eliminate data security risks. No motivator provides a greater incentive than money — specifically, the financial loss an organization stands to incur if it suffers a breach, data loss, or other event brought on by a risk that went unidentified, unmitigated, or ignored.

Trends for monitoring credit card risk

The move toward risk management software

The risk of data breaches facing businesses today has never been higher, with nearly 50% of organizations suffering at least one security event in the past 12 months. Companies have taken notice by increasing their attention to risk assessment software tools for safeguarding workforce data that is relevant to business delivery.

MSPs who want to compete in today’s marketplace need to have the tools that directly address the wide variety of security risks facing enterprise data.

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Assessing financial implications of risk

One of the primary challenges facing MSPs is convincing your clients’ accountants, CFOs, and other financial decision-makers about the time-critical nature of essential infrastructure protection and the need to act now.

The best way of imparting that important message is to explain the company’s exposure to risk in terms of dollars. And no risk assessment tool conveys that message more clearly than Risk Intelligence from N‑able.

Risk Intelligence assigns concrete dollar amounts to a company’s data sensitivity, making it much easier to build a business case in support of a multi-layered data security approach.

Some of the features of N‑able Risk Intelligence software include:

  • Risk assessments illustrated in dollar-based figures
  • Discovery of sensitive data
  • Deep system scans for hidden security vulnerabilities
  • Risk trending reports
  • Discovery and alerts for inappropriate data access
  • PCI compliance scans

Companies typically amass huge amounts of sensitive data, which means that a risk assessment software tool such as Risk Intelligence is vital to providing actionable steps to sensitive data protection and vulnerability reduction.

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Risk Intelligence software tools from N‑able

Risk Intelligence focuses on three types of essential threats: threats resulting from inappropriate access permissions, sensitive data, and general vulnerabilities. Workplace devices — such as PCs, Macs, and even mobile devices — are scanned at a deep level to reveal current and potential vulnerabilities. The information collected from this data breach risk scan is balanced and prioritized to arrive at a color-coded, dollar-based risk assessment report that shows, down to the dollar, the financial consequences that a data breach can inflict on the organization.

Information is categorized into meaningful categories such as the unprotected data summaryvulnerability summaryunprotected data details and statistics, and vulnerability by vendor details. The report also provides drill-downs that allow you to obtain granular information about the suggested fixes for improving a company’s risk level.

Risk Intelligence also provides an eye to the future by using risk-trend reports to identify and investigate emerging trends in your workplace. If these trends are assessed to be workforce risks, proactive mitigation can be performed before the full impact of the risks are realized. Risk-trend reports also enable you to assess the impact of security strategies and policies.

Cyber Insurance Risk Monitoring

Software tools for a layered security strategy

Risk Intelligence provides you with the first step in executing a comprehensive layered security strategy. Once you’ve assessed a company’s data security risks, you can develop a plan that includes proactive, detective, and reactive security measures, including:

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Frequently asked questions

What is risk analysis?

What is risk analysis?

Risk assessment makes an organization a better place to work, a more secure place to collaborate and achieve enterprise goals, and a safer partner with which to join forces and conduct business. Risk assessment achieves these objectives by determining the likelihood and consequences of risk events if they occur in an organization.

Typically, these assessments take into account how an event can impact a company financially, affect schedules, and delay performance objectives and goals. The results of this evaluation are used to take actionable steps that protect organizations from the relentless and evolving cyberthreats on today’s dynamic attack landscape.

What kind of risks do businesses face?

What kind of risks do businesses face?

Risks run the gamut from physical security vulnerabilities and gaps in security operations to holes that set the stage for data breaches, fraud, noncompliance with regulatory and federal standards (such as HIPAA, PCI, SOX, DSS, FISMA, DIACAP, STIGs, PPSM, CCRI, and NERC-CIP), and everything in between. The realistic goal of risk assessment is to promote the overall data security of an organization by limiting or reducing all of these vulnerabilities to a manageable level.

MSPs must identify and plug leaks in a company’s infrastructure before they turn into floods that can ruin company finances, damage its reputation, and place the company on the front pages along with Sony, Anthem, LinkedIn, and other victims of serious data breaches.

The purpose of IT risk assessment

The purpose of IT risk assessment

Assessing risks and potential threats is an important part of running any organization, but risk assessment is especially important for IT departments that have control over networks and data. The purpose of IT risk assessment is to help IT professionals identify any events that could negatively affect their organization.

Performing an IT risk assessment

Performing an IT risk assessment

IT risk assessments are the next step after performing a business impact analysis (BIA). Once you’ve performed a BIA on your organization and have analyzed critical business functions and identified the impact a loss of those functions could have on your organization, you can begin your IT risk assessment.

The first thing you should do when performing a risk assessment is gather information about possible threats to your organization. This can include:

  • System-related information, such as information about hardware, software, and data
  • Business-related information, such as company records, experience of vendors doing business with the firm, and experience of key stakeholder organizations
  • Natural-related information, such as national weather service historical data and U.S geological survey maps

Next, you should identify any threats that could affect your organization based on your list. Common threat sources include natural threats, such as floods and earthquakes; human threats, such as inadvertent data entry; and, environmental threats, such as long-term power failure and pollution. Once you’ve identified potential threats, you can assess weaknesses in your IT system that could allow these potential threats to turn into disasters.

After assessing threats and weaknesses, the next step is to perform a risk analysis that will tell you the likelihood one of these events will occur and the severity of its consequences.

N‑able Risk Intelligence

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