CIS RAM guided risk management | Appropriate execution and assessment of CIS Controls| Reasonable Due Care protection techniques
Risk and Compliance
Why Opt for a Risk Assessment Service?
As an industry-leading cybersecurity company, Di8it’s risk assessment service serves as a strong foundation to establish a better understanding of your organization’s security and threat environment.
The reason behind Di8it’s reliability and consistency is the perfect combination of seasoned veterans and market-leading tools like CIS RAM that enable us to perform clinical risk assessments. We use every weapon in our arsenal to help you examine the fundamental components of your company’s cybersecurity environment.
Our assessment helps identify vulnerabilities and the impact those threats could have. It helps realize the damage potential of an actual attack and helps determine the best plan of action for effective remediation and to increase efficiencies in the relevant areas.
What is Reasonable Security?
Reasonable security refers to measures that organizations take to ensure that risks are within reasonable levels and acceptable to the stakeholders involved.
For cyber security services, concepts such as “due care” and “reasonable safeguards” are widely used by legislators and regulators to determine and ensure that organizations were following standard security protocols. In case you are breached and the case goes through litigation, establishing that your organization was not complacent and demonstrated “due care” while implementing sufficient security controls and safeguards to prevent breaches and kept risk within reasonable parameters.
Using market-leading CIS RAM helps us in assessing credible risks to your cybersecurity, no matter how insignificant they may seem. We then implement proper security patches and fixes as needed and make sure your data is secure. The CIS RAM methodology ensures that in case of breaches, the organization did have adequate protective and security measures in place and were not complacent.
Why CIS RAM (Risk Assessment Methodology)?
CIS RAM (Center for Internet Security® Risk Assessment Methodology) is cybersecurity, risk-assessment method (based on Duty of Care Risk Analysis) that supplements established standards such as ISO 270051, OCTAVE, RISK IT3, and NIST Special Publications 800-302. This framework, while working as a guideline for risk assessments, ensures that the organization’s information security controls are compliant with modern regulatory standards, helping the organization strike a balance between security and functionality.
The Center for Internet Security® is a nonprofit entity that works with the global IT community to develop and establish cybersecurity benchmarks and best practices to help ensure that private and public organizations have adequate protection against cyber-attacks. With tools such as CIS RAM, CIS Controls™, and CIS Benchmarks™, they aim to establish a shield that protects organizations from even the most pervasive attacks.
The CIS RAM Helps You Apply the Right Amount of Security Risk analysis helps shape and customize controls to address the internal and external challenges that organizations face.The CIS RAM enables you to apply just the right amount of security — not too much, not too little — striking a balance between keeping you safe and ensuring your organization can conduct business as usual.
Our Methodology
Our progressive approach towards risk assessment and use state of the art CIS RAM Express risk assessments procedures revolves around the following activities:
- Identify Asset
- Developing the Risk Assessment
- Modeling the Risks
- Evaluating the Risks
- Recommending Safeguards
- Evaluation
- Reporting
The first step is to identify the assets on the organization’s network such as client contact info, servers, confidential documents, trading methods, and the software components in use. Di8it partners with the client’s IT and security team to list down all the crucial assets of the company. We then define a standard to identify the importance of each company asset, keeping in mind its monetary value, legal standing, and its importance in the smooth functioning of the organization, among other criteria. Once approved by the client, we then use this standard, as part of the risk assessment security policy, to classify assets as critical, major, or minor. The risk assessment’s scope is then scaled to include only those assets that the client deems necessary. We then start identifying how these assets can be compromised, such as by interference, interception, and impersonation and list down the threats and vulnerabilities.
Di8it uses CIS RAM to identify these threats and vulnerabilities by analyzing vendor data and audit reports, conducting penetration testing, and through automated vulnerability scanning tools. We then single out vulnerabilities that are in the scope of our risk assessment.
Establish and define the criteria for evaluating and accepting risk.
This step involves evaluating the effect of the currently implemented CIS Controls that could effectively shield the organization from foreseeable future threats. We assess existing and planned controls to minimize the possibility of a vulnerability being exploited. Di8it’s security consultants also assess the probability and impact of an attack on identified weaknesses, as well as the likelihood of it being targeted, based on the type of the vulnerability, the motivation and skill level of the attacker, and effectiveness of existing controls. We also analyze what the asset is being used for, and its dependencies, its value, and its sensitivity within the organization.
At this stage, we determine the possibility and effect of any security breach that might occur to ascertain a risk score. Looking at the overall risks involved, we decide if they are acceptable for the company or not. Depending on the severity of the attack, threats are ranked as high, medium, or low. We then use a risk-level matrix to calculate the overall risk. The level of risk for each threat is determined through the following factors:
- The possibility of the threat exploiting the vulnerability and its impact
- An estimate of the cost of each occurrence
- Checking if the security controls put in place are reasonable enough to mitigate or eliminate the risk entirely
After the evaluation, we use our findings, as well as the risk-level matrix prepared earlier to ascertain threat severity and then determine the minimum remedial actions needed to mitigate those risks. The Di8it team then proposes those recommended CIS controls and safeguards to the client.
We then evaluate the recommended safeguards for any resulting unacceptable risks. This helps in securing the client’s infrastructure effectively.
We then create a risk management report that highlights the vulnerabilities and exploits found during the risk assessment, as well as the recommended safeguards. We also detail what assets are at risk and what impact an attack could have. The report is designed to help the management make key security decisions and also ensures that the in-house security team has access to all necessary information about each vulnerability.