Glossary

Cyber Security Risk Register

The risks may vary but the goal does not: reducing risk through remediation or mitigation. Risk registers are not a new concept, but a cyber risk register is a specialized tool used to identify and organize the risks unique to cybersecurity. Read on to learn how you can use a cyber security enterprise risk register to collectively identify, analyze, and solve risks before they become problems, and achieve your compliance goals.

Cyber Security Risk Register

What is a Cyber Security Risk Register?

A risk register is a tool in risk management. It is used to identify potential risks in a particular project or across a company, sometimes to fulfill regulatory compliance but generally to stay on top of potential issues that can derail company objectives. As mentioned, a specialized cyber risk register tool is used to identify and organize the risks distinctive to cybersecurity. Cybersecurity is unique in its nature, covering physical, technical, and operational risks. 

A cyber risk register is a form of reporting that organizes an inventory of potential risks, logging relevant details for each that can be used for prioritizing and decision making. Each detail logged serves to highlight a difference aspect of the risk.

Why is a cyber risk register important?

Doing your due diligence means you’ll have a plan in place before risks can open you up to threats and vulnerabilities. Being organized boosts efficiency and productivity which in turn will overall be financially beneficial to your company.

Unlike other areas of business, cyber security is inherently about securing systems, networks, databases and information, ultimately through reducing the risks involved. The huge array of risks connected to cybersecurity need a high level of organization and focused proven remediation steps.

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See for yourself how the Centraleyes platform exceeds anything an old GRC
system does and eliminates the need for manual processes and spreadsheets
to give you immediate value and run a full risk assessment in less than 30 days

Learn more about Cyber Security Risk Register

What to include in a cyber risk register?

  • Risk Description: This is the risk itself, including details of how it may threaten the organization.
  • Impact: This is the result of the event occurring, a measure of the impact it will have on your organization.
  • Likelihood: This logs how likely it is for the potential event to occur. This will be key in prioritizing the remediation efforts.
  • Outcome: This measures the effect on the organization after the event occurs. This is actionable information that helps leaders understand whether they are likely to achieve what they have set out to achieve. They can determine whether that likelihood is acceptable and decide what actions are needed, if any.
  • Risk Level: Taking all factors into account, based on your risk matrix, it measures how much of a priority is any particular risk.
  • Cost: Mitigation measures and remediating risks may save money in the long run but will cost money to implement. This can evaluate both sides of the coin.
  • Mitigation actions: What are the steps to remediate or at least mitigate the risk? Creating a task for each risk will make it easier to put into action and to measure progress.
  • Roles and responsibilities: To whom is the risk assigned? Risk management is a team effort. Assigning responsibilities clarifies who needs to take care of the risk and maximizes accountability, usually producing productive results.

The Challenges of a Traditional Risk Register

Most companies have kept their risk registers in spreadsheets. This was once the best way to do it but times have moved on. Traditional risk registers suffer from human error, time wasted on input, updates are very difficult to track accurately, and since the spreadsheet is siloed from real-time events, you end up with an isolated list that isn’t working in sync with the rest of the company activities in this area. It has also been difficult to measure the multi-facets of risk simultaneously, including the financial impact, technical effect, damage to business objectives, effect on continuity, amongst others.

Using the world’s first automated cyber risk register to its full potential

When Centraleyes released platform update version 4.0, it included a one of its kind capability – an Automated Risk Register.

The new addition to the platform’s unique cyber risk management features is a state-of-the-art organizational risk register that automatically creates a set of 64 primary risks and generates both an inherent and a residual risk score, as well as the linkage to the affected assets and mitigating controls. This feature alone can save tens to hundreds of hours of manual work, when creating and maintaining a risk register. The risk register will continuously update itself based on control measurement the platform does in real time.

The 64 primary risks are based on a unique combination of the OWASP, NIST and MITRE ATT&CK framework, which include physical, adversarial and non-adversarial risks.

An additional and significant advanced attribute is the Financial Impact, which is calculated under 6 elements of loss, automatically tagging the risk with a financial attribute.

The addition of this cutting-edge new capability Automated Risk Register is another unique and proprietary feature that positions the Centraleyes platform as the leading solution for cyber risk and compliance management. 

Start Getting Value With
Centraleyes for Free

See for yourself how the Centraleyes platform exceeds anything an old GRC
system does and eliminates the need for manual processes and spreadsheets
to give you immediate value and run a full risk assessment in less than 30 days

Want to talk to Centraleyes about Cyber Security Risk Register?

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