Risk Mitigation Strategies for Cybersecurity

As technology evolves, more innovative digital solutions emerge, and more of our data finds its way online, an increase in the number of cyber threats is inevitable. Worse still, as cyber attacks increase in sophistication and severity – as well as in number – it becomes more difficult and less feasible for organisations to address each threat as it arises. Instead, companies must take a more proactive approach to cybersecurity and develop cyber risk mitigation strategies to protect themselves from the cyber threats they face. 

In this post, we explore the concept of cyber risk mitigation and detail six fundamental threat mitigating strategies to better protect your company from cyber attacks.  

What is Cybersecurity Risk Mitigation? 

Cybersecurity risk mitigation is the process of identifying, assessing, and preventing cyber threats to reduce an organisation’s overall risk exposure. Risk mitigation strategies can roughly be divided into three categories:  

• Prevention: actions designed to prevent the occurrence of risk factors 

• Detection: actions and solutions designed to detect cyber threats  

• Mitigation: actions intended to minimise the likelihood and/or severity of cyber threats  

Subsequently, cybersecurity risk mitigation strategies are documented procedures that detail a company’s proposed solution for reducing its overall cyber risk exposure. As your company faces an ever-growing range of cyber risks, you must develop and implement several mitigation strategies to address as many risk factors as possible.  

6 Cybersecurity Risk Mitigation Strategies 

Let’s look at six of the most important risk mitigation strategies a company should implement to best strengthen its cyber security posture.  

Conduct a Cyber Risk Assessment 

A fundamental step in all cybersecurity risk mitigation strategies is identifying your organisation’s risks. Consequently, conducting a cybersecurity risk assessment is an essential threat mitigation strategy, as it will uncover and highlight your IT security gaps and provide insight into how to address them.  

The cyber risk assessment process typically involves:  

• Identification: cataloguing your company’s data, assets, and systems and the threats each faces.  

• Assessment: determining the likelihood of each risk being realised and its severity were it to occur. This results in each threat being assigned a risk rating of “low”, “medium”, or “high”.  

• Prioritisation: where security teams decide which identified risks must be mitigated first. Mitigating all risks may be a lengthy process – and may not even be feasible or desirable – so prioritising cyber threats allows you to mitigate the most impactful risks, before dedicating time and resources to those less severe.   

After completing your cyber risk assessment, you can begin implementing the appropriate risk mitigation policies and controls to best strengthen your cybersecurity posture. 

Establish Network Access Controls 

Network access controls are security measures that manage who can access your network and the assets and data within. Additionally, network access controls govern where an individual can go within your network and, subsequently, the data and systems they’re permitted to access. Because they help limit the likelihood and severity of data breaches, as well as reduce the likelihood of insider threats, implementing network controls is one of the most important and effective risk mitigation strategies. 

Common methods of network access control include:    

• Strong authentication: robust methods for individuals to verify their identity before being granted access to IT infrastructure. This could include enforcing a strong password policy, i.e., requiring passwords to be a certain length and include non-alphanumeric characters, e.g., $,#, etc. This could also involve implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA), with which an individual must confirm their identity in multiple ways, e.g., a PIN code or access card in addition to login credentials. 

• Network segmentation: this involves dividing a network into subnetworks, or segments, so critical data and systems are separated from internet-facing parts of your IT infrastructure. This limits the lateral movement of malicious attackers in the event of a security breach and, subsequently,  helps contain the potential impact of a cyber attack. Plus, as you can apply granular access controls to each segment, users need only access to those they work in, reducing insider risk.  

• Role-based access control (RBAC): with RBAC, users are assigned roles according to their position and responsibilities within the company, and their network access is based on said role.  

• Zero trust: a dynamic approach to network access that’s guided by the principle of “never trust, always verify”, continuously forcing users to re-verify their identity regardless of how recently they accessed the network – or even if they’re already inside it. Zero trust network access also adheres to the principle of least privilege, granting users the minimum access privileges necessary to carry out their responsibilities, thereby reducing the risk of data breaches and insider threats.  

Continuously monitor your IT infrastructure 

It’s not enough to simply implement the right cyber risk mitigation strategies and expect these measures will be effective – you must continuously monitor your network to ensure their efficacy. This allows you to determine how well the policies and controls you put in place mitigate their associated risk factors, or if you need to adapt your mitigating strategies.  

Just as importantly, continuous monitoring tools allow your security teams to identify new cyber threats and devise mitigation strategies for them, while keeping track of existing risk factors to observe if they increase in likelihood and/or severity.  

Create an incident response plan (IRP) 

An incident response plan (IRP) is a structured cyber threat mitigation strategy that outlines how your company will respond to data breaches and other cybersecurity incidents. Developing a comprehensive IRP ensures security teams, IT, operations, individual business units, and your organisation, in general, know the process and their specific responsibilities in the event of a cyber attack. Developing an IRP is a proactive approach to cyber threat mitigation, as it allows your company to have the appropriate personnel, resources, and procedures in place in anticipation of a security breach – instead of scrambling to react to cyber attacks. 

A good incident response plan will include:  

• Roles and responsibilities: the personnel involved in incident response and what they’re to do in the event of a security incident 

• Incident categorisation: the identification and assessment of likely incidents and their severity, as determined by your cyber risk assessments  

• Incident detection and alerting: how, i.e., the systems and tools, security incidents are detected and reported 

• Response actions: the immediate actions to be taken when an incident occurs 

• Containment and mitigation: how the incident is to be contained and the measures in place for its mitigation 

• Communication: when and how the security incident should be reported and to whom, i.e., management and other stakeholders, investors, the general public, etc. This also includes accounting for any legal requirements regarding communication, e.g., how soon after a security breach you’re obliged to report it, as per industry regulations.  

• Recovery: restoring any affected systems and data 

An essential part of an IRP is the cyber incident report that provides a comprehensive overview of the security event, including its potential causes and origin, timeline, impact, carried out response actions, and current status. By allowing your company to learn from the security breach, you can adapt and strengthen your cyber risk mitigation strategies accordingly and prevent similar or related incidents going forward.  

Examine your company’s physical security measures 

Although your organisation’s physical security measures might appear to fall outside the realm of cyber risk mitigation strategies, they’re actually a crucial part of your overall cyber security posture. By preventing unauthorised physical access to your premises, you reduce the risk of your digital assets and data being stolen, damaged, or otherwise compromised.  

This could include a criminal stealing hardware containing sensitive data or damaging vital infrastructure that severely impacts your business continuity. Similarly, strong physical security measures limit insider risk by restricting which employees have access to critical data and systems.   

Your company’s physical security measures could include  

• Physical access control: as well as governing who can access your premises, through key cards, PINs and biometric readers (eye, facial, and fingerprint scanners, voice recognition, etc.), you can control who can enter specific areas or rooms. 

• Security cameras: to monitor events on your premises 

• Alarm systems: typically featuring motion sensors, these alert building security to individuals gaining authorised access to the premises or areas within it 

• Security awareness training: by teaching staff to be more vigilant and aware of how their actions can compromise security, you’ll strengthen both your physical and cyber security efforts.  

Minimise Your Attack Surface 

Your attack surface refers to the combination of points of vulnerabilities – known as attack vectors – within your IT infrastructure that malicious actors could use to access sensitive data and assets. Cyber risk mitigating strategies are mainly concerned with your digital attack surface,  i.e., assets accessible through the internet, such as applications, databases, web domains, etc. However, it’s important to consider your physical attack surface: vulnerabilities in equipment and hardware that a criminal could exploit with access to your company’s premises. 

By minimising your attack surface, you reduce the possible methods by which malicious actors can launch a cyber attack against you, which reduces your risk exposure.  

Ways of minimising your attack surface include:  

• Establishing a patch management strategy: unpatched software is one of cybercriminals’ most common attack vectors. By regularly seeking out the latest updates and fixes for installed software, you patch up vulnerabilities that could have been used to breach your network.  

• Install anti-malware solutions: this prevents devices and, subsequently, your network from being infected with viruses, ransomware, Trojans, and other malware. This helps avoid direct damage or compromise to your data and assets or prevents the means for a cybercriminal to further their plan to gain access to your network later.  

• Manage third-party risk: although using third-party services, including software, is inevitable in the modern business landscape, each additional vendor increases the size of your attack service. By implementing vendor risk mitigation strategies, you can avoid cyber threats caused by suppliers or software vendors with poor security practices.   

• Reduce instances of shadow IT: users installing software and systems without their IT department’s prior knowledge or consent, i.e., shadow IT, increases cyber risk in two ways. Firstly, adding applications increases the size of your attack surface and, more importantly, as IT is unaware of them, they won’t be aware of their vulnerabilities or if they opened the door for a breach – until it’s too late. Restricting the use of unauthorised software helps limit your organisation’s attack surface.  

How RiskXchange Helps You Mitigate Cybersecurity Risk 

By determining your attack surface’s true size and complexity, RiskXchange will help you identify the most severe cyber risks your organisation faces. This puts us in a prime position to devise risk mitigation strategies to best strengthen your company’s cybersecurity posture and reduce your overall risk exposure.   

Contact us to schedule your free trial today. 

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