Identifying Assets and Threats

Identifying Assets

Effective risk management starts with a clear understanding of your assets. Assets can be anything of value to your organization, from physical property to digital data.

Asset Inventory

Begin by creating a comprehensive inventory of all your assets. This includes tangible assets like buildings and equipment, as well as intangible assets such as customer data, intellectual property, and brand reputation. Maintain and update this inventory regularly to reflect changes in your organization.

Asset Analysis

Assign a value to each asset in your inventory, classifying them based on their criticality and sensitivity. This analysis helps prioritize asset protection efforts, as critical assets require higher levels of protection.

Identifying Threats

Once you've identified your assets, the next step in effective risk management is identifying potential threats that could harm those assets.

Threat Assessment

Consider all possible scenarios that could harm your assets, from external threats like hurricanes or hackers to internal threats like data breaches due to employee negligence or intellectual property theft. Continue to monitor emerging and evolving threats to ensure the continued effectiveness of risk management strategies.

Risk Profiling and Impact Analysis

Create a risk profile for each identified threat, including the likelihood of occurrence and the severity of impact. When assessing potential impact, consider the financial, operational, and reputational consequences. Use these insights to help choose which risk management strategies to employ.

Risk Matrix

Create a visual representation based on the risk profile for simplified future reference. Below is an example risk matrix; notice how it quantifies risk. Likelihood and consequence are each assigned values 1 through 5, resulting in a 1 to 25 scale of risk. The range of the scale can be adjusted by increasing or decreasing the assigned maximum value for each factor.