Cyber risk is the possibility that something could happen to the information or IT components stored in your company that would cause significant damage to your company. Risk is measured at two levels:
How badly something could hurt your business and how likely it is.
Typical examples of incidents that can harm businesses include:
The likelihood of such a damaging incident depends on the steps your organization takes to ensure and protect the storage of information and access to IT resources. Since the damage scenarios are abstract and many of the assets at risk are intangible, cyber risks are often underestimated. This makes the potential of most companies to reduce or better manage these risks through appropriate measures. For example, raising awareness among employees can lead to a more critical approach to malicious emails and prevent incidents. And with frequent and regular backups, for example, after a server failure caused by force majeure, you can return to productive everyday work much faster.
Many everyday details of your day-to-day work affect your company’s cyber risk. For example, whether:
Identify your organization’s cyber risk. Based on the results, you will know where your most important need for action is.
If you’re short on time, prioritize. Every measure reduces your cyber risk. Identify the biggest risk factors and start with them, e.g. raising awareness among your employees, updating your servers and creating regular backups.
Use reliable sources of information such as the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) as a basis for decision-making
Consider insurance against cyber risks if, for example, production downtime could quickly put your business at risk
