Risk Assessment

What Is Risk Assessment?

Risk assessment is the process of identifying, analyzing, and evaluating risks to determine their potential impact on an organization. In cybersecurity, it helps determine how threats, vulnerabilities, and exposures interact – and which risks require immediate attention.

A risk assessment provides the foundation for proactive, data-driven decision-making.

Why Risk Assessment Matters

Organizations cannot protect everything equally. Risk assessments help security teams:

Understand where the most critical risks exist
Align security controls with business priorities
Allocate resources more effectively
Meet governance and compliance requirements
Improve communication with executives and stakeholders
Support strategic planning and cyber risk reporting

Risk assessments are often required for compliance frameworks such as NIST, ISO 27001, SOC 2, and HIPAA.

How Risk Assessment Works

1. Identify Assets and Risks

Define the scope and identify the systems, data, applications, identities, and business processes to assess.

2. Identify Threats and Vulnerabilities

Determine what could go wrong, including attack vectors, misconfigurations, privilege risks, and software vulnerabilities.
See: Threat vs Risk vs Vulnerability

3. Evaluate Likelihood and Impact

Assess how likely a risk is to occur and the potential business or operational impact.

4. Determine Risk Levels

Use scoring, frameworks, or models to categorize risk severity based on defined criteria.

Develop a plan to reduce or eliminate risks through technical controls, process changes, or compensating measures.

6. Document and Report

Summarize findings and recommendations for stakeholders and compliance audiences.

How Brinqa Helps

Brinqa enhances risk assessments by delivering real-time, contextual intelligence across vulnerabilities, assets, identities, misconfigurations, and threats.

Brinqa provides:

Unified Risk Visibility

Consolidates data from dozens of security tools into one risk model.

Explainable, Business-Aligned Risk Scoring

Translates technical risks into clear, measurable business impact.

Continuous Assessment

Supports ongoing measurement beyond periodic assessments.

Remediation Orchestration

Routes prioritized risks to the right teams and tools for faster mitigation.

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