Cyber risk assessments

There are cyber security firms who can provide you with a cyber risk assessment. They can look for vulnerabilities in your system through physical attacks, i.e. can a stranger walk in off the street and get into the office as well as penetration tests…these can be internal or external.  

An internal attack could be if someone was in the building, say in a meeting room, could they simply plug their laptop into the network and gain unauthorised access to your system?

External testing would be where attempts are made to access your network from outside the physical building. This could be through a weak security measure on the company website or through the online service/ cloud server that employees normally use when working remotely to allow genuine access to their office systems.

An alternative to employing the services of a cyber consultant would be to conduct your own cyber risk assessment. There are some tools available online that allow you to run some of your own vulnerability tests. 

If you do look to carry out your own cyber risk assessment obviously make sure that the product being offered online is itself genuine…after all you do not want to be assisting a cyber criminal by effectively installing their malware on your network thinking that you are installing a free penetration test tool!