Preparing for Budget Season: Threat & Vulnerability Assessments (Part 3)
(BLUF) “To Know Thyself is the beginning of Wisdom” (Socrates) Understanding what to protect, is as important as understanding what you are protecting it from.
Vulnerability Assessments play a key role in not only your security plan but in your Business Continuity Plans as well as your Emergency Action Plan. Understanding a few basics about your business can ensure continued success when things go awry. Where is my business vulnerable? What elements of my business are critical to our success? Are there any elements of my business that, if they were impinged, would create such a significant impact that my business could fail?
Military organizations operate in very defined and well-planned blocks of achievement call missions. Some have a long-range strategic mission while others have short term tactical missions. Despite the length or overall goal of the mission, all military units identify the key elements that must happen in order to be successful. These units identify how something could go wrong and what the impact of that failure would have on the overall mission. This is called a Vulnerability Assessment. Identifying these vulnerabilities, allows the units to establish safeguards that prevent cascading failures within the mission as a whole.
As a commercial business, securing key elements of your organization and or your services is fundamentally important to your profitability. For many business’ COVID-19 has been devastating. Many could not have planned for the impact this pandemic would have and sadly, some will never recover. Others had plans in place not for the pandemic, but for other catastrophic events that were quickly adapted and enabled these businesses to focus on key elements to their success, reallocate resources to protect and keep moving forward. The important lesson learned from COVID-19 was the need to identify what elements of a business need to be protected, which ones can be protected and what actions are best suited to deliver these protections in a way that ensures continuity.
Vulnerability Assessments require businesses to accurately reflect upon long and short ranges goals, key personnel, key activities, key resources, and key events to name a few. For Kerberos, once we know where to focus our efforts and where to invest our resources, we are on a path to better ensure your mission (and profits) are protected. As a security professional trusted by many US Government agencies, Kerberos stands ready to help you develop a Security Plan that is targeted, specific, and tailored to the threats that will most impact the vulnerabilities of your business. “My strength is knowing where I am weak, and facing my weakness makes me courageous.” MKH
Next week we’ll discuss how applying the Threat Assessment against the Vulnerability Assessment work to create a strong Security Plan.
Click here to schedule a site visit with one of our security professionals: mharrison@kerberosinc.com