Data and information are power. From private companies and enterprises to government agencies, schools, health care organizations and non-profit foundations, every type of business or institution regards its data as its greatest treasure. That treasure can contain personally identifiable information (PII) such as names, addresses, birth dates, social security numbers, and medical records, as well as intellectual property—including patents, trademarks, financial information, and more.

With this in mind it's safe to assume that organizations are highly interested in protecting their data; after all, it's at constant risk. If it's valuable to the organization, it will surely be valuable to malicious actors, whether to be sold on the black market, used for market advantage, leveraged to ruin reputations, or just because.

To protect ourselves against risks, we should first know what they are, and understand them. While every organization has an abundance of risks (including competitive, economic, operational and strategic risks), they tend to put less focus on **security risks**. This is unfortunate, as security risks could impact and heighten other risks: **loss of data can impact reputations and cause operational issues such as downtime**, not to mention the substantial financial losses organizations suffer due to data breaches.

We mentioned security risks when we talked about risk assessment and risk management, and how we use the two to lead better-informed decision-making when understanding and mitigating security risks. Additionally, we went over what constitutes a risk in cybersecurity, but we're now due for a deeper dive into the security risks that plague the current threat landscape.

The 7 most popular security risks across all organizations

Before we explore today's most common security risks, let's reiterate what a security risk actually is. Security risk is the likelihood of financial, operational and reputational damage resulting from the failure of an organization's IT systems as a result of a cyber incident, such as a data breach or other type of cyber crime.

We can recognize several sources of security risks. These can be:

Insider threats, such as competitors engaging spies among your own team members, disgruntled employees, or simple human error

Outsider threats, such as cyber criminals, hacktivists, and nation states

Third-party providers and suppliers

Data breaches and cyber attacks can be perpetuated for different reasons. These can include financial gain by selling the data on the black market, identity theft, disruption of services, activism, or even as the result of sheer negligence. While there are a number of reasons for them and different organizations face different risks, there are some that affect all industries and organizations of all sizes.

Last week, we ran a poll on our Twitter account to see what our followers have to say about the most prolific security risk they've encountered at their workplace, and in general. Here are the results:

As per our results as well as current news and research, we've compiled a list of the 7 most common security risks that all organizations should be aware of:

1. No backup and recovery plan

Surprisingly or not, our followers did say that the **lack of a backup and recovery plan** is the number one risk for organizations today. Statistics support this claim, too: a survey of SMEs by Riverbank IT Management found that 46% of SMEs don't have a backup and recovery plan, and for those that do have it, 23% have never actually tested it.

Recovery plans are designed to protect organizations in times of disaster, including security incidents and data breaches. A backup and recovery plan focuses on the policies and procedures organizations should follow in certain scenarios to protect their most valuable assets and systems and reduce downtime, financial impact and reputational loss.

While every organization will have a unique backup and reco...