Life is about taking risks. Business is about taking risks. Heck, anything you do involves taking risks. But you wouldn't jump right off a cliff into unknown waters, would you? You'd want to know: How deep is the water? Are there sharks? Is there anyone around you who could help if you needed it? Are you even ready to make the jump?

While yes, there are adrenaline seekers among us who would gladly take the plunge, let's look at it from a non thrill seekers' perspective: you would only jump if you knew you had the skills to do it safely, consider all the circumstances, assess the terrain, enlist someone to help out if necessary; essentially, prepare yourself for everything that comes with taking a risk.

And putting our exaggerated example aside, running any modern business or enterprise is all about taking risks. Information technology has brought on a new dawning of conducting business (and even our everyday lives)—as well as a whole new set of risks.

You've certainly stumbled upon terms like **risk assessment, risk analysis and risk management**, and quite possibly heard them used interchangeably. While there is an overlap in the actual functionality of these terms and what they consider, there are a few differences worth pointing out, to help those involved in these processes avoid misunderstanding and wrong expectations. That's why today we'll examine these terms and what they mean from a strategic standpoint.

Let's begin by learning what "risk' actually is, in the context of cyber and information security.

What constitutes a risk in cybersecurity?

Put simply, a risk is generally any situation that involves exposure to danger. When speaking in cybersecurity terms, we can translate this as a likelihood of damage both to finances and reputation, resulting from the failure of an organization's information technology systems upon suffering a cyber attack or data breach.

Think of cybersecurity risks as the intersection of threat, vulnerability and **assets**: the **assets** are what we're trying to protect, the **threat** is what we're protecting them from, and the **vulnerability** is a gap in that protection. This puts risk in the middle of the action, as it entails the damage or loss of an asset as the result of a threat exploiting a vulnerability.

Cybersecurity risks are inherent in the current threat landscape, and no one is immune to them. Nearly every business faces cyber risks, and they can come from different places. Among these risks are:

Outsider threats such as different types of cybercrime, advanced persistent threats, network security threats, and the like.

Insider threats, which can range from cyber espionage to employees unwittingly clicking on a wrong link.

Third parties with sub par cybersecurity posture working with the organization.

There are plenty of ways in which cyber attackers can strike, and many ways in which you can unintentionally put your organization at risk. So what can we do about it? Assess, analyze and manage!

What is cyber risk assessment?

To explore these terms and their relationship to one another, let's take a hierarchical perspective: risk analysis is part of risk assessment, and risk assessment is part of risk management.

While it might be logical to start from the bottom (if we're still looking at it from a hierarchical viewpoint), it's more telling to start with risk assessment, and in going through its steps, arrive at its most crucial: risk analysis.

Risk assessment is exactly what it sounds like—identifying the risks, their likelihood of happening, and estimating their consequences.

All of this leads to better decision making towards understanding and mitigating said security risks. Specifically in cybersecurity, **risk assessment identifies and analyzes security risks posed from both external and internal threats that can be damaging to organizations' critical data and infrastructure**. We can also look at risk assessment as a strategic cybersecu...