What are Quantitative and Qualitative Risk Assessments?

Risk management requires regularly completed risk assessments to identify potential threats, understand the current threat landscape, and assess risk occurrence. Risk analysis represents just one step in your more extensive risk control process. This blog examines the increased need for quantitative and qualitative risk assessments to understand better cybersecurity challenges in 2023 and their impact on organisations.

Compare and Contrast Quantitative and Qualitative Risk Analysis

Thereare critical distinctions between qualitative and quantitative riskassessments. Qualitative risk assessment is based on the individual'sperceptions of potential risks, the impact of risks, and risk exposure.Quantitative risk concentrates on data collection, measurement, and a riskscoring matrix. 

Risk management teams view qualitative risk as a highly subjective evaluation of the probability of the possible effects.

Why is a Risk Analysis Important?

Organisations should perform a qualitative risk assessment and analysis of risk perception changes because of the discovery of additional risks during a product or solution development. Project managers perform qualitative risk assessments from the early stages of each project. Since qualitative risk analysis is relatively easy, quick, and inexpensive, someone can carry it out anywhere within a project. 

Is Qualitative Better for Risk Management Strategies?

An organized risk assessment should help you better manage and prioritize risk and judiciously spend your time and resources. It would be best if you approached these findings with the same subjectivity level used during production. Qualitative assessments don't provide precision numbers but opinions expressed by those who know your business and its sector.

Role of the Trusted Security Advisor for Risk Assessments

Organisations are encouraged and often required to hire a third-party firm to perform quantitative analysis and risk assessments. Some organisations may consider hiring independent firms, each executing the risk assessment and analysis individually.

Performing an Assessment Before Engaging a Managed Security Service Provider

Organisations engaging a managed security service provider (MSSP) for the first time may consider conducting a quantitative and qualitative risk assessment to determine the current state of the company's cybersecurity posture. These assessments are helpful to both parties in determining the engagement, what service-level agreements (SLA) will apply to the arrangement and the costing model for services.

Both assessments will give both parties a point-in-time reality check of the current security risk, compliance, and capacity of resources for handling incident response cases. MSSPs will leverage resulting assessments to compile a baseline of risk.

The Value of a Managed Security Service Partner (MSSP)

MSSPs like LinearStack have the expertise and resources to help organisations execute quantitative and qualitative risk assessment and analysis. LinearStack has access to global talent 24x7x365 to help organisations with pre and post-assessment workflows. 

About LinearStack

Founded in 2013, focusing strongly on world-class cyber security services, we built LinearStack from the ground up in Auckland, New Zealand. Our passion for making information security simple and accessible for all organisations is the fuel that fires our engine.

"We’re a growing team of certified Cyber Defence Analysts, Threat Hunters, Incident Responders, CTI specialists, malware analysts, security architectures, and engineers with two geo-redundant operations centres across the globe."

Managed Services Offering

We designed our Managed Services for firms who don’t have the desire to recruit for and maintain this relentless, 24/7 task in-house.

With teams in two time zones, you can be confident that your security analysts are always alert and fresh when defending your infrastructure. As your partners, you can reach out to any of our analysts 24/7 to understand the journey of a threat.

Culture

We’re100% privately held, grown with a family mindset. When working with clients, we’re well-integrated within their teams and act as an extension of their operations. Augmenting existing teams is a transition we manage smoothly, empowering our customers to prioritise cyber security strategy while we protect their business from cyber threats 24x7.

Maintaining thriving IT systems and assuring data protection are fundamental needs that all businesses deserve.

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