From a certain age, many people regularly visit their doctor for check-ups. In this way, risks and dangers can be identified early and appropriate measures taken.
The same applies to cybersecurity: Regular risk assessments help security teams identify vulnerabilities and areas for improvement. Unfortunately, such assessments are not carried out universally.
Advantages of a cyber risk assessment
CISOs benefit from the following advantages when they integrate cybersecurity risk assessments into their work:
- Identifying vulnerabilities: A cyber risk assessment helps to identify security gaps in a company’s IT infrastructure, networks, and systems. This provides the opportunity to eliminate these vulnerabilities before they can be exploited by cybercriminals.
- Prioritize risk management measures: Not every system is critical, and not all of a company’s data is equally important. The results of the risk assessment clarify which assets and systems are most critical and at the highest risk of attack. Based on this, security managers can prioritize their measures and thus allocate their resources more effectively to address the most critical risks first.
- Meeting compliance requirements: Almost every company must comply with various data protection and data security regulations, such as the GDPR or the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). Many of these legal requirements explicitly demand specific risk assessments, such as a data protection impact assessment under the GDPR. Risk assessments help to meet the compliance requirements of various regulations. This ensures that the necessary security standards are met and that potential fines or legal consequences for violations are avoided.
- Make smart decisions and reduce costs: Cyber risk assessments give companies a comprehensive understanding of their cyber risks. This allows them to make informed decisions about risk mitigation strategies, thereby reducing the likelihood of a successful and costly cyberattack. Furthermore, it enables them to make targeted and therefore more effective investments in their cybersecurity.
A look at data risk
The target of most cyberattacks is a company’s data — with enormously costly consequences: According to IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report 2025, a data breach caused an average of $4.44 million in damages. Therefore, it is crucial to take a close look at data and the risks it faces.
This is all the more important because, unlike infrastructure and other systems, data is not “uncompromising.” Servers can be reconfigured, cloud instances rebuilt. But once stolen, data remains in the hands of cybercriminals. Backups offer no protection against this.
An analysis of nearly 10 billion cloud objects, conducted as part of data risk assessments at more than 700 companies across various industries worldwide, reveals the risks that data is generally exposed to. According to the analysis, one in 10 data sets in the cloud is accessible to all employees. This creates an internal radius that significantly increases the potential damage from a ransomware attack.
However, a lack of multifactor authentication (MFA) also makes it easier for attackers to compromise internally exposed data: Microsoft has found that more than 99% of compromised accounts do not have MFA.
Conclusion
These general findings already highlight the biggest problem areas. Nevertheless, it is important to determine the individual data risk and identify weaknesses within the framework of a data risk assessment.
Companies typically don’t know what data they possess, where it’s stored, or who has access to it. Only with this fundamental information can they identify their risks and take targeted measures. The time investment is manageable, at around two to four hours, and a comprehensive report provides immediately actionable recommendations. Furthermore, the assessment process often uncovers additional security issues, ranging from ongoing cyberattacks to Kerberos passwords that are up to 15 years old.
Regularly conducted cyber risk assessments allow for clear and verifiable documentation of progress in data security — also for management. CISOs finally have a tool at their disposal that makes their cybersecurity successes visible.