What Is a Security Risk?

A security risk is a combination of the likelihood of a security incident (event) and the severity of its consequences.

Security Risk

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A security risk is a combination of the likelihood of a security incident (event) and the severity of its consequences.

Security risks, traditionally,

Traditionally, there are two approaches to security risk management: a forward-looking approach and a reactive approach, each with advantages and disadvantages. There are two different approaches to prioritizing a risk: qualitative security risk management and quantitative security risk management.

Many organizations introduce security risk management by responding to a relatively small security incident. But no matter what the initial incident is, as more and more security-related issues emerge and begin to affect business, many organizations are discouraged from responding to crisis after crisis. They need an alternative, a method that reduces first security incidents. Organizations that effectively manage risk have developed a more forward-looking approach, but this approach is only part of the solution.

Reactive approach: When a security incident occurs, many IT professionals feel that the only thing that works is to contain the situation, point out what happened, and fix the affected system as quickly as possible. Reactive methods can be an effective technical response to security risks that have been exploited and transformed into security incidents. Reactive methods have a degree of rigor that can help all types of organizations make better use of their resources.

Proactive approach: Proactive security risk management has many advantages over reactive approaches. Rather than waiting for a bad thing to happen before responding, a proactive approach first minimizes the possibility of a bad thing happening.

Of course, organizations should not completely abandon incident response. An effective, forward-looking approach can help organizations significantly reduce the number of future security incidents, but it seems that such problems will not completely disappear. Therefore, organizations should continue to improve their incident response processes while developing a long-term, forward-looking approach.

The first step in risk management is to identify and assess potential areas of risk. The so-called risk area is a collection of risk factors. The comprehensiveness and accuracy of risk identification directly affects the risk assessment and risk control. Taking CRTS slab ballastless track for risk identification as an example, it mainly includes 3 items:

The object of risk identification, that is, what aspects of risk events need to be considered in the construction of ballastless tracks;

the risk factors that led to these risk events, and the consequences caused by the risk events;

(3) Determine the weight of each risk event. ^[1]