For any business to survive and thrive it needs an element of security. As the world today is changing it’s both volatile, unpredictable, and can be fraught with risk. In the past businesses viewed risk as a necessary evil that needed to be mitigated or minimised wherever possible. However nowadays increased regulatory requirements has meant that businesses need to inject both significant resources and time into controlling and managing risk better. For this reason a security risk assessment is essential. But what exactly is it and what does it entail?
In essence a security risk assessment is a procedure of analysing, assessing, and monitoring the patterns of risk. Then by implementing suggested strategies that negate that risk, businesses should in theory be better equipped to prevent it from happening. Typically organisations would start with a broad overall risk assessment and overtime, refine their data and analysis to include assessments of individual areas within the business. These include:
Physical asset security
This includes evaluation of any current physical asset security and what could be done to improve areas such as storage, handling limitations, and asset control; paying particular attention to high value or attractive items.
Premises security
How secure is the business premises and more importantly how well protected is it? Do you have an up-to-date security system in place and do you have sufficient perimeter lighting? What about security signage or CCTV cameras? Is all perimeter fencing secure? Again all of these factors can be evaluated during a security risk assessment of your premises.
Information technology risk assessment
As businesses rely heavily on the worldwide web, more and more information is being transferred to the internet. A a result cyber crime is becoming rife. Companies looking to protect their assets need to have tight controls over their internet activity. This includes evaluations for the potential of system failures, the importance of access control to sensitive information, password evaluation, and of course the potential for cyber crime.
The examples listed above are exactly this and are used for illustrative purposes. As a result every company should adapt their own risk assessment to suit their needs and immediate requirements. The scope of a security risk assessment can be both wide and detailed, but the outcome should always be that the business is better run, better controlled, and at less risk from security issues because of it. For this reason it’s a highly important factor in your business success.
If you’d like to find out more about security risk assessments and what they entail, or if you’d like to book an assessment for your company, then contact MA Services Group. We’ve been in the security industry for many years, and as well as supplying trained personnel for event security and static guarding, we also conduct security risk assessments. Contact us on 03 9994 4107 to find out more. We look forward to hearing from you.
