Cybersecurity risk assessment template

According to the World Economic Forum (WEF)’s Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2025 report, cybersecurity is entering an era of unprecedented complexity due to intensifying geopolitical tensions, rapid technological advancements, and increasingly sophisticated threats.

These challenges are compounded by expanding regulatory scrutiny, vulnerabilities within supply chains, and a growing shortage of cybersecurity professionals, which make it increasingly difficult for organizations to ensure cyber resilience.

These findings highlight the importance of performing cybersecurity risk assessments regularly and effectively. We’ll cover the definition and established risk assessment frameworks,

What is a cybersecurity risk assessment?

A cybersecurity risk assessment is the process of identifying, evaluating, and mitigating risks within an organization’s IT environment. It involves evaluating the likelihood of potential cyber threats and the impact they could have on organizational operations and assets, individuals, and other organizations. In addition to incorporating threat and vulnerability analyses, the assessment process considers mitigations provided by security controls that are planned or in place.

Cybersecurity risk assessment is just one part of cybersecurity risk management, which also involves risk framing, response, and monitoring activities. 

Cybersecurity risk assessment vs risk assessment

Cybersecurity risk assessment is focused specifically on cybersecurity risks, or the loss of confidentiality, integrity, or availability of information, data, or information systems that exist in or intermittently have a presence in cyberspace. Cybersecurity risks are a subset of technology risks. 

A risk assessment has a broader scope that encompasses all types of risks including physical risks, not just cyber risks. 

Now that we have a better understanding of the meaning of cybersecurity risk assessment, let’s take a closer look at the purpose. 

What is the purpose of a risk assessment in cybersecurity?

The primary purpose of a risk assessment in cybersecurity is to protect an organization's digital assets by identifying vulnerabilities and implementing appropriate security measures. 

Secondary purposes include:

• Reducing the risk of data breaches and cyberattacks: By proactively identifying and mitigating security vulnerabilities, organizations can minimize the chances of unauthorized access, data theft, and cyber incidents.
• Ensuring compliance with industry regulations and standards: A formal risk assessment process helps organizations meet compliance requirements for a variety of frameworks, such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, NIST 800-53, CMMC, HIPAA, and GDPR.
• Enhancing incident response and recovery capabilities: Understanding potential threats allows organizations to develop more effective cyber incident response plans, ensuring they can detect, contain, and recover from security incidents more efficiently.
• Allocating resources effectively to address high-priority risks: A risk assessment helps organizations focus their cybersecurity investments on the most significant threats, ensuring efficient use of security resources.
• Building trust with customers and other stakeholders: Having an established risk assessment process helps demonstrate a strong commitment to cybersecurity. This reassures customers, business partners, and other stakeholders that their sensitive data is protected, fostering trust and long-term relationships.

Cybersecurity risk assessment frameworks

A cybersecurity risk assessment framework provides a structured approach to conducting risk assessments. Organizations can choose the framework that best aligns with their industry, regulatory requirements, and security needs. Popular frameworks include:

NIST Risk Management Framework (RMF)

Ideal for: Federal agencies and other organizations that want to implement the NIST CSF

Created by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the RMF is a comprehensive, flexible, repeatable, and measurable 7-step process aimed at integrating security and risk management activities into the system development life cycle. Presented in NIST SP 800-37, the RMF provides a structured process that ensures information security and risk management are not afterthoughts but integral components of an organization’s overall mission and business processes.

Federal agencies can satisfy the requirements in the Federal Information Security Modernization Act of 2014 (FISMA), the Privacy Act of 1974, OMB policies, and Federal Information Processing Standards, among other laws, regulations, and policies by adhering to the RMF. Following RMF guidelines also helps organizations implement the NIST Cybersecurity Framework.

NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF)

Ideal for: Federal agencies and other organizations that want a flexible approach to risk management

NIST CSF 2.0 provides a comprehensive set of standards, guidelines, and best practices to managing and reducing cybersecurity risk. It consists of six core functions—Govern, Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, and Recover—that help organizations better understand, assess, prioritize, and communicate its cybersecurity efforts.

The NIST CSF itself does not prescribe a set of controls. Instead, the NIST 800-53 and NIST 800-171 frameworks provide security controls for implementing NIST CSF.

While Executive Order 13800 made the CSF mandatory for federal agencies and contractors, many organizations across sectors in the private sector adopt this framework due to its flexibility.

ISO/IEC 27005

Ideal for: International organizations that want to be ISO 27001 certified

Part of the ISO 27000 series, the ISO/IEC 27005 framework is specifically focused on managing information security risks. Designed to fulfill the requirements of ISO/IEC 27001 concerning actions to address information security risks, ISO/IEC 27005 provides a detailed risk management process that includes risk identification, assessment, treatment, and monitoring. 

Organizations, regardless of type, size, or sector, can follow ISO 27005 and benefit from a structured approach to risk management that aligns with international standards.

CIS Risk Assessment Method (RAM)

Ideal for: Organizations that want to comply with the CIS Controls

The CIS Risk Assessment Method (RAM) is a practical information security risk assessment method designed to help organizations assess cyber threats and implement reasonable security measures to mitigate those threats. Specifically, this method is designed for organizations to implement and assess their security posture against the CIS Critical Security Controls (CIS Controls).

CIS RAM is particularly useful for small to mid-sized businesses looking for a straightforward yet effective risk assessment approach.

Conducting a cybersecurity risk assessment: A step-by-step process

Below we provide some essential steps organizations can take to effectively conduct a cybersecurity risk assessment. These are based on the RMF, as presented in NIST 800-30.

1. Prepare for the cybersecurity risk assessment

This phase defines the scope, purpose, and context of the risk assessment. Organizations determine what assets will be assessed, the assessment methodology, and any assumptions or constraints that apply.

2. Conduct the cybersecurity risk assessment

This step involves assessing risk factors, including threat, vulnerability, predisposing condition, impact, and likelihood, to effectively determine risk. Here is a closer look at key risk factors:

2A. Identify threat sources and events

Organizations must determine potential threat sources that could exploit vulnerabilities. Threat sources can be adversarial (e.g., cybercriminals, insider threats), accidental (e.g., employee errors), structural (e.g., system failures), or environmental (e.g., natural disasters).

Next, consider the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) of potential adversaries to determine the most relevant threat events. One example of a threat event would be theft of credentials through an SMS or email phishing campaign.

2B. Identify vulnerabilities and predisposing conditions

Next, organizations must identify weaknesses in their IT infrastructure, policies, procedures, controls, or implementation that could be exploited by threat sources. These are vulnerabilities.

Penetration testing, security audits, and reviewing threat intelligence sources are all common methods for identifying vulnerabilities.

Organizations must also consider predisposing conditions (e.g., outdated software, weak access controls) that increase the likelihood of exploitation are also evaluated.

2C. Determine the likelihood of occurrence

Next, organizations should assess how likely it is that a threat will successfully exploit one or multiple vulnerabilities. In other words, they must determine the likelihood that a threat source would initiate a threat event and the likelihood that the threat event would be successful.

Qualitative (e.g. very high, high, moderate, low, very low) or quantitative methods (e.g. 10, 8, 5, 2, 0) may be used to estimate probability. 

2D. Determine the impact of threat occurrence

At this step, organizations should assess the potential consequences on operations, assets, individuals, and other organizations if a threat successfully exploits a vulnerability. Consequences may include financial loss, data breaches, regulatory penalties, operational disruption, or reputational damage.

Qualitative (e.g. very high, high, moderate, low, very low) or quantitative methods (e.g. 10, 8, 5, 2, 0) may be used to estimate potential harm.

2E. Determine risk

The final step is to determine overall risk by combining likelihood of threat event occurrences and the impact of such occurrences.

Here’s an example of an assessment scale you may use to determine level of risk:

3. Communicate and share cybersecurity risk assessment results

Once risks are identified and analyzed, the findings are documented and shared with stakeholders. Clear communication ensures that decision-makers understand the risks and can take appropriate action.

4. Maintain the cybersecurity risk assessment

Since cybersecurity risks evolve, organizations must continuously monitor and update their risk assessments. This involves reassessing threats, vulnerabilities, and security controls as the IT environment changes.

Cybersecurity risk assessment template

A cybersecurity risk assessment template can streamline the assessment process by providing a standardized format for documenting findings. Use ours to simplify the process.

Cybersecurity risk assessment tools

Organizations can leverage cybersecurity risk assessment tools to automate and enhance their assessment processes. Some widely used tools include:

Free self-assessment tools

Some free tools guide organizations through a self-assessment to evaluate their strengths, weaknesses, and security posture using controls from government and industry-recognized cybersecurity standards like NIST CSF. For example, the Cybersecurity Assessment Tool (CSET) helps organizations assess their cybersecurity maturity and identify areas for improvement.

While this tool, like other stand-alone tools, is free and easy to use, it provides limited assurance and automation because of its lack of integrations with your tech stack, controls, policies, and other important data. It therefore can’t assure compliance with framework requirements or validate accuracy of user inputs after they fill out lengthy questionnaires.

Risk quantification tools

These tools apply risk analysis methodologies to quantify cyber risks in financial terms, helping organizations make data-driven security decisions. For example, RiskLens uses the Factor Analysis of Information Risk (FAIR) framework to provide a financial analysis of cybersecurity risks.

While these types of tools support informed decision-making by translating complex risks into clear financial terms, they typically require lots of manual data collection and expertise to input risks and interpret results. They also do not provide actionable steps or remediation guidance to help organizations reduce their risk.

Vulnerability management platforms

These solutions continuously scan and assess vulnerabilities in an organization’s systems, offering insights and recommendations for remediation. For example, Rapid7 InsightVM automates vulnerability scanning and provides actionable remediation steps.

This type of platform provides real-time vulnerability insights, but it can generate overwhelming data that’s difficult to interpret and act upon without expert guidance.

Compliance automation platforms

Compliance automation tools automate risk assessments as well as other security and compliance workflows like continuous monitoring. This can improve the efficiency and accuracy of risk assessments and other tasks while unlocking huge time and cost savings. For example, Secureframe Comply AI for Risk can produce detailed insights into a risk with a single click based on only a risk description and company information. 

When evaluating these tools, look for a platform that truly automates the end-to-end risk assessment process and has customization options. Some only have workflows that walk you through the risk assessment process step by step but don’t actually automate the process. Also, see if you can assess custom risks and use a custom risk scoring model or whether you’re limited to risks from a pre-built risk library and a default scoring model.

Compliance automation is ideal for organizations looking not only to automate risk assessments but their overall compliance program. 

How Secureframe streamlines the cybersecurity risk assessment process

A well-executed cybersecurity risk assessment is essential for organizations to proactively manage threats, reduce vulnerabilities, and maintain regulatory compliance. 

Secureframe not only automates the cybersecurity risk assessment process with Comply AI for Risk — it also streamlines overall cybersecurity risk management. Our end-to-end risk management solution enables organizations to:

• Automatically assess and treat risks with Comply AI: The fully automated risk assessment workflow leverages AI to generate risk scores, treatment, residual risk, and justifications. 
• Easily add and track risks with the risk library: Our risk library includes NIST risk scenarios for categories including IT, Fraud, Legal, Privacy, and Finance. 
• Link risks to controls and view history to coordinate risk management strategies with compliance requirements: Close any gaps in your risk management program and demonstrate the steps you’ve taken to strengthen your security and privacy posture over time. 
• Continuously monitor your risk management program: Dashboards provide a comprehensive view of your organization's risks, allowing you to visually monitor your progress over time and effectively communicate the health of your risk management program to executives, auditors, and other stakeholders.

By leveraging Secureframe, businesses can streamline their risk assessment workflow, improve their overall security posture, and have peace of mind that their digital assets are safe and that they remain compliant. Schedule a demo to learn more.