Assets and Risk Management - Assignment Example

The exposure is done through the examination of the results of the subject of exposure assessment.

Describe the key approaches to identifying threats relevant to a particular organization.

The strategies that can be used to identify threats relevant to a particular organization include the SWOT analysis. SWOT is an analytical method that categorizes an organization's internal factors that affect it. The steps used in this approach are,

Identifying the strengths of the organization- the strengths of an organization are obtained by looking at the advantages, what the organization does well, what resources the organization accesses and what the people see as the strengths.

Weaknesses

The weakness of an organization is looked at by looking at what should be improved in the organization, what the organization does poorly and what should be avoided that places the company at risk of losing its customers. The weaknesses are considered from an external and internal viewpoint by asking questions like, do people see weaknesses that the management does not see, and are the organization's competitors doing any better than the latter? By doing this, the company notices its loophole and can go ahead in addressing the issues raised.

Opportunities

            Employee management in an organization looks deeply at realistic opportunities that are ahead of them and the trends that are of interest to the entity. They ought to look at avenues where useful opportunities can result. Perfect examples include technological and market change on a broad and narrow scale, government policy-related changes, social patterns, population changes, and local events too.

Threats

            To identify the threats of an organization, one has to know what obstacles they face, and the progress of the competition. There is also a need to scrutinize whether there are any changing specifications, knowledge of any cash flow problems, and knowing any other serious weaknesses that threaten the organization.

            The analysis helps in knowing what needs to be done and also by putting problems into perspective thus identifying the threats. When carried out, this analysis often seems to be illuminating - this occurs both in terms of pinpointing what is needed to be done, and also placing the existing problems into appropriate perspective.

There exists a close link between the organizational weaknesses and the strengths of internal factors and the opportunities and threats as the external factors.

Describe different types of assets that need protection.

Some of the assets that need protection are categorized as,

Information assets

These assets comprise all pieces of information in an organization that has been collected and stored in different forms. These types include databases, data files, and archived information and need to be highly protected against any form of interference.

A single alteration of these assets may lead to a crisis in an organization and a loss of enough trust when it comes to matters of money.

Physical assets

This refers to the visible and tangible equipment and structures of an organization that comprises all the electronic devices from computers to printers and scanners. Communication equipment like routers and modems, storage media, and technical equipment consisting of power supplies and air conditioners not forgetting the office furniture and fixtures (Esch, Kieffer & Lopez, 2005).

Software assets

Software assets that need protection are categorized into application software that implements business rules and any flaw in the application software may lead to a serious business loss thus requiring a lot of protection. The second category is the system software where an organization invests in various programs that help in the daily management and running of the activities in the organization. Without this software, it becomes hard for businesses to operate hence a need to protect them (Esch, Kieffer & Lopez, 2005).

Explain the relationship between access and risk, and identify the tradeoffs of restricting access to the organization's assets.

There exists a relationship between access and risk involved in an organization. The two are related in that, if the accessibility of the organization's assets is left free for each and every person, then there is a high risk of interferences in the assets involved (Landoll, 2011).

Open accessibility leads to high levels of risk exposure, and for this reason, it calls for the restriction of some information and assets to the people. Some assets like those related to keeping the financial documentation of an organization need to be highly restricted. Restrictions to access help an organization in several ways, an organization's data and internal problems are strictly known and managed within the organization. There are no external interferences in the organization, no data is lost and all the records are kept safe for future reference.