How to perform a free risk assessment using WatchDog Security’s platform
Traditional business infrastructure is rapidly transitioning to digital mediums (such as the Cloud). This expanded attack surface means businesses now face more cybersecurity threats than ever. Cyber risk assessment services have become increasingly crucial, whether you manage a small business or oversee IT for a large enterprise. Regular risk assessments are essential to safeguarding your assets, data, and operations while understanding the next steps to improve your organization’s security. Maintaining a risk register and performing such assessments is vital for compliance frameworks such as ISO 27001 and SOC 2. Traditionally, organizations relied on costly third-party consultants for risk assessments. Our SaaS application (WatchDog UI) is changing how organizations conduct risk assessments by enabling businesses to conduct these evaluations themselves. With Watchdog’s DIY risk assessments, you can perform comprehensive, accurate, and straightforward assessments without needing external consultants. The platform automatically generates risks in your risk register based on your answers, details the next steps, and allows you to schedule remediation tasks within your team.
What is a Risk Assessment?
A risk assessment is a systematic process of identifying, analyzing, and evaluating potential risks that could affect your organization’s ability to operate securely. This typically includes assessing vulnerabilities in your IT infrastructure, understanding potential threats, and identifying the impact of these risks on your business operations. Once you know the risks, you can take steps to mitigate them—ensuring compliance with industry standards, maintaining coverage with cyber insurance, and protecting sensitive data from breaches.
The Problem with Traditional Risk Assessments
For many organizations, performing a risk assessment is not easy. The process is often outsourced to third-party consultants who charge high fees for their services. Through our parent company, Mand Consulting Group, we have long offered these assessments ourselves as consulting work. These external assessments can be costly, time-consuming, and inflexible. Furthermore, many smaller businesses lack the resources to employ a professional team like Mand Consulting Group to handle their risk management.
How Watchdog Security Simplifies Risk Assessments
Our platform collects data from your entire infrastructure, including all human, digital, and physical assets. This enables us to automate the risk assessment process further by generating risks upon detection. We can produce daily risk assessments by correlating data from various sources—such as endpoints, cloud resources, and employee behaviour. This approach provides added value by allowing continuous risk evaluations instead of just point-in-time assessments. Our platform automatically takes corrective actions, associates events with risks, and notifies the relevant owners based on the affected assets. WatchDog Security’s Risk Assessment page offers a comprehensive overview of your organization’s risks. The Risk Register is a centralized platform where you can view, create, and collaborate on risks throughout your organization. Whether assessing existing risks or generating new ones, WatchDog provides a reliable source for all your risk management activities. You will soon be able to import your risks, create them manually, or generate them automatically using our library of questionnaires.
Step-by-Step Guide to Performing a Free Risk Assessment Using Our Platform
Now that you understand the key features of Watchdog Security, let’s break down how you can perform a free risk assessment using the platform. Step 1: Set Up Your Watchdog Security Account To get started with Watchdog Security, you’ll first need to sign up for an account here. While we are in an invite only beta, you can message us on Intercom (bottom right) for a code to sign up for our platform. Step 2: Trigger the perform risk assessment flow Once logged in, you can access the Risk Assessment tab. From here, you can click Perform New RA to start the risk assessment flow. Step 3: Choose a template Choose from an ever-growing library of risk assessment templates to guide your risk assessment. The templates are modelled by cybersecurity experts who have designed and executed programs for enterprises and SMBs and have performed and delivered risk assessments for hundreds of organizations. Step 4: Perform the Assessment Watchdog Security’s platform simplifies the risk assessment process significantly. It uses templated questions to guide you through each step, ensuring you don’t overlook critical risk areas. For instance, you may be asked to confirm whether you remove inactive user accounts or monitor compliance with your password policy. To simplify the process, we provide the relevant commands when applicable, minimizing your effort and enhancing efficiency. This approach helps you achieve confidence that is often unattainable through traditional manual risk assessments, which typically rely on an interview-style format. Step 5: Review and Take Action Once the assessment is complete, the platform automatically populates risks in your risk register and assigns a unique, incremental ID to each risk. You also have the ability to achieve risks if no longer required in addition to exporting them for third parties (e.g. auditors). Step 6: Collaborate on risks with your team After selecting a risk in the risk register (whether generated through a questionnaire or manually imported/created), you can begin the collaboration process with your team. With auto-generated risks, you benefit from our experts filling out the information, including the inherent risk impact and likelihood, treatment steps, description, residual risk, and status.
Why Choose Watchdog Security for Risk Assessments?
In addition to the features outlined above, Watchdog Security offers several other advantages:
- User-Friendly Interface: The platform is designed to be intuitive, ensuring that both technical and non-technical users can navigate the tool and perform assessments easily.
- Cost Efficiency: By eliminating the need for consultants, Watchdog helps organizations save on the typically high costs associated with professional risk assessments.
- Compliance: With templated assessments aligned with industry regulations, Watchdog ensures that your organization stays compliant with legal and industry standards, as well as requirements for cyber insurance coverage.
- Automation and Customization: Automation tools like PowerShell commands (provided within the assessments) make it easier to gather data quickly and accurately. Additionally, you can customize templates to suit your organization’s specific risk needs. With our paid packages, we entirely remove the manual effort of going through the templated questionnaires by pulling real-time data from your environment.
Stay Audit-Ready and Simplify Compliance
Compliance doesn’t have to be complex. Kickstart your program on our unified trust, compliance, and security platform, free-for-life, and access:
- Policy management – publish, distribute, and track policies with ease
- Risk and vendor tracking – stay ahead of gaps and third-party exposures
- Framework coverage – SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, GDPR, and 15+ more
- Audit readiness tools – organize evidence and streamline certifications
Get started free today – no credit card required.
- Framework to Implement a Cybersecurity Plan
- NIST Cyber Risk Management Overview
- Harvard Business School Risk Overview
- How WatchDog Secures Your Human Assets
- WatchDog’s Automated Risk Management
Framework to Implement a Cybersecurity Plan NIST Cyber Risk Management Overview Harvard Business School Risk Overview How WatchDog Secures Your Human Assets WatchDog’s Automated Risk Management
