April 24, 2025
Preliminary Penetration Testing: Key Steps to Follow
Preliminary Penetration Testing: Key Steps to Follow
Omar
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As a society, taking risks is necessary for progress and growth. Whether it’s energy, infrastructure, supply chains, airport security, hospitals, or housing, managing risks well helps communities succeed. So it’s important to stay alert. Effective risk management reduces dangers and makes the most of the opportunities present.
Since risk is involved in almost everything we do, the work of risk professionals is very varied. They work in many areas, including insurance, business continuity, health and safety, corporate governance, engineering, planning, and financial services.
Enterprise risk management (ERM) is a way of managing risks that considers the organization as a whole. It is a top-level approach that focuses on identification, evaluation, and preparation for possible risks, dangers, or problems that could disrupt the organization’s work. The goal is to protect the organization and help it achieve its objectives.
It is also common to share the risk management plan with all stakeholders through an annual report. Many industries, including aviation, construction, public health, international development, energy, finance, and insurance, have adopted the use of enterprise risk management.
For ERM to be successful, good communication and coordination between different parts of the company are important. Sometimes, decisions made by top management may differ from local assessments, so working together is key.
Companies that use ERM usually have a special team responsible for managing risks and overseeing how the organization handles potential problems.
Enterprise risk management (ERM) mainly focuses on finding, analyzing, handling, and reducing risks throughout an organization. In contrast, enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools are designed to connect and improve main business processes.
The main goal of ERP systems is to make operations smoother in areas like finance, manufacturing, sales, and marketing. While ERM looks at risks across different departments and functions, ERP systems are more targeted and focus on improving specific operational tasks rather than managing overall risks.
Putting in place ERM tools needs teamwork from important people such as risk managers, compliance officers, executives, and board members. These groups work together to create risk management plans.
On the other hand, ERP systems often involve close cooperation between IT teams, department managers, and users. Besides being important for daily operations, a key part of ERP systems is the real-time connection and sharing of data. Because of this, ERP systems usually require more technical knowledge compared to ERM tools.
In the end, risk management strategies in ERM help the organization stay sustainable over the long term, protect its assets, and reduce possible interruptions. ERP systems support the organization’s goals by increasing productivity, lowering costs, and offering real-time information about business opportunities.
Sometimes, ERM and ERP systems can seem to work against each other. For example, an ERP system might show chances for growth and efficiency in a new market, while an ERM might warn that entering that market is too risky.
Customer relationship management (CRM) systems focus on managing interactions with customers and potential clients. They use technology and processes to organize, automate, and coordinate sales, marketing, customer service, and support tasks. The main goal of CRM is to build better relationships with customers, make business processes more efficient, and increase profits by satisfying customer needs better.
Similar to ERM systems, CRM systems bring together data in one place. However, the type of data they handle is very different. ERMs focus on tracking and managing risks, while CRMs focus on customer information, interactions, and insights. This helps the company improve customer engagement and satisfaction.
Implementing a CRM is important for sales, marketing, customer service, and management teams, as they rely on customer data to increase sales and improve overall business performance. On the other hand, ERMs are more useful for teams in risk management, insurance, operations, or finance.
An ERM mainly looks inward but can also consider external market factors. A CRM, on the other hand, is more focused on outside factors. While it takes into account the company’s current processes and resources, a CRM mainly monitors what is happening outside the company, especially with its most valuable resource—its customers.
ERM helps a company set and match its risk appetite with its overall strategy. As the company defines its purpose, it needs to establish clear objectives that support its mission and goals. These objectives should be aligned with the company’s risk appetite.
The strategic plans should reflect what the company aims to achieve, such as hiring more staff to handle new regulations in expansion areas. The company can also consider different strategies to reach its goals.
Governance guides a company's overall attitude and emphasizes the importance of ERM, while also defining who is responsible for overseeing it. Company culture includes its ethical beliefs, the behaviors it encourages, and how it understands risk.
Good governance and culture involve the board overseeing risk, creating clear operational structures, shaping the company’s desired culture, showing commitment to core values, and focusing on building a skilled team. This team should be attracted, trained, and kept, all in line with the company’s goals and strategy.
ERM requires a company to regularly gather and share important information from both inside and outside sources. The company's IT systems should collect data that helps management understand the company’s risks and how they are being managed.
This involves monitoring all parts of the company equally, without giving special treatment to any department. Some of this data should be analyzed and shared with employees if it can help reduce risks. Talking with employees about this information can lead to better support for risk management processes and help protect the company's assets.
Risks can impact how well a company achieves its strategy and business goals. Therefore, ERM advises that these risks be identified and evaluated. They are then ranked based on how serious they are, in relation to the company's risk appetite.
For example, a high-risk event could threaten daily operations, such as natural disasters causing temporary office closures, or affect the company’s strategy, like new government rules banning its main products.
The company then chooses how to respond to these risks and considers the overall level of risk it is willing to accept. The outcomes of this process are shared with important stakeholders.
A company can evaluate how effectively its ERM components are working over time by checking its risks and performance. If there are major changes needed, these are identified and carefully reviewed. The company then determines what updates are necessary and works on improving the ERM process.
ERM is especially useful for large companies that work in complex and diverse settings. These companies often face many different risks across various business units, locations, and functions. ERM helps these organizations to identify, evaluate, and handle risks in an organized way, covering both daily operations and long-term strategies.
ERM can also be especially helpful in certain industries. For example, banks, insurance companies, and investment firms benefit from ERM because they operate in strictly regulated and often unstable markets.
These organizations face many of the risks mentioned earlier. With ERM, financial institutions can improve how they manage risks, make better use of their resources, and become stronger during economic downturns.
Finally, multinational companies and global businesses are good candidates for ERM. These companies operate in many countries and face risks from different areas. They often deal with issues like political instability, changes in currency values, supply chain problems, and different rules and regulations.
ERM helps these organizations keep track of and manage these risks more effectively, especially if some parts of their business face higher risks than others.
No matter what your business achieves, enterprise risk management can support you in reaching those goals. While most companies manage risks in some way, having a formal ERM process provides clear methods and practices.
This helps you to better identify, assess, and handle risks systematically, which can improve your chances of success. Without proper risk management, a company is more likely to make bad decisions, be less prepared for challenges, and find it harder to consistently meet its goals.
Over the past two years, one clear lesson is that companies must prepare for unexpected events. Many businesses have faced challenges such as weak employee protections, supply chain problems, and financial uncertainties.
For instance, security has always been important, but it became even more urgent when many companies implemented work-from-home policies. The quick shift to remote work forced businesses to quickly change their security procedures to protect their operations and employees. They had to address issues like insider threats, financial fraud, data privacy, protecting intellectual property, saving cash, and following legal rules.
Most companies aim for innovation and growth, but only those that are resilient succeed in the long run. The best business plans are flexible enough to change quickly when markets, business models, or rules shift.
For example, companies that use modern risk management systems with automated audits and security monitoring can perform these tasks remotely, even across different countries. This allows them to keep running smoothly despite travel restrictions and helps them save costs and operate more efficiently. These benefits can continue long after the crisis is over.
When you are ready to use technology to support your organization’s risk and compliance work, choose a dedicated ERM (Enterprise Risk Management) system that offers the following features:
First, your ERM system should be simple for everyone involved to use. This is very important because you need the participation of many different stakeholders to be effective. ERM is not a separate process; it needs to work closely with your current systems.
This way, you can easily connect with all the decision-makers in your organization, and they can easily give their feedback and updates regularly.
An ERM program and its technology should not be seen as separate from the rest of the organization. When risk management software is used in isolation, it often does not connect with or affect other stakeholders.
This can make ERM just a simple process without collaboration or real impact, which are important for success. Instead, focus on creating a culture of risk awareness throughout your organization.
Consider how well a risk management solution can involve all stakeholders in the organization. This should be your main factor in making a decision. Although digital risk management relies on technology, its true success depends on engaging both frontline staff and leaders.
Any ERM solution should follow international ISO standards and best practices. It should also include a basic set of analytics to help you get started.
ioSENTRIX offers a consulting-led ERM solution to help organizations build secure, resilient, and compliant operations from the ground up. With a deep understanding of cybersecurity, risk governance, and industry standards, we provide frameworks that connect security, strategy, and performance.
Partner with ioSENTRIX to build an enterprise risk management strategy that’s as agile as your business.
