Mitigating security threats and utilizing preventative measures should be done in order to ensure that your network and applications are hardened and regularly assessed, which will allow you to identify risks and threats to your infrastructure before they become sources of attacks. The information gained from security assessments can be used to determine incident response protocols and to reveal how your business will hold up to an actual cyber-attack. By assessing and prioritizing the highest risks for remediation, you can ensure that the risk level of your organization is lowered and that your systems are hardened against potential threats.Security assessments are also important for any provider of goods or services in the IT industry, which often requires code review scans, penetration test reports and security assessments. These are instrumental in proving that the company has gone through thorough security testing to ensure potential clients and partners that their systems and software are secure and safe to use. Without such security assessments, vendors will often have difficulty operating in the industry or find clients willing to work with them. A prime example is when Yahoo was breached due to not acting with due diligence to prevent cyber-attacks, resulting in Verizon Communications considering whether they should withdraw from a lucrative business deal with Yahoo.

These Vulnerabilities exist in networks and applications that companies depend on to successfully operate. Assessment results can be used to:

- Improve the security of your network

- Improve the quality of your applications

- Protect your sensitive data from being leaked

- Prevent a breach from damaging the reputation of your company

If malicious cyber-attackers discover these security holes before your business does they can surreptitiously create exploits, post-exploitation payloads, and even design backdoors and malware to completely cripple your systems, acquire long-term root access, bypass authentication, and break encryption. This can also result in data exfiltration, completely compromised systems, and damage to your reputation as a whole.Security assessments should be an integral part of any organization as they arm you with the important knowledge of potential security holes in your business systems. Once identified these holes can be patched, potential risks can be decreased, threats can be mitigated, and your business can rest assured that cyber-criminals will be unable to exploit the vulnerabilities that you already discovered and fixed.Security assessments are necessary as a measure to prevent cyber-attacks and as a set of practices that help to create a better foundation for all of your systems. However, it is not just the security of your business infrastructure that is at stake, but the data therein that can compromise the privacy of your customers and of your business. The ensuing data leaks that can result from systems that have not been properly assessed can amount to significant lost revenue and dissatisfied customers. Identity theft is another significant concern that can affect your customers in the event of a data breach, which can cost significant amounts of money to repair.

In order for your company to operate as a professional entity within the ecosystem of your business industry - and in order to maintain good public relations - you must take steps to ensure that your company is protected with professional-grade security systems to negate data leakage and data breaches.Spam emails are another security issue that must be dealt with in order to ensure that your business operates professionally and in a way that keeps the trust of its customers. This can affect both current customers and future prospective customers who may be unwilling to do business with a firm that has gained a negative reputation. Despite the difficulties with fixing a data breach, it is more difficult to fix a damaged reputation. Hence, prevention of data leaks is always better than attempting to repair it after it has occurred. Security assessments are a major preventative measure that can keep your business safe and your systems hardened against future attacks.