Security Risk Assessment Services in Raleigh-Durham
Understand the full spectrum of threats facing your organization. Petronella Technology Group delivers structured security risk assessments grounded in NIST SP 800-30 and ISO 27005 methodology, covering cyber, physical, operational, and third-party risk domains for Triangle businesses.
What Is a Security Risk Assessment?
A security risk assessment is a systematic process for identifying, analyzing, and evaluating the risks that threaten an organization's assets, operations, and people. Unlike a vulnerability scan or penetration test -- which focus narrowly on technical weaknesses in software and infrastructure -- a security risk assessment examines the full landscape of threats your organization faces and measures each one against the likelihood of occurrence and the magnitude of potential impact.
The output is not a list of patches to install. It is a prioritized understanding of which risks demand immediate attention, which can be accepted within your organization's defined risk appetite, and which should be transferred through insurance or contractual arrangements. A well-executed risk assessment gives leadership the data needed to allocate security budgets rationally, justify investments to boards and stakeholders, and demonstrate due diligence to regulators and auditors.
Petronella Technology Group has conducted hundreds of risk assessments since our founding in 2002. Our methodology draws from NIST Special Publication 800-30 (Guide for Conducting Risk Assessments) and ISO/IEC 27005 (Information Security Risk Management), adapted for the practical realities of mid-market organizations in healthcare, defense contracting, financial services, legal, and technology sectors across the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill region.
Why Risk Assessments Matter
Organizations that skip formal risk assessment operate on assumptions. They assume their firewall is sufficient. They assume employees will not click phishing links. They assume their third-party vendors handle data responsibly. These assumptions collapse under the weight of a real-world incident, and the financial consequences are severe. The average cost of a data breach in the United States exceeded four million dollars in recent years, and for regulated industries like healthcare and financial services, the costs climb substantially higher when enforcement penalties are factored in.
A structured security risk assessment replaces assumptions with evidence. It forces an organization to catalogue its critical assets -- patient records, intellectual property, financial data, operational technology systems -- and then systematically evaluate the threats targeting those assets and the vulnerabilities that could be exploited. This process reveals gaps that no single technology solution can address, because the most dangerous risks often sit at the intersection of people, processes, and technology rather than in any one domain alone.
For organizations in the Research Triangle, the risk landscape is particularly complex. Healthcare systems must protect electronic protected health information under HIPAA. Defense contractors must safeguard Controlled Unclassified Information under CMMC and NIST 800-171. Financial services firms face examination under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and state-level cybersecurity regulations. Universities and research institutions manage federally funded data subject to export control requirements. A one-size-fits-all approach to risk fails in this environment. PTG builds each assessment around the specific regulatory, operational, and strategic context of the organization being assessed.
Our Assessment Framework: NIST SP 800-30 and ISO 27005
Petronella Technology Group's assessment methodology is anchored in two internationally recognized frameworks that provide rigor, repeatability, and defensibility.
NIST Special Publication 800-30
Published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, SP 800-30 provides a structured four-step process: prepare for the assessment, conduct the assessment, communicate results, and maintain the assessment over time. Within the conduct phase, our analysts identify threat sources (adversarial, accidental, structural, and environmental), characterize vulnerabilities, determine the likelihood of threat events, analyze the magnitude of impact, and compute overall risk. This framework is required for federal agencies and is widely adopted by government contractors and regulated industries. For organizations pursuing CMMC certification, NIST 800-171A assessments, or FedRAMP authorization, an SP 800-30-aligned risk assessment is a prerequisite.
ISO/IEC 27005
ISO 27005 provides an information security risk management process that aligns with the ISO 27001 Information Security Management System standard. It defines a risk assessment cycle that includes context establishment, risk identification, risk analysis (qualitative, semi-quantitative, or quantitative), risk evaluation against acceptance criteria, and risk treatment planning. Organizations pursuing ISO 27001 certification require a risk assessment process that conforms to ISO 27005 principles. PTG's methodology satisfies both frameworks simultaneously, reducing the assessment burden for organizations subject to multiple compliance obligations.
By combining elements of both NIST and ISO approaches, PTG delivers risk assessments that are accepted by auditors across every major compliance framework -- HIPAA, CMMC, SOC 2, PCI DSS, GDPR, CCPA, and FTC Safeguards Rule -- without requiring separate assessments for each.
Assessment Scope: Four Risk Domains
A meaningful security risk assessment cannot focus exclusively on network firewalls and endpoint protection. True organizational risk spans multiple domains, and our assessments examine all four.
Cyber Risk
Threats to digital assets including networks, servers, workstations, cloud environments, SaaS applications, email systems, and data repositories. We evaluate attack surfaces, access controls, encryption practices, patch management cadence, endpoint detection capabilities, and incident response readiness. Threat modeling covers ransomware, business email compromise, credential theft, supply chain compromise, and advanced persistent threats relevant to your industry.
Physical Security Risk
Threats to facilities, server rooms, data centers, and physical media. We assess perimeter controls, badge access systems, visitor management procedures, surveillance coverage, environmental controls (fire suppression, HVAC, water intrusion), and the physical security of portable devices and removable storage. For organizations handling classified or regulated data, physical security controls are not optional -- they are mandated by frameworks including CMMC, HIPAA, and PCI DSS.
Operational Risk
Threats arising from business processes, human factors, and organizational structure. We examine employee onboarding and offboarding procedures, separation of duties, change management controls, business continuity planning, disaster recovery testing frequency, and the maturity of security awareness training. Operational risks are often the most overlooked and the most exploited. A technically sound network means little if terminated employees retain active credentials or backup restoration has never been tested.
Third-Party and Vendor Risk
Threats introduced through your supply chain, business partners, and service providers. We evaluate vendor due diligence processes, contract provisions for security and data handling, Business Associate Agreements, right-to-audit clauses, fourth-party dependencies, and the security posture of critical vendors through questionnaire review and, where appropriate, direct assessment. Third-party breaches have been responsible for some of the largest data incidents in history, making vendor risk management a board-level concern.
Risk Scoring Methodology
Effective risk management requires more than a list of findings labeled "high," "medium," and "low." Our scoring methodology provides the quantitative and qualitative data needed to make informed decisions about risk treatment.
Inherent Risk vs. Residual Risk
Every risk is scored twice. Inherent risk measures the exposure assuming no controls are in place -- this reveals the raw severity of each threat and helps organizations understand what they are truly up against. Residual risk measures the remaining exposure after existing controls are applied. The delta between inherent and residual risk quantifies the effectiveness of your current security program. When residual risk exceeds your defined risk appetite, additional controls or risk transfer mechanisms are required.
Likelihood and Impact Scoring
Each identified risk is scored on two axes. Likelihood considers threat source capability, threat source intent, historical frequency of similar events in your industry, and the exploitability of identified vulnerabilities. Impact considers financial loss (direct costs, regulatory fines, litigation exposure), operational disruption (downtime, productivity loss, recovery effort), reputational damage, and strategic consequences (loss of contracts, competitive disadvantage). We use a five-point scale for both axes, producing a 25-cell risk matrix that provides clear prioritization.
| Likelihood / Impact | Negligible | Minor | Moderate | Major | Severe |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Almost Certain | Medium | High | High | Critical | Critical |
| Likely | Low | Medium | High | High | Critical |
| Possible | Low | Medium | Medium | High | High |
| Unlikely | Low | Low | Medium | Medium | High |
| Rare | Low | Low | Low | Medium | Medium |
Risk Appetite and Tolerance
No organization can eliminate all risk, nor should it try. Part of our assessment process involves working with your leadership team to define your organization's risk appetite -- the aggregate level of risk the organization is willing to accept in pursuit of its objectives -- and risk tolerance -- the acceptable variation around specific risk categories. These definitions transform the risk register from a theoretical document into a practical decision-making tool. Risks above tolerance thresholds demand action. Risks within tolerance may be monitored and accepted. This clarity prevents the common failure mode of treating every finding as equally urgent, which leads to budget exhaustion and security fatigue.
What You Receive: Assessment Deliverables
Every PTG security risk assessment produces a comprehensive set of deliverables designed to serve different audiences within your organization -- from technical staff who need actionable detail to executives and board members who need strategic summaries.
Risk Register
A structured inventory of every identified risk, including threat source, affected asset, vulnerability exploited, inherent risk score, existing controls, residual risk score, risk owner assignment, and recommended treatment. The risk register becomes a living document that your organization maintains and updates as your environment changes.
Risk Heat Map
A visual representation of your risk landscape plotted on a likelihood-impact matrix. The heat map provides an at-a-glance view of where your greatest exposures are concentrated and enables rapid identification of risk clusters that demand coordinated treatment rather than isolated fixes.
Executive Summary
A concise, non-technical narrative that communicates findings, overall risk posture, key areas of concern, and strategic recommendations to senior leadership, board members, and non-technical stakeholders. Written in business language with clear connections between identified risks and potential business outcomes.
Remediation Roadmap
A prioritized action plan that sequences remediation activities based on risk severity, implementation complexity, cost, and dependencies between controls. The roadmap includes short-term quick wins (30-day actions), medium-term improvements (90-day projects), and long-term strategic initiatives (6-12 month programs) with estimated resource requirements for each.
Additional deliverables may include threat modeling documentation, control gap matrices mapped to specific compliance frameworks, vendor risk assessment summaries, and physical security evaluation reports. Every deliverable is audit-ready and formatted to satisfy evidence requirements for HIPAA, CMMC, SOC 2, PCI DSS, ISO 27001, and other applicable frameworks.
Compliance Alignment
A security risk assessment is not just a best practice -- it is an explicit requirement of virtually every regulatory and industry compliance framework. PTG structures each assessment to satisfy the risk assessment mandates of the frameworks that apply to your organization.
- HIPAA Security Rule (45 CFR 164.308(a)(1)(ii)(A)): Requires covered entities and business associates to conduct an accurate and thorough assessment of the potential risks and vulnerabilities to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of electronic protected health information.
- CMMC 2.0 / NIST 800-171 (RA.L2-3.11.1): Requires organizations handling CUI to periodically assess the risk to organizational operations, organizational assets, and individuals resulting from the operation of organizational systems and the processing, storage, or transmission of CUI.
- SOC 2 (CC3.2): Requires management to identify, analyze, and assess risks related to achieving objectives, including risks arising from changes in the entity's environment, business model, technology, and personnel.
- PCI DSS 4.0 (Requirement 12.3.1): Requires a formal risk assessment to identify threats, vulnerabilities, and risks at least once every 12 months and upon significant changes to the cardholder data environment.
- ISO 27001 (Clause 6.1.2): Requires the organization to define and apply an information security risk assessment process that identifies, analyzes, and evaluates information security risks.
- FTC Safeguards Rule (16 CFR 314.4(b)): Requires financial institutions to conduct a risk assessment that identifies reasonably foreseeable internal and external risks to the security, confidentiality, and integrity of customer information.
- GDPR (Article 35): Requires Data Protection Impact Assessments where data processing is likely to result in a high risk to the rights and freedoms of natural persons.
PTG maintains current knowledge of every major compliance framework and updates its assessment methodology as frameworks evolve. Our team includes a CMMC Certified Registered Practitioner and professionals with direct experience preparing organizations for third-party audits across all of these standards. With BBB accreditation since 2003 and more than 2,500 clients served, we bring proven compliance expertise to every engagement.
Our Assessment Process
PTG follows a structured, repeatable assessment process that produces consistent, defensible results. Each phase builds on the previous one, ensuring nothing is overlooked.
Scoping and Context Establishment
We begin by understanding your organization's mission, objectives, regulatory obligations, and risk tolerance. We define the assessment boundary, identify in-scope assets and systems, catalogue applicable compliance requirements, and establish the criteria against which risks will be evaluated. This phase includes stakeholder interviews with leadership, IT management, compliance officers, and operational managers to ensure the assessment reflects the organization's actual priorities and constraints.
Asset Inventory and Valuation
Effective risk assessment requires knowing what you are protecting. We develop a comprehensive inventory of information assets, technology systems, physical locations, and third-party relationships. Each asset is classified by sensitivity and business criticality, establishing the foundation for impact analysis. For organizations lacking a current asset inventory, this phase alone delivers substantial value by providing visibility that many mid-market organizations do not have.
Threat Identification and Modeling
We identify the specific threat sources and threat events relevant to your organization, industry, and geography. This goes beyond generic threat lists to model the actual adversaries, tactics, techniques, and procedures most likely to target organizations with your profile. For Triangle-area defense contractors, that means nation-state actors using spear-phishing and supply chain compromise. For healthcare practices, it means ransomware operators targeting unpatched VPN appliances and exploiting weak remote access credentials. Our threat modeling is informed by current threat intelligence and real-world incident data.
Vulnerability and Control Assessment
We evaluate the vulnerabilities that could be exploited by identified threats across all four risk domains: cyber, physical, operational, and third-party. This includes technical testing (vulnerability scanning, configuration review, architecture analysis), policy and procedure review, physical security inspection, and vendor risk evaluation. Simultaneously, we document existing controls and assess their design effectiveness and operational implementation.
Risk Analysis and Scoring
Each threat-vulnerability pair is analyzed for likelihood of exploitation and potential impact. We compute inherent risk scores, apply control effectiveness factors, and determine residual risk scores. Results are plotted on the risk heat map and documented in the risk register with full traceability from threat source through vulnerability to business impact.
Risk Evaluation and Treatment Planning
Residual risks are evaluated against your organization's risk appetite and tolerance thresholds. For risks exceeding tolerance, we develop treatment recommendations: mitigate (implement additional controls), transfer (obtain insurance or contractual indemnification), avoid (discontinue the risk-generating activity), or accept (document the conscious decision to retain the risk). Treatment options include cost estimates, implementation timelines, and expected risk reduction.
Reporting and Executive Briefing
We deliver the full assessment package -- risk register, heat map, executive summary, and remediation roadmap -- and conduct an executive briefing to walk your leadership team through the findings, answer questions, and align on treatment priorities. This briefing ensures that assessment results translate into organizational action rather than sitting unread in a binder.
Industries We Serve Across the Triangle
Petronella Technology Group delivers security risk assessments to organizations across Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Cary, Apex, and the broader Research Triangle region. Our deep familiarity with the local regulatory landscape and industry composition allows us to tailor each assessment to the specific threats and compliance requirements facing your sector.
- Healthcare: Hospitals, physician practices, dental offices, behavioral health providers, medical device companies, and business associates. HIPAA Security Rule risk assessment is a federal requirement, and OCR enforcement continues to increase. Our assessments evaluate ePHI across all creation, receipt, maintenance, and transmission points.
- Defense Contracting: The Triangle is home to hundreds of companies supporting the Department of Defense. CMMC 2.0 certification requires a comprehensive risk assessment aligned with NIST SP 800-30. PTG's CMMC CRP credentialing ensures our assessments meet C3PAO expectations.
- Financial Services: Banks, credit unions, wealth management firms, insurance companies, and fintech startups. FTC Safeguards Rule, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, NYDFS Cybersecurity Regulation, PCI DSS, and SOC 2 all mandate formal risk assessment programs.
- Legal: Law firms managing confidential client data, litigation materials, and privileged communications face unique risks from targeted attacks and insider threats. Bar association ethics rules increasingly require documented cybersecurity risk management.
- Technology and SaaS: Software companies, managed service providers, and SaaS platforms pursuing SOC 2 Type II or ISO 27001 certification require formal risk assessment processes as the foundation of their information security management systems.
- Manufacturing and Critical Infrastructure: Organizations with operational technology environments, industrial control systems, and IoT deployments face converged IT/OT risks that require specialized assessment approaches.
Why Petronella Technology Group
Since 2002, Petronella Technology Group has built its reputation on delivering thorough, defensible security assessments that produce real improvements in organizational risk posture. Led by CEO Craig Petronella -- a Licensed Digital Forensic Examiner, CMMC Certified Registered Practitioner, and MIT-certified professional with over 25 years of experience in cybersecurity and compliance -- PTG brings practitioner-level expertise that larger consultancies often lack.
- Framework fluency: We do not just reference NIST and ISO -- we operationalize them. Our assessors have direct experience implementing and auditing against CMMC, NIST 800-171, HIPAA, SOC 2, PCI DSS, ISO 27001, GDPR, CCPA, and FTC Safeguards Rule.
- Independence: As a third-party assessor, PTG provides the objective perspective that internal teams and technology vendors cannot. Our findings are unbiased and our recommendations are vendor-neutral.
- BBB accredited since 2003: More than two decades of continuous accreditation reflects our commitment to ethical business practices and client satisfaction.
- 2,500+ clients served: Our assessment methodology has been refined through hundreds of engagements across healthcare, defense, financial services, legal, technology, and manufacturing sectors.
- Full-lifecycle support: Unlike consultancies that deliver a report and disappear, PTG provides remediation services, managed security, compliance monitoring, and ongoing risk management support. We stand behind our findings with implementation capability.
- Local presence, national reach: Headquartered at 5540 Centerview Dr., Suite 200, Raleigh, NC 27606, PTG serves Triangle businesses with on-site assessment capability and extends nationally through remote assessment services.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between a security risk assessment and a vulnerability assessment?
How long does a security risk assessment take?
How often should a security risk assessment be performed?
What is the difference between inherent risk and residual risk?
What is risk appetite and why does it matter?
Does PTG help remediate the risks identified in the assessment?
Can a single risk assessment satisfy multiple compliance frameworks?
What qualifications does PTG bring to security risk assessment?
How is this different from the IT Security Risk Assessment service?
What should we prepare before the assessment begins?
Understand Your Risk Before Your Adversaries Do
Contact Petronella Technology Group to schedule a security risk assessment. We serve businesses across Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, and the Research Triangle with structured, framework-aligned risk assessment services built on over two decades of cybersecurity and compliance expertise.
919-348-4912 Request Your Risk Assessment5540 Centerview Dr., Suite 200, Raleigh, NC 27606 | Founded 2002 | BBB Accredited Since 2003