RA.L2-3.11.1  

Reference: CMMC 2.0

Family: RA

Level Introduced: 2

Title: Risk Assessments

Practice:
Periodically assess the risk to organizational operations (including mission, functions, image, or reputation), organizational assets, and individuals, resulting from the operation of organizational systems and the associated processing, storage, or transmission of CUI.

CMMC Clarification:
Risk arises from anything that can reduce an organization's assurance of mission/business success; cause harm to image or reputation; or harm individuals, other organizations, or the Nation.

Organizations should assess the risk to their operations and assets at regular intervals. Areas where weakness or vulnerabilities could lead to risk may include:
• poorly designed and executed business processes;
• inadvertent actions of people, such as disclosure or modification of information;
• intentional actions of people, such as insider threat and fraud;
• failure of systems to perform as intended;
• failures of technology; and
• external events, such as natural disasters, public infrastructure and supply chain failures.

An organization can perform a formal or an informal risk assessment. In a formal risk assessment, you use established criteria and procedures. Formal risk assessments are documented. It is important to note that risk assessments differ from vulnerability assessments (See RM.2.142). A vulnerability assessment provides input to a risk assessment along with other information such as results from likelihood analysis and analysis of potential treat sources.

Example
You help manage IT for your employer. You and your team members are working on a big government contract requiring you to store CUI. You assess the risk involved with storing CUI. You consider storing that information with a cloud provider. You and your coworkers discuss the pros and cons of this option. Then, you use these details to make the final decision about using a cloud provider.

Source: CMMC v2.0