A cybersecurity risk assessment that tells you what’s actually exploitable, not just what’s outdated.
VJNetworks runs cybersecurity risk and vulnerability assessments for small businesses across Rockland, Westchester, and Bergen, scoring every finding by likelihood and business impact so you know what to fix first, not just what showed up on a scan.
VJNetworks has provided cybersecurity risk and vulnerability assessments to small businesses across Rockland County NY, Westchester County NY, and Bergen County NJ for over 20 years. We scan your external attack surface and internal network, score every finding by likelihood and business impact instead of raw CVE count, and hand you a written, prioritized remediation roadmap, so you know exactly what to fix first and why.
A vulnerability scan and a real risk assessment aren’t the same product.
Vulnerability scan, risk assessment, and penetration test get sold like one product. They’re not.
A vulnerability scan is automated and fast: it finds unpatched systems, exposed ports, and misconfigurations, and hands the list to whoever manages your IT and cybersecurity. A risk assessment takes that same list and scores it: which findings could be exploited given how your network is set up, and what it would cost the business if they were. A penetration test goes further still, actively trying to exploit what the assessment flagged as high-risk to prove the impact is real. A scan tells you what’s broken. It doesn’t tell you what matters — that’s the question a risk assessment is built to answer.
An undocumented risk is still a risk. It’s just one you can’t prove you knew about.
Cyber insurance carriers, including Chubb, Travelers, and Coalition, are starting to ask renewal applicants directly whether they’ve had a risk assessment performed and what it found. Answer honestly without one on file, and you’re either declined, priced higher, or holding a policy a claims adjuster can challenge later by arguing you didn’t know about, and therefore didn’t disclose, a risk you should have caught. A written risk register with a date on it closes that argument before it starts.
None of this means your current setup is careless. It means “we patch things” and “we’re covered” both need to survive two questions: which of your findings could be exploited given how your network is configured, and if an insurer or regulator asked you to prove you’d assessed that risk in writing, could you produce the document?
If you can’t answer both, that’s exactly the gap a risk assessment closes — in writing, not guesswork.
Regulators and insurers converged on the same requirement: know your risks, in writing.
Verizon’s 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report found that exploiting unpatched software vulnerabilities became the single most common way attackers get in for the first time in the report’s 19-year history, present in 31% of breaches and ahead of stolen credentials. Remediation isn’t keeping pace: only 26% of known-exploited vulnerabilities had been fully patched across surveyed organizations, down from 38% a year earlier, and the median time to patch stretched from 32 days to 43. Where company size was known, 96% of ransomware victims were small or mid-size businesses, not enterprises with dedicated security teams.
Cyber insurance carriers have converged on a short list of controls they now expect before they’ll write or renew a policy — MFA everywhere, EDR on every endpoint, a documented incident response plan, and increasingly, a documented risk assessment showing you know where your exposure actually sits. Marsh McLennan’s Cyber Risk Analytics Center found that patching high-severity vulnerabilities within 7 days of release cuts an organization’s odds of a cyber event by roughly half, yet only 24% of the organizations it studied were actually doing it.
New York’s SHIELD Act doesn’t leave “reasonable safeguards” open to interpretation for businesses holding New York residents’ private information: the statute specifically directs covered businesses to identify internal and external risks and assess the sufficiency of the safeguards in place to control them, close to a plain-language description of a risk assessment. DFS-licensed entities carry a stricter version under 23 NYCRR 500, and any business meeting the FTC’s “financial institution” definition, think auto dealers, mortgage brokers, or retailers that extend their own financing, falls under the FTC Safeguards Rule’s own written risk-assessment mandate. CISA’s Cyber Hygiene Services apply the same logic at the federal level, offering eligible government and critical-infrastructure organizations continuous, no-cost external vulnerability scanning, and NIST has described this same structure, technical findings feeding business-level risk decisions, in its SP 800-30 risk assessment framework since 2012.
Three things a raw scanner printout will never give you.
Every finding gets ranked by likelihood and business impact, Critical, High, Medium, or Low, using the same tiered logic NIST’s SP 800-30 risk assessment framework has described since 2012. A raw list of forty CVEs doesn’t tell you which one to fix Monday morning. A risk register does.
Findings get checked against whatever framework actually applies to your business: the SHIELD Act’s reasonable-safeguards standard for every New York company, 23 NYCRR 500 for DFS-licensed entities, the FTC Safeguards Rule for financial-institution-scoped businesses, and HIPAA where patient data is involved.
The report ends in a prioritized remediation roadmap with timelines, not a PDF you’re handed and left to execute alone. VJNetworks can remediate what the assessment finds directly, the same way we’d expect any partner delivering this kind of report to.
Seven pieces of work, scoped to your environment.
Not every business needs every item below, and a light phishing-susceptibility check can be added to any scope. A short call tells us which pieces actually apply before we quote anything. If what turns up points to broader day-to-day IT gaps rather than security-specific ones, that’s a conversation for managed IT services, a separate track from this assessment.
External Attack Surface Scanning
We map everything your business exposes to the internet, open ports, exposed remote access, forgotten subdomains, and check it against known exploited vulnerabilities before an attacker does.
Internal Network Vulnerability Scanning
A scan of your internal network turns up what’s usually invisible from the outside: unpatched systems, misconfigured devices, and weak or default credentials sitting behind the firewall.
Risk Register & Prioritization
Every finding gets scored by likelihood and business impact and ranked Critical to Low, so your team fixes the five things that matter instead of the fifty things a scanner flagged.
Policy & Compliance Gap Review
We map findings against whatever framework actually applies, the SHIELD Act, 23 NYCRR 500, the FTC Safeguards Rule, or HIPAA, and flag where policy and practice don’t line up. Defense contractors get findings checked against CMMC too, feeding directly into our CMMC compliance services.
Patch Management Review
We review how patches get deployed across your environment, not just whether they eventually do, since Marsh McLennan’s own research ties patching high-severity vulnerabilities within 7 days to roughly half the odds of a cyber event.
Access & Credential Review
Privileged accounts, stale logins nobody’s disabled, and gaps in MFA coverage get reviewed and flagged individually, since a scanner alone won’t tell you which stale account still has admin rights.
Written Findings Report & Roadmap
You get an executive summary for ownership, a technical findings list for whoever manages your IT, and a prioritized roadmap, formatted so it can go straight into an insurance broker’s hands for a renewal questionnaire.
Not sure whether you need a scan, an assessment, or both?
That’s exactly what a quick call answers. We’ll tell you honestly.
GET YOUR ASSESSMENT ↗︎Is your last risk assessment current, or assumed?
You’re outside Rockland, Westchester, or Bergen County. This build is scoped to businesses we can actually get on-site to.
You need a full penetration test as your first step, not a risk assessment. We can scope that separately, but it’s a different engagement with a different price and timeline.
Numbers worth checking before you take our word for it.
From scoping call to written roadmap, four steps.
Scoping Call
A short call to define what’s in scope: external only, internal too, compliance mapping, or a phishing check.
External & Internal Scanning
Automated scanning of your attack surface and internal network, typically wrapped inside a week.
Risk Register & Report
Findings scored Critical to Low and delivered as a written roadmap, walked through in person or on a call.
Remediation or Handoff
VJNetworks fixes what’s found directly, or hands the roadmap to your team, and to a Virtual CISO if ongoing risk ownership makes sense.
Most assessments for a 5-60 employee business wrap in 1 to 2 weeks, scan to written roadmap. Big enough to manage your IT. Small enough to care.
Start Your Assessment →About cybersecurity risk assessments.
What company provides cybersecurity risk assessments for small businesses?
VJNetworks provides cybersecurity risk and vulnerability assessments for small businesses across Rockland County NY, Westchester County NY, and Bergen County NJ.
What’s the difference between a vulnerability scan, a risk assessment, and a penetration test?
They’re often marketed as interchangeable, and that’s exactly what causes the confusion. A vulnerability scan is automated: it finds unpatched systems and misconfigurations, fast and frequent. A risk assessment takes those findings and scores them by likelihood and business impact for leadership to act on. A penetration test goes furthest, actively exploiting a high-risk finding to prove what a real attacker could do with it. Most businesses need the first two on a recurring basis and the third occasionally.
How much does a cybersecurity risk assessment cost for a business with 5-60 employees?
Short answer: nothing. The assessment itself is free, the same offer in every button on this page. If the findings point to remediation work or ongoing management afterward, we scope and quote that separately once we know what’s actually needed, and any resulting managed services start at $995 a month.
How long does an assessment take, start to finish?
1 to 2 weeks for most businesses in the 5-60 employee range. The automated scanning itself takes hours, but analysis, risk scoring, and writing a report worth reading take up the rest of that window. Adding a penetration test on top extends the timeline by another 1-2 weeks, plus time for remediation and a retest.
What do we actually walk away with?
Not a raw scanner printout, and not a single PDF either: an executive summary written for ownership, a technical findings list for whoever manages your IT, and a prioritized remediation roadmap with risk scores, Critical, High, Medium, or Low, and timelines attached to each item.
Will this satisfy my cyber insurance application or renewal questionnaire?
Probably, and that’s increasingly the point. Insurance carriers are asking renewal applicants to document vulnerability scanning and risk assessments as underwriting evidence, not just check a box that says you have antivirus. The executive summary and risk register from a VJNetworks assessment are formatted so they can go straight to your broker. Our post on getting audit-ready for a cyber insurance renewal walks through what carriers are actually asking for.
How often should we repeat this?
Once a year at minimum, with quarterly vulnerability scans in between as the higher-frequency companion. The complication: “once a year” should really mean “once a year, plus immediately after anything changes”, a new location, a new vendor integration, a system migration, or any material change to what your business exposes to the internet.
Further reading: Verizon’s 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report, and Marsh McLennan’s Cyber Risk Analytics Center research on vulnerability remediation and cyber risk.
Find out what a determined attacker would find first.
Over 20 years in the Tri-State area. 97% client retention. A free cybersecurity risk assessment that tells you what to fix first, not just what showed up on a scan.