无忧传媒

Transforming Your Cyber Risk Management Program

The Cyber Risk Challenges Keeping Security Leaders Up at Night:

The Cyber Risk Challenges Keeping Security Leaders Up at Night:

  • What are the top cyber risks to our business?
  • What is the potential business risk exposure (monetary cost)?
  • Is our cyber program strategy aligned with our cyber threat and risk profile?
  • Where can we get the greatest return on security investment (ROSI), and how can we communicate that value to the board and executive leadership team (ELT)?
  • How can we save costs by prioritizing our security spending on what matters most?

Transform Your Cyber Risk Management Programs

The first step in addressing these critical questions and challenges is to build a strategic cyber risk management program operationalized by an analytical cyber risk model and tool. Successful programs employ advanced analytics to sift through data, yielding insights that drive investment prioritization and inform broader business decisions. But how can enterprises effectively and efficiently measure risk from dozens of disparate data sources (e.g., security telemetry, application configuration settings, and threat intelligence)? Enter cyber risk quantification (CRQ).

CRQ is an analytical approach to aggregating various data into a risk model producing high-fidelity insights at a speed and scale that exceeds what humans alone can do. CRQ-based methods use in-house telemetry data to offer a holistic view of cyber risk by generating a probabilistic estimate of the financial impacts of cyber events to inform the business鈥 strategic direction. A CRQ-enabled cyber risk management program answers these and other pressing concerns while allowing organizations to measure and manage risk across the enterprise before it impacts the business. This approach repositions cyber risk management as a powerful growth enabler, informing tactical allocation of resources to high-priority areas of strategic importance. This type of risk management strikes a defensible balance between spending, value, and risk-taking to drive business growth鈥攚ith the accuracy and precision that only a data-driven CRQ can provide.

Moving from a Traditional GRC Program to a Data-Driven IRM Program

While GRC tools traditionally support an enterprise鈥檚 cyber risk management practices by providing workflows and compliance-based risk tracking, they don鈥檛 measure cyber risk statistically or articulate exposure in monetary terms. This lack of analytical data leaves decision makers uncertain about how the cyber program should adapt to and collaborate with the broader business.

Traditional GRC-centric approaches rely on static, tactical data, which leads enterprises to believe they are measuring risk when they are actually measuring compliance. To drive defensible prioritization and develop a threat-informed, risk-based cyber program, leaders must be able to statistically quantify risk and communicate it in terms that the business can appreciate and act upon. By using CRQ to formulate and justify sound investment decisions, CISOs, and technology leaders can mature their GRC programs into automated, data-driven Integrated Risk Management (IRM) programs.

GRC

IRM Maturity Journey

Performed Informally

Cyber risk management activities focus largely on meeting compliance requirements, minimally on assessing business impact.

Planned & Tracked

Cyber risks are classified with a rudimentary framework and are not specifically tied to assets in the value chain.

Well-Defined

A risk model is being used to develop repeatable metrics and inform technology risk reporting at executive level.

Quantitatively Controlled

Quantification solution uses a risk model to normalize risk across domains and facilitate prioritization.

Continuously Improving

Quantification solution leverages telemetry for continuous monitoring of control coverage and effectiveness.

Using CRQ to Build a Threat-Informed and Risk-Aligned Cyber Program Strategy

In addition to providing a holistic view of cyber risk that is easily digestible by the rest of the business, CRQ findings can inform the overarching cyber program strategy. Many corporations make siloed decisions and are unaware of the overall impact of their collective actions on cyber risk exposure. By using CRQ methodologies, security leaders can identify the critical interdependencies between cyber and business risks, and incorporate these insights into their strategy. This CRQ-enabled approach allows for a risk-aligned cyber program strategy that defends against threats around the clock, enhancing cyber resilience through optimized defense strategies. High-value CRQ findings include breachability scores (e.g., ransomware probability percentage), risk exposure in real dollars (e.g., $25 million), and risk mitigation return on security analysis (e.g., probability percentage decrease, risk exposure costs decrease).

Organizations that approach risk with a quantitative lens using CRQ tactics can expect:

Enhanced Cyber Resilience

Corporations can now measure risk exposure and make decisions to mitigate that exposure accurately, precisely, and quickly before any harm comes to the organization鈥檚 value chain.

Enabling Cohesive Decision Making

The insights generated by a CRQ program are in business terms, which supports the alignment of cyber functions with other business functions. This alignment improves communication and the ability to make complex decisions in sync.

Optimized Cyber Spend and Control Prioritization

Enterprises can quickly measure control effectiveness and correlate control gaps to risks, enabling defensible remediation recommendations with heightened accuracy and precision.

Reduced Cyber Insurance Coverage and Premiums

CRQ鈥檚 high-fidelity insights give businesses the data they need to negotiate cyber insurance premiums and save tens of thousands of dollars annually in reduced coverage and wasted resources.

These outcomes also enable CISOs and other security leaders to build defensible business cases to justify cyber program investment based on a more accurate overall understanding of the risk to the business. Business risk-based insights grounded in monetary terms will resonate with the board and corporate leaders more effectively than any risk heatmap or NIST CSF maturity score ever could.

A Practical and Programmatic Approach to Cyber Risk

Leveraging next-generation cyber strategy and risk solutions enables synergy between data-driven insights and strategic decision making across the business. A foundation of deeper understanding ensures a proactive approach to security and empowers the enterprise by putting leaders in control of their resources and operations. In addition, the enterprise鈥檚 cyber strategy must continuously evolve and improve over time. To support this evolution, enterprises should work with a tech and advisory partner who can formulate targeted cyber assessments combining practitioner-led consulting, technical depth, and advanced AI and machine learning (ML)-driven CRQ tools grounded in the FAIR framework鈥攖he only certified CRQ approach. This partner should also use advanced cyber threat modeling, such as MITRE ATT&CK, to measure your cybersecurity program鈥檚 ability to defend the business against automated malware attacks while informing actionable and prioritized remediation recommendations.

By aligning CRQ findings with the overall value chain, businesses can create the foundation for a cyber program approach grounded in a threat landscape based on real-time risk posture. This strategic alignment enables the enterprise to operate in a cyber-resilient state efficiently and cost-effectively.

CRQ FAQ for Security Leaders

While it might seem counterintuitive, CRQs rarely aim to solve a specific tech or cyber problem. Instead, CRQ technology enables the discovery and resolution of deeper organizational challenges. Leveraging a single-pane view of your enterprise鈥檚 cyber risk lets cyber leaders quickly and simultaneously dive into macro and micro risks across the organization and communicate risk priorities in dashboards and language the rest of the business can understand. CISOs and security leaders are uniquely positioned to champion a CRQ-integrated cyber program strategy for the companies they defend.

FAQs

Can we save money by manually performing CRQ?

No, not at scale. While you can manually leverage telemetry data (e.g., Qualys scan), it would take a lot of human effort, and the results will only provide transparency into a fraction of the enterprise鈥檚 overall attack surface.

What risks will this enable us to quantify?

We鈥檒l provide a 360-degree view of your cyber risks, associated business risk exposure (dollar value), and the technical vulnerabilities enabling each risk.

Will this CRQ platform easily integrate with our tech stack?

Yes, the CRQ platform we leverage has over 100 technology integrations (via read-only APIs), and that number is growing to accommodate every client鈥檚 unique IT environment. We recommend starting your CRQ journey with three APIs to prevent analysis paralysis. Depending on each client鈥檚 environment and needs, these can include cloud environment integrations (e.g., AWS, Azure), vulnerability assessment tools (e.g., Qualys, Rapid7), and/or endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools (e.g., CrowdStrike).

Do we have enough data for this to be worth it?

Yes, we鈥檒l be able to leverage telemetry data passing through your IT business applications and security tools, such as digital asset configurations, technical vulnerabilities, and security controls.

Is this solution aligned with industry standards and frameworks?

Yes, this approach leverages advanced analytics (AI/ML) to operationalize the only industry-recognized CRQ framework (FAIR) to deterministically measure cyber risk and associated business risk exposure (value at risk or VaR) using internal telemetry data. We also leverage industry-leading standards (e.g., NIST CSF, ISO 27001) to provide the programmatic dimension of your cybersecurity maturity posture to further enrich the technical analysis.

Will this CRQ process take a long time?

Not with the right tech and strategic partner. 无忧传媒 can illuminate your organization鈥檚 cyber risk exposure (i.e., VaR) in as little as three to four weeks.

Is CRQ expensive?

No, and it鈥檚 certainly not as expensive as the cost of a breach would be to your business. According to IBM鈥檚 鈥淐ost of a Data Breach 2023鈥 report, the average data breach cost in 2023 was $4.45 million.

Next Steps

In an age where cyber incidents can profoundly affect an organization鈥檚 reputation, finances, and operations, understanding and quantifying cyber risks is no longer an option, but a strategic imperative. 无忧传媒鈥檚 cyber risk program advisory and assessment solutions are designed to be proactive, bridging the gap between business leaders and the threats, vulnerabilities, and business impacts they must be aware of and manage effectively. Through this process, the board and C-suite gain enhanced visibility into their respective cyber and business risk posture, driving well-informed decisions that improve the bottom line. CISOs and risk management leaders will also see increased fidelity into risk-based insights driving optimized ROSI and cyber resilience across their organization.

We hope this paper has prepared you to advocate for better ways to measure, manage, and report cyber risk.

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