Over the last few years, cybersecurity has become one of the biggest priorities for many businesses. In the past, cybersecurity was managed by security teams only, and business executives were not too interested in it. After a few notable incidents, leaving companies damaged with losses of millions of dollars, corporate boards turned their attention to it. Now, the security of the digital assets of organizations has become too valuable, and businesses are doing everything they can to protect them from hackers.
For many companies, addressing cybersecurity risks is a relatively costly and burdensome process. If the risks the organization is facing are only evaluated quantitatively, chances are the cybersecurity spending will not be sustainable. This is where cyber risk quantification techniques can help to assess the risks in financial terms that will be cost-effective and favorable for your business. They will allow you to identify the top risks posed to your organization and prioritize them in the best way financially.
What Is Cyber Risk Quantification?
Cyber risk quantification (CRQ) is a process in which identified risks are evaluated and analyzed to better prioritize the risks with the biggest financial impact on an organization. By using different mathematical modeling techniques, CRQ can help with the decision-making processes over where to invest to best protect your IT infrastructure. In simple terms, CRQ can give you a financial aspect over the cybersecurity problems in your company. In general, there are 5 areas of cybersecurity whose spending requires analysis:
Monitoring and Threat Detection
It is always better to detect a threat sooner rather than later. Catching a threat in the early stages of development means that it will be easily remediated and will not break the build. This is why investing in monitoring and threat detection software solutions is a wise investment in almost all cases.
Hybrid and Cloud Security
Almost all companies nowadays operate on a cloud or at least a hybrid environment. Protection of your digital assets on the cloud has to be a priority if you make use of this technology. Investing in dynamic security controls and security as a service is a great way to do it.
Risk Assessment
Risk assessments are also known as maturity assessments, and they are analyses that most companies conduct once a year to prioritize their cybersecurity expenditures. In today’s day and age, threats are way too dynamic to be assessed this infrequently and require a continuous approach.
Manpower
As cybersecurity is becoming more important than ever before, so is the demand for security experts. It’s no secret that demand for skilled professionals in the field is high, and for this reason, their average salaries have increased too. Make sure that you hire exactly as many people as you need and remember that outside service providers are an option too.
Cyber insurance
Data breaches and other cyber incidents can damage your company for sizable amounts of money. Negative effects of a cyberattack include loss of data, regulatory and legal fines, downtime, loss of business, and most importantly – a big stain on your reputation. Investing in cyber insurance can be a great move, though it requires a thorough analysis to get the right one for your business.
Main Cybersecurity Spending Areas – How CRQ Can Help
The biggest positive about cyber risk quantification is that it enables security teams to communicate the threats to management in terms that they can understand. It can be used as a common language between them and allow them to be on the same page. Without it, the security team only has metrics and technical controls that can be somewhat hard to understand when you do not have the necessary expertise. Through CRQ analysis, cybersecurity can be elevated into a business issue and have an equal impact on the decision-making process as other financial issues.
Conclusion
To sum it all up, cybersecurity today is a point of interest to higher management in addition to the security team. The financial effect that cyberattacks and incidents can cause is simply too big to be ignored and it needs to be treated as the main concern for everyone. By making use of CRQ techniques, security teams can assess cyber threats in financial terms. This will enable them to better communicate these issues to the executives and allow them to prioritize risks in collaboration with each other.
Founder Dinis Guarda
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