Since many frameworks out there are heavily driven by controls, there is a tendency to take a bottoms-up approach to assessing a security landscape. And while I'm not discounting the rigor behind this approach, evaluating every control gap, security weakness, and asset in one's environment is no small feat. At some point, the law of diminishing returns must be factored into the equation.
Rachel Slabotsky is Senior Manager, Professional Services, for RiskLens
RiskLens helps organizations quantify loss events in financial terms, taking a top-down approach to risk management. Below I will summarize some of the key benefits of taking a top-down approach to help inform decisions relating to controls optimization:
The first step in this top-down approach is identifying and prioritizing the most probable and impactful loss events that make up the organization's risk landscape. The RiskLens platform’s Rapid Risk Assessment capability helps CISOs accomplish this objective in less than one week.
The efficiency of this approach is due to the following:
The RiskLens platform leverages industry data and inputs from the organization to generate produce flexible, customizable reporting in financial terms, as in the example below:
Identifying and prioritizing your organization's greatest loss exposure in financial terms helps CISOs focus on what matters most - the controls that have the greatest impact on top risk. Current approaches that rely on existing controls and frameworks can sometimes fail to make that connection.
In other words, rather than spending time understanding every control gap and weakness in your environment, you can save time and also better prioritize investment opportunities by taking a step back and asking the following questions:
RiskLens' Risk Treatment Analysis capability allows organizations to assess and compare risk treatment options and demonstrate the ROI of controls investments for reducing cyber risk, which allows you to focus on the impact of each identified control as it relates to your top risks. Below is an example of the decision-making capabilities of this feature:
Taking a top down risk-based approach to prioritizing controls helps to:
RiskLens helps organizations better justify, prioritize and manage the cybersecurity investment decisions and risks that accompany digital growth and transformation. Schedule a demo of the RiskLens platform.