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Cyber Risk = Business Risk
Cyber risk is a top 3 business concern - but cyber risk isn’t being evaluated in terms that the business can understand. The role of cybersecurity is to protect the business from financial harm – but if you can’t see cyber risk in financial terms, how can you fulfill this mission?
You simply cannot.
Technical evaluations on risk and qualitative heat maps can't get you there – it is time for business-aligned security, where cyber risk is assessed in financial terms and security programs are managed based on how well they reduce financial risk to the business.
See Financial Risk from Cyber
When cyber incidents can result in tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, CISOs must learn to think and act in terms of enterprise risk.
Report to the Board and C-Suite
Regulators increasingly demand that boards guarantee true financial disclosure of cyber risk. Boards and the C-Suite are demanding CISOs up their game.
Truly Support the Business
New products, new markets, new partnerships and M&A - in the digital age, cyber risk enters into all aspects of decision-making.
"Controls and procedures should enable companies to identify cybersecurity risks and incidents [and] assess and analyze their impact on a company’s business.”
SEC Cybersecurity Disclosure Guidance
FAIR is "different from more traditional threat assessment methods because it calculates the cost of risk based on a business' broader concerns...the risk based system can help companies better understand the costs of cyber threats."
The Wall Street Journal's WSJ Pro Cybersecurity Newsletter
The Digital Revolution and the Emergence of New Risks
Changing the Game
Business processes have digitalized at an accelerated pace over the past decade. While business executives leveraged this digitalization to enable phenomenal business efficiencies and growth, it also brought a new range of technology risks that need to be understood and managed.
- The increasing impact of cyber events: The 2017 NotPetya campaign demonstrated how wide scoping and immediate the financial impact of a cyber event can be to your organization. When a single incident can lead to hundreds of millions of dollars in losses in a matter of months, cyber risk has understandably become a source of major concern for business executives and corporate boards.
- There has been little financial accountability for cybersecurity: Most often, cybersecurity risk has been communicated as a technical concern and simple business questions such as “Are we doing enough?” or “Are we spending too much or too little?” get unsatisfactory responses or none at all. The status quo is no longer sustainable and you must translate cybersecurity risk into financial terms.
- There is no such thing as perfect security: It’s all about balancing the digital opportunities with the associated risk and achieving a sustainable risk posture. You know your teams are taxed to the limit with seemingly endless priorities – by assessing cyber risk in financial terms, you’re armed with a true roadmap for prioritizing your response. Tackling the areas that represent the biggest financial risk to the firm first.
Changing How Risk and Security Deliver Value to the Business
Demanding a New Approach
The overall governance of cyber risk is undergoing a deep transformation. Board and executives can no longer delegate risk decisions to IT and must ‘own’ cyber risk. CIROs, CISOs and other risk and security professionals must use the power of cyber risk management to deliver value and influence business decision making
- Cyber risk = business risk: as part of their fiduciary responsibility towards shareholders and customers, boards and business executives are expected to incorporate the management of cyber risk as part of their business strategy
- The changing role of the risk profession: risk and security professionals are no longer the defenders of the organization. They are no longer the arbiters of what is good and what is bad. They must become the facilitators of a balance between protecting the organization and running the business
- Talking the language of business: risk and security professionals must learn about and communicate the impact that cyber risk has on business outcomes in a language that the business can understand, e.g. dollars and cents
- The organizational impact: interestingly, an increasing number of CIROs and CISOs no longer work in IT and are transitioning to the business risk side of the organization.
Enable Financially Driven Business Decision Making
A Must for the Business
The effectiveness of CIROs, CISOs and other risk and security professionals as facilitators of business decision making depends on the implementation of a financially-driven, business-aligned approach to managing cyber risk.
- Beyond FUD: conducting board and management-level presentations about cyber risk at a technical or qualitative level, often based on FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt), doesn’t allow for objective business analysis or effective decision-making and should become a thing of the past
- A modern communication approach will capture and translate the wealth of information that an organization is already collecting, conscious or not, in financial terms that the business can understand and use as a basis for effective decision making
Adopt a Proven Cyber Risk Quantification Approach
Drive True Cyber Risk Management
Consider RiskLens to quantify the true measure of cyber risk, dramatically improve the communication and the decision-making among all stakeholders and optimize your security investments.
- RiskLens is the leading provider of cyber risk quantification software that helps business executives achieve digital resiliency by managing cyber risk from the business perspective
- RiskLens pioneered cyber risk quantification by building its solutions from the ground up on FAIR, the only international standard quantitative model for cybersecurity and operational risk
- Our solutions are purpose-built to solve the pervasive challenges that exist in merging financial, operational, and IT security data to deliver improved analytics, reduce cyber risk, and sustain business value
"If CISOs push back on quantifying potential loss, I find that unacceptable as a board director. CISOs need to advance."
eBook: An Executives Guide to Cyber Risk Economics
A Must Read Resource
Three time CISO, and creator of the FAIR model which makes cyber risk quantification a reality, Jack Jones provides a high-level introduction to managing cyber risk from the business perspective. You’ll learn how the FAIR model powers cost-effective analysis for security initiatives on par with other forms of Enterprise Risk Management.
Read this eBook and never be satisfied again with qualitative, high-medium-low or red-green-yellow risk ratings.
November 15, 2018
Schedule a Demo
Let us help you measure your risk in financial terms. RiskLens offers solutions that measure and analyze cybersecurity risk based on the international FAIR standard.