Undoubtedly, the Internet plays a crucial role in accelerating companies’ growth. It provides businesses a chance to establish a global client base. Under the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic, it also helps maintain productivity with the remote working trend.
Despite the benefits that technological advancements bring along, cybersecurity issues are still a major threat. With a growing reliance on technology, we are now exposed to more critical cyber-attacks than ever. As our use of the web grows, threats follow the same trajectory.
To navigate the complex cybersecurity landscape, organizations have started embracing the trend of practicing internal risk management. By mitigating cyber threats based on their business nature, decision-makers can minimize the impact of attacks. Mostly inspired by its long-lived version adopted by financial sectors, cybersecurity risk management translates to a proactive approach to coping with risk factors.
This article is going to walk you through how security professionals harness the power of cybersecurity risk management. We will cover everything from what cyber risk management is and how it works to tips on establishing a thorough risk management strategy.
What is Cyber Risk Management?
Taking the idea of risk management in other industries, IT experts apply it to fight against cyber risks. A competent risk management structure in cybersecurity is tailored to identify, assess, and respond to potential threats. Instead of just emphasizing existing vulnerabilities, a robust cybersecurity risk management strategy can also locate uncertainties and evaluate their possible impacts.
Ideally, a well-established cybersecurity risk management strategy puts organizations on the proactive side. It is about how well you can manage uncertainties, develop protective mechanisms, and get yourself prepared. It also helps with a more efficient allocation of resources on hand.
The setting up of a cyber risk management strategy involves the following six aspects:
- Alignment to business goals and objectives
- Risk identification
- Risk assessments
- Types of risk response
- Continuous risk monitoring
- Internal communication and reporting
Read on and understand how to cover all these important sectors.
How does Cyber Risk Management work
Compiling a special team
Similar to developing any other enterprise strategy, establishing a cybersecurity risk management plan requires a compatible team. Assembling a trustworthy team with relevant knowledge is always the first step. Ideally, the team should involve management-level leaders, a compliance professional to handle regulations, business unit managers, and IT experts.
Following a Framework
The next big task is to set up concrete objectives for the strategy based on cybersecurity risk management frameworks. One of the most dominant frameworks is constructed by NIST, highlighting seven essential steps on how to set goals.
- Prepare: Essential activities to prepare the organization to manage security and privacy risks
- Categorize: Categorize the system and information processed, stored, and transmitted based on an impact analysis
- Select: Select the set of NIST SP 800-53 controls to protect the system based on risk assessment(s)
- Implement: Implement the controls and document how controls are deployed
- Assess: Assess to determine if the controls are in place, operating as intended, and producing the desired results
- Authorize: A senior official makes a risk-based decision to authorize the system (to operate)
- Monitor: Continuously monitor control implementation and risks to the system
Conducting regular cyber risk assessment
A cybersecurity risk assessment is to understand, manage, and eliminate cyber vulnerabilities in your system. Knowing organizational weaknesses gives you a clearer idea of where you need to improve.
Start with auditing your data by answering the following questions:
- What kind of data do we collect?
- How and where do we store this data?
- How do we protect and document the data?
- How long do we keep data?
- Who has access internally and externally to the data?
- Is the place where we are storing the data properly secured?
Moving on, define the parameters of the risk assessment with these questions:
- What is the purpose of the assessment?
- What is the scope of the assessment?
- Are there any priorities or constraints I should be aware of that could affect the assessment?
- Who do I need access to in the organization to get all the information I need?
- What risk model does the organization use for risk analysis?
Why is Cyber Risk Management important to your organization?
In the digital era, a well-built cybersecurity risk management strategy empowers organizations with many benefits, including:
Protecting the business image and reputation
For larger enterprises that hold millions of personal data, a data breach basically erases all the customer relationships built with hard work. Imagine accidentally leaking your customers’ data because of a ransomware attack. Your company would instantly lose trust among customers. The data leaking of Facebook before has been a powerful proof of how this matter can affect any brand image. A strong cybersecurity risk management strategy prioritizes critical risks, keeping you one step ahead of attacks and protecting your reputation.
Reducing the workload of your IT team
Despite the importance of cybersecurity, it should not be a sore matter that the in-house IT team spends excessive time on. A good security management plan supports IT professionals by minimizing their efforts spent on dealing with crises. By freeing up your IT team’s capacity, you can then maximize employees’ productivity on other initiatives or projects.
Preventing revenue loss
Financial impact is the most obvious benefit of having a vigorous risk management plan. An effective plan can save your cost on
- data recovery
- fines or penalties for data compromised
- potential revenue loss because of downtime
- labor costs
- and many more
Gaining a competitive edge
Implementing a successful cybersecurity risk management plan protects your business interests and prevents information from falling into competitors’ hands. An alternative way to win target customers over is given that data is prioritized by online users worldwide. The dedication your organization puts into building a secure system gives clients the confidence to share their data with you.
Tips on developing an effective Cyber Risk Management Strategy
Build a Cybersecurity Risk Management Culture
For a cyber risk management strategy to work, leaders must first build a top-down culture of cybersecurity throughout the organization. This is the strongest way to educate and keep team members aware of the importance of security. Here are some must-have elements in establishing a cyber-sensitive company culture:
- Defining a monitoring structure
- Facilitating internal communication on security intent and managing expectations
- Setting up security training
For good cyberattack prevention, general mindsets and behaviors within the organization are the key deciding factors. Every member of an organization, even the executive board,should acknowledge his or her responsibility in managing cyber risk across the organization. This includes all stakeholders and not just the management level. Try your best to ensure an appropriate level of employee involvement and accountability. The development and profiling of a new corporate culture require:
- well-informed structural and organizational choices
- a detailed description of roles and responsibilities
- appropriate definitions of organizational units and work scopes
- concrete reporting and governance lines
- granular benchmarks (most of the time, industry-specific)
- reasonable budget estimation
This is how you can tap into a cyber security-oriented culture, reminding every member of their essence role and responsibility in protecting the organization. More tips are available here to help you improve your organization’s defense
Ensure Proper Cyber Hygiene
Apart from prepping teams mentally, incorporating good cyber hygiene practices is another aspect of cyber risk management. Cyber hygiene is the general term for practices aiming to maintain the health of users, devices, networks, and data. It works similarly to personal hygiene, in which you follow a set of precautionary measures to protect yourself. For organizations, some of the popular action items include:
- Allowlisting or blocklisting of applications and websites
- Authentication and access control
- Backup strategy
- Cloud access security broker (CASB)
- Encryption
- Endpoint security
- Network segmentation
- Secure remote control and access
- Log management
- Effective monitoring
Collective Responsibility
The burden of maintaining cybersecurity and organizational risk management is simply too much to be solely handled by the IT team. To be clear, cybersecurity risk management is for certain, a specific niche that requires in-depth expertise. In other words, not everyone can do it. However, organizations should also reinforce the fact that everyone participates by identifying and reporting issues. This can only be achieved by a comprehensive risk management workflow. Leaders can promote a universal response mechanism so everyone knows how to detect and report suspicious activities.
The importance of collective accountability has been on the rise because of advanced social engineering tactics. In fact, most of the cyber risks nowadays are spread from an individual level. Prevalent attack methods such as phishing take advantage of individual, ill-equipped employees and are then escalated to a more threatening level. It often only takes one small mistake to compromise your information security, network security or data security. Just look at how malware at one of Target's vendors led to the leaking of 110 million credit card numbers. This is why you should keep in mind to develop a holistic cyber risk management approach that covers every teammate. Because it only takes a small careless mistake to endanger and devastate the entire workforce.
Invest in Security Awareness Training
Further, engage your workforce with effective security awareness training to prevent loss from the user’s end. With an efficient delivery of the latest information and fundamental knowledge verification, security awareness training increases employee’s resilience against cyber attacks not only at the office but also at home and on the move. This should especially be taken into account because of the rising remote working trend around the globe. Chances are, more and more of your team members are accessing data from afar, making your organization more prone to cybersecurity threats. Hence, you need well-trained staff at all levels who are capable of identifying and mitigating risks.
Make sure you educate your staff on topics from corporate policies for working with data, to the protocol for responding to threats. Providing a reliable, go-to contact person for employees is also a wise option. A bonus tip is not to underestimate the effect of educating your vendors and 3rd-party agencies too.
Share Relevant Information
To excel in the team sport of cybersecurity, cross-departmental cooperation is a must. Internal communication is a must-have component in updating and informing all stakeholders. Put more effort into ensuring that all levels are aware of the impact brought by cyberattacks through information-sharing tools, whether it’s the dashboard, an alert system, a forum, or anything else. Simply provide a medium that your organization's community can contribute and connect with each other to stay involved. Some companies may choose to invest in a security rating tool, visualizing the risks with numbers for non-technical personnel to understand.
Prioritize Cybersecurity Risks
Your organization only has a restricted budget and staff, and it is impossible to put equal effort into finding solutions to combat every single cybersecurity risk. Instead, prioritize what cybersecurity risks to focus on addressing based on metrics like cybersecurity trends, possible impact, the likelihood of incidents to happen, and when they may materialize (near term, medium term, long term). In simple words, find the threat that matters the most, and implement measures accordingly.
Encourage Different Points of View
Leverage the collective wisdom of the entire organization. While fundamental IT knowledge is important, you must not ignore how attackers may get creative. Drawing insights from tests and assessments, or through IT professionals, is essential. However, absorbing the viewpoints from different sources sometimes helps you to think outside the box. Do your best to embrace diverse opinions on security. Maybe someone from the Design department noticed a new trend of cybersecurity attacks from a day out with friends. Or an admin may learn something from a newspaper article. Encouraging team members with different capabilities can work magic in identifying more risks and scenarios.
Emphasize Speed
In the cybersecurity world, speed determines the success of both the defender and the attacker. When your organization is facing a risk, a rapid response can greatly help in averting the impact. When you are preparing yourself for potential attacks, the speed of how a product can run or how fast your team can get the job done is crucial too. Improving speed in many aspects is a superior investment in the cybersecurity defense of an organization.
Implement an Incident Response Plan
An incident response plan can act as a follow-up to speed up your response. Come up with a set of written instructions that outline your organization's response to security incidents. Not only can it reduce the mean time to respond to a threat, but also be a good general guideline for members across the organization.
The incident response plan needs to give details on:
- potential impacts of the incident
- allocation of roles and duties
- identify key personnel
- give a concrete timeline as a reference
- elaborate on ways to handle negative publicity or customer complaints
Read this article to know more about how you level up your incident response plan.
Vendor risk management
Remember: your cyber risk management challenge doesn't end with your internal assets and structure. For industries that rely on external assistance or are connected closely with third-party vendors and their vendors (4th-parties), there’s more. Take vendors into account when you consolidate a solid risk management plan. From education and training to response networks to monitoring, they should be seen as a part of your team too.
Cyber Risk Management with Sangfor
A leading global vendor of IT infrastructure solutions, Sangfor offers state-of-the-art cyber security solutions for organizations of all sizes. All the existing data suggests that prevention trumps actual incident management. Well-chosen protective solutions not only subdue critical situations but also minimize damage in the long run.
Explore our vast array of products and services, if you are looking to be safeguarded with industry-leading solutions. When in doubt, simply get in touch with us to address your concerns.
