In today’s modern landscape of cybersecurity risk management, the most difficult truth is that the management of cyber risk is getting harder than ever. It is true that today we have the most skilled teams, but it is becoming overwhelming for them to fight cyber-attacks.
Cyber threats are evolving on a constant basis. The organizations around the world are looking for effective ways to protect themselves from cyber-attacks. The right path is to adopt a risk-based approach to cyber security.
When you adopt a risk-based approach, it ensures that the cyber security measures you implement are based on the unique risk profile of your organization. You'll not only be able to save time, but also the efforts and money by avoiding addressing irrelevant threats.
When we talk about Cybersecurity risk management, we are referring to a strategic approach to prioritize threats. Cybersecurity risk management is implemented by organizations to ensure that the most critical threats are handled in a timely and efficient manner. This approach to cybersecurity helps identify, analyze, evaluate, and address threats based on what is the potential impact each threat.
The most important fact acknowledged by a risk management strategy is that organizations cannot eliminate all system vulnerabilities. Also, it is not possible to block cyber-attacks completely. The aim of establishing a cybersecurity risk management initiative is to help organizations stay alert to the most critical flaws, threat trends, and attacks.
If we speak broadly, the cybersecurity risk management process involves the following stages:
Risk identification – The first stage is to evaluate the organization’s environment to identify current or potential risks that could possibly affect business operations.
Risk Assessment – It is important to analyze identified risks to see how likely they are to impact the organization. Another valid question to tackle is that what could be the possible impact.
Control risk – The next step is to define methods, procedures, technologies, or other measures that can help the organization mitigate al the possible risks.
Review controls – The final step is to evaluate how effective controls are at mitigating risks and adding or adjusting controls as per requirements. This should be done on continuous basis.
A cybersecurity risk assessment refers to the process of organizations determining key objectives of the business. After the objectives are determined, the next step is to identify the appropriate IT assets required to fulfil the objectives.
The process involves identification of cyber-attacks. All the vulnerabilities that can have a negative impact on IT assets are figured out and eliminated. It is important for the organization to determine the likelihood of the occurrence and impact of these attacks.
A cybersecurity risk assessment should map out the entire threat environment. A proper analysis is done on how it can impact the business objectives of an organization.
Whatever the result of the assessment is, it should assist security teams and relevant stakeholders to make informed decisions related to the implementation of security measures to mitigate risks.
A cyber or cybersecurity threat refers to a malicious act that damages or steals data. In general, it targets to disrupt digital life. Computer viruses, data breaches, Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, and other attack vectors are included in cyber threats.
We can understand these threats as a possibility a successful cyber-attack. Cyber threats aim to gain unauthorized access, damage, disrupt, or steal an information technology asset, or any other form of sensitive data. And the worst part of these cyber threats is that it can come from within an organization by trusted users or from remote locations by unknown parties.
Common threat categories faced by modern organizations are:
Another reason that can cause as much damage as a malicious cyber attacker are hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, fire, and lightning. Whenever a natural disaster occurs, it can result in loss of data, disruption of services, and the destruction of an organization’s resources. If an organization’s operations are distributed over multiple physical sites or using distributed cloud resources, the effect of natural disasters can be minimized.
These threats include third-party vendors, insider threats, trusted insiders, established hacker collectives, privileged insiders, ad hoc groups, suppliers, and corporate espionage. This category also includes malicious software. Trained security staff and specialized tooling is important to mitigate these threats.
There is a possibility that any user may accidentally download malware or get tricked by social engineering schemes such as phishing campaigns. A storage misconfiguration may expose the valuable and sensitive data of the organization. To prevent and mitigate these threats, it is important to establish an employee training program as those offered by Cyber Cops. It is also crucial to ensure strong security controls. For instance, ensure password managers and monitor critical systems for misconfigurations.
There are common incidents related to system failure. Whenever a system fails, it not only causes data loss but also lead to a disruption in business continuity. It is essential for an organization to make sure that the most critical systems are running on high-quality equipment. They must have redundancy in place to ensure high availability and must be backed up to offer timely support.
It is just the beginning to identify and assess risk. The next question is that what your organization going to do about the risk you find? What will be the mitigation response for managing risk? How are you going to manage residual risk? The most successful risk management teams have a well-thought plan in place to guide their risk response strategy.
The most important third step of response begins by understanding all your options for risk mitigation that your team can employ. They can be either be technological or best practice methods, or a combination of both. The technological risk mitigation measures include - encryption, firewalls, threat hunting software, and engaging automation for increased system efficiency.
Best practices for risk mitigation are:
Well-equipped organizations know how to effectively implement the risk response measures and risk management plan. They prioritize risks as well as mitigation solutions using accurate data from real-world applications.
In today’s world, companies have come to use technology in every aspect of life - from day-to-day operations to business-critical processes. This has made their IT systems larger and more complex than ever. More people, devices, and software have joined the computer network. This is due to the explosion of cloud services, the rise of remote work, and the growing reliance on third-party IT service providers. As an IT system continuously grows, so does its attack surface.
Cyber risk management initiatives by Cyber Cops offer companies a way to map and manage their shifting attack surfaces. This ultimately improves security posture of the organizations and nations.