Cybersecurity Risk Management: Why does it matter?

Risk management is a concept that has been around as long as companies have had assets to protect. The simplest example may be insurance. Life, health, auto, and other insurance are all designed to help a person protect against losses. Risk management also extends to physical devices, such as doors and locks to protect homes and vehicles, vaults to safeguard money and precious jewels, and police, fire, and CCTV to protect against other physical risks. As data and IT infrastructure become more valuable by the day, cybersecurity risk management is increasingly important for enterprises with a steep cost for noncompliance or extensive, unaddressed vulnerabilities.

What is Cybersecurity Risk Management?

Cybersecurity risk management is the process of identifying potential risks, assessing the impact of those risks, and planning how to respond if the risks become a reality. It is important for every organization, no matter the size or industry, to develop a cybersecurity management plan. However, it is also important to know that not all risks, even if identified in advance, can be eliminated. That said, even in those cases, there are steps that your organization can take to reduce the potential impact of a cyber-attack.

In order to stay competitive, today’s organizations are expected to embrace and undergo digital transformation, a task that is easier said than done while accounting for security. Effective cybersecurity risk management allows businesses to confidently embrace emerging solutions and leverage third- and fourth-party vendors without having to worry about compromising their cybersecurity posture.

Why is it important?

Cybersecurity risk management is important because it helps a business assess its current cybersecurity risk profile. This informs decisions the security organization will make moving forward in order to reduce the level of risk and address vulnerabilities. Cybersecurity risk management is also important because it helps to bring about situational awareness within a security organization. Simply put, analysts don’t know what they don’t know. Awareness is the ability to look at all the information available, recognize what’s important, and act accordingly.

It’s essential to have a clear understanding of the risks in your organization and those that might arise in the future. You can assess awareness according to three distinct levels:

• Situational awareness: An organization understands the critical – people, data, and process – and operational elements for executing information-security strategy.
• Situational ignorance: Organizations assume everything is OK without considering the impact of people, data, and processes. They may be implementing security controls and awareness training, but there is no straightforward process or strategy that aligns to risk reduction and mitigation. In this scenario, budgets continue to creep ever upward.
• Situational arrogance: Organizations continue to spend big while being routinely compromised and breached. In fact, they may actually take into account people, data, and processes, but they fail to act because of other budgetary priorities. In this scenario, it may only be a matter of time before a business’ reputation is severely damaged due to its continued inability to defend against attacks.

Cybersecurity risk management is the overarching umbrella under which specific kinds of security risk mitigations fall. Implementing a strategy to assess, identify, mitigate, and remediate vulnerability and risk is critical to every security organization operating on any level in any sector.

How can Cybersecurity Risk Management benefit your organization?

In the digital era, a well-built cybersecurity risk management strategy empowers organizations with many benefits.

Protecting the business image and reputation

For larger enterprises that hold millions of personal big data, a data breach basically erases all the customer relationships you’ve worked hard on building. 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 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

The 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 due to downtime, labor costs and so much more!

Gaining a competitive edge

Implementing a successful cybersecurity risk management plan protects your business interests and prevents the information from falling into competitors’ hands. It is also an alternative way to win target customers over, 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.

Cybersecurity Risk Management Process

Cyberattacks are not random. If you know where to look, there are usually signs of a planned attack against an organization. Telltale markers of an imminent attack include mentions of the organization on the dark web, the registration of similar domain names to be used for phishing attacks, and confidential information – such as user account credentials – put up for sale.

Many organizations don’t maintain an ongoing vulnerability management (VM) program for their cybersecurity risk after they conduct a Cybersecurity Maturity Assessment and take initial steps to bolster security.

Conclusion

Cybersecurity and compliance are complex, and becoming more so as sophisticated threats arise throughout the world. Comprehensive cybersecurity driven by management can provide flexible and responsive solutions to these problems and set up organizations with a more secure and robust infrastructure.