Effective Cybersecurity Risk Management

effective cybersecurity risk management

To fight off malicious attacks and to be a strong contender, you should prepare your business for confrontation. Read the article to find out how to manage cyber risks and about virtual CISO services, who can help you do this effectively. 

What Is Cybersecurity Risk Management? 

It is a prioritization of dealing with threats according to their business impact. It is almost impossible to protect all assets equally. It would take a lot of time and money, so it is smarter to end up focussing the efforts on the most valuable and critical things for business (for example, intellectual property). 

Let's see the real-life example for better understanding the importance of the prioritization approach to risks. Imagine a war, wounded and doctors. Some of the patients have arterial bleeding, and some hurt the leg. Both need help. But if there is a shortage of doctors in the war to help everyone at once, then someone who has a broken leg can wait a bit. The business works the same. Prioritization is the way of surviving. 

How To Manage Cybersecurity Risks? 

Know The Company's Security Architecture 

It might be critical to provide a speedy reaction when a security breach is present and contain further damages. Understanding the security architecture allows noticing the threat faster, seeing how far it has spread, what endpoints are infected, and localizing the threat. Understanding the security landscape allows faster identification of all affected assets, resources, and their connections to ensure that when containment measures are removed, the incident does not come back or propagate further through the organization. The sooner you see a pest in your environment, the less harm it will do to your business. We recommend having short-term, long-term containment strategies ready and having a redundant system back-up. 

security management digital surveillance

Identify The Pain Points And Assess Risks 

Think proactive and try to find security gaps before they cause breaches. It allows saving money, business, and the status of a reliable organization. To do this, you may use security services of vulnerability testing like vulnerabilities assessment and penetration testing. Choosing a vendor for your environment security assessment, ask to prepare a report with an explanation of criticality and the business impact of the gaps. 

Find A Team 

Find a team to address emerging security threats. To complete a team that can fully meet all your business needs is a challenging and costly task. Especially considering that cyber attackers don't have working hours. To fully secure your business, most likely, you will need security experts from outside. For example, if your staff monitors your network during working hours, you will need people to work at night. 

Teach The Employees 

According to McKinsey research, during 2012-2017, half of the breaches they studied had an insider component, which means it has been caused by employees. The reason for almost half of the insider-related violations was negligence. During the training, it is essential to emphasize the meaning of cybersecurity and the proper behavior of the employees. Find good examples, use numbers to illustrate the situation, don't use technical language, and explain that simple actions may save the company. 

cybersec policy

Security Policy 

Cyber security policy is the list of what is secure for the organization and what is not. It should be formed in a document for every employee to have a clear understanding of each risk, relevant controls and strategies needed, and how they can maintain the company's security. A security policy must identify all of a company's assets as well as all the potential threats to those assets. The efficient security policy should cover security from end-to- end across the organization, be practical, have space for updates, and be focused on the business goals of your organization. 

Find The Most Suitable Risk Management Framework 

A risk management framework is the set of processes used to identify potential threats to an organization and define the strategy for eliminating or minimizing the impact of these risks. Risk management framework helps manage risks comprehensively and with an understanding of the interrelationship/correlation among various risks. The most frequently embraced cybersecurity frameworks are PCI DSS, ISO 27001/27002, CIS Critical Security Controls, and NIST Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Security. 

Prepare An Incident Response Plan 

It is vital to have a well-structured and easy-to-implement incident response plan for an emergency situation. It is a set of tools and processes that your security team can use to identify, eliminate, and recover from cybersecurity threats. It should be created individually, according to your company's specifics. You need an incident response plan to respond quickly and not make critical decisions in case of an emergency. An incident response plan ensures that when a security breach happens, the right personnel and procedures are in place to deal with an incident effectively. Having an incident response plan in place ensures that a structured investigation can take place to provide a targeted response to contain and remediate the threat. 

How To Start Cybersec Solutions? 

With the development of business, the need for protection against cyberattacks is also growing. The number of endpoints increases, more devices enter the network, more valuable information appears, which needs more protection. Rapidly growing businesses may not have a complete security program, full-time CISO (chief information security officer), and in-house resources with deep insights and knowledge on how secure operations should be developed, implemented, run, and managed.

Final Thoughts On Cybersecurity Risk Management 

Once you begin to delve into the topic and importance of cybersecurity, it can seem complicated and confusing. But it is better to start late than to ignore all the risks that are around. Implement cybersecurity risk management to ensure business continuity and safety for you and your clients.

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