How Can You Be Fluent in Cyber Risk?
Do you know that 91% of businesses say their boards believe that cybersecurity presents some level of business risk? These numbers were released in a recent report by the Advanced Cyber Security Center. The report also highlighted that 64% of those respondents also agreed to the role of their Organization’s board in digital transformation initiatives was a maturing partnership. One thing is quite clear with the report; there is a significant gap and these numbers exhibit just how far many Organizations have to go to reach a full partnership.
This relationship is well-versed in the digital agenda, cyber risks, and priorities, but being informed about the overall IT and related investments need to move to the next level, which is a state of more secure systems and it will also provide valuable feedback in the meetings.
But still, with cyber risk clearly on their minds, why are the companies acting so slow to build a risk-aware culture? Maybe because top executives are not so tech-savvy. Actually, in 2018 almost half of the Organizations reported that their digital transformation initiatives were being led by the board of directors or CEO. Therefore, it’s not a leap to assume that these Organizations understand the cybersecurity impact of digital transformation on their overall security and risk posture. These Organizations need a reminder of the four crucial things that are necessary to close this gap and build a transformative culture that is equipped to proactively manage cyber risk.
A Consistent Cyber Risk Framework
If you think that cyber risk is just contained within the IT realm, then you must be aware that cyber risk can hide anywhere in a digital Organization and can create security vulnerabilities and regulatory compliance problems. A lot of systems and data are scattered across the company to monitor and protect. And, in most cases, there may be different controls in place for different teams, functions, and locations. So, if you can 100% bulletproof one part of the business, your customers won’t care if a breach happens in a different area.
The key to implementing comprehensive and consistent controls across a company doesn’t need a complete renovation or militant deployment of one single tool, as both are impractical. Rather, businesses need to create a standard framework for understanding and managing application and infrastructure risk throughout the Organization. This effort should be about orchestrating controls, maximizing required remediation, and providing visibility into vulnerabilities. A standard cyber risk framework forms a constant language that allows everyone across the Organization to understand, communicate and address security and compliance risks.
Real-time visibility into Cyber Risk
For managing cyber risk, you should be able to see it first. If a standard cyber risk framework is in place, a closed-loop process for discovering, prioritizing, and remediating vulnerabilities in a timely manner is quite crucial.
As IT and development architectures are complex, there should be real-time visibility, especially where microservices are being used in a lightning-fast environment of innovation. Additionally, the visibility should be provided to the right people at the right time. Granular details must be provided to development and IT teams so that they can investigate and address issues within their purview. Risk managers should be able to validate remediations that are made across the board. And executives & boards should have a strategic view of the overall security posture and risk profile of their company.
Integrating security across operations
Many companies have already adopted a DevOps model to increase flexibility and ability while accelerating time to market and both of these are critical for supporting digital transformation. However, security and risk cannot be considered a separate component of the effort. These two factors must be fully integrated across the DevOps process. This secure DevOps approach allows businesses to fuel innovation while still treating cyber risk as a priority. Additionally, orchestration is required to integrate security and risk controls in DevOps workflows without creating additional complexity or any delays.
Automation
Another key component to agile DevSecOps is automation that supports delivery timeframes. Continuous innovation and continuous delivery require continuous application and infrastructure testing, which is quite labor-intensive. The different tools that we employ across different parts of the business work differently and they have their own way to categorize and present results. To collect, consolidate, and correlate that data can add further delay and may introduce errors into the process. But automation combined with orchestration, DevSecOps can scale vulnerability testing across the entire enterprise to speed execution and centralize management of the disparate testing tools, thus reducing complexity.
The top cybersecurity company in Bangalore, Neumetric believes that digital transformation can bring big business rewards, but at the same time, it increases the cyber risk. So, if digital transformation is a strategic, executive, or board-level initiative in your organization, then cyber risk should also be a strategic, executive, and board-level concern, which should be operationalized throughout the company.
Neumetric, a cybersecurity services, consulting & product Organization, can help you reduce your security cost without compromising your security posture. Our years of in-depth experience in handling security for Organizations of all sizes & in multiple industries make it easier for us to quickly execute cost-cutting activities that do not bring value to you, while you continue focusing on the Business objectives of the Organization.
