INTRODUCTION
The cyber risk landscape is more interconnected today than ever before. One risk can snowball into several more, requiring different management and mitigation approaches. A prime example of this is the COVID-19 pandemic which began as a health and safety risk but quickly evolved into business continuity, remote access, and cyber risk and has changed how the world works and lives forever.
As the world went into lockdown and businesses went online in 2020, malware attacks increased by 358%. Over the next year, cyberattacks across the world increased by 125 percent.
Amidst this fraught risk environment, the role of cyber risk leaders, such as the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), chief security officer (CSO), and others, have gone through a paradigm shift. The cyber risk leader has long been considered to be the enforcer of rules pertaining to cybersecurity, telling organizations what not to do in order to prevent breaches. Today, they need to take on a more powerful, strategic, and business-oriented leadership role where they can embed cybersecurity into core business strategy. Gartner predicts that by 2025, 40 percent of boards will include a dedicated cybersecurity committee.
Cyber risk leaders have an essential role in aligning the cyber risk management program with organizational goals and the overall operating strategy to ensure a watertight security posture. They must also take the lead in integrating cyber governance, risk, and compliance into the larger GRC framework. This also aligns with the recently announced cybersecurity risk management rules by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
To better align to the evolving role, CISOs or CSOs need to undertake a connected approach – connecting not just internally across the enterprise but connecting to the latest developments in the cyber space, such as apps, cloud, automation, etc., connecting cyber to the business aspect and industry trends, and more, to deliver a more holistic and forward-looking cyber governance, risk, and compliance strategy.
In this eBook, we delve deeper into the five key connections that today’s modern CISO and cyber risk leaders must make to enable secure and resilient cyber strategies.
Connecting Internally
Until now, the security team alone was responsible for protecting an organization from cyber attacks. They have been the ones that set down the rules of what not to do to prevent cyberattacks. Unfortunately, this approach is not effective enough to meet new challenges posed by a rapidly evolving cyber risk and threat landscape. Increased digitalization and the growing popularity of hybrid working models have resulted in a highly fragmented IT infrastructure, significantly expanding the surface area of attacks.
Traditional cybersecurity measures spearheaded by the CISO or CSO office are not enough to protect the organization across endpoints. There must be an enterprise-wide understanding of new and emerging cyber risks. Every member of the organization, from the leadership team to the frontline staff, must be aware of cyber risks, be equipped to identify them, and make the right decisions to mitigate the risk.
The modern cyber risk leader needs to go beyond the role of enforcer to that of an advocate. Today, they are responsible for ensuring effective and open communication about cyber risk management across the organization. They must provide strategic counsel to the leadership team and help shape organizational cyber risk strategy. Most important, they must drive risk and security awareness amongst employees to ensure risk awareness and alertness across every level of the organization. As the focus shifts to cyber resilience over mere attack protection, a cyber risk leader has a critical role to play in ensuring a cyber risk-aware mindset amongst employees and providing training on addressing evolving cyber threats.
Connecting Apps and Content – APIs, Automation, Cloud
The cyber risk landscape is evolving at an unprecedented pace, rendering traditional and manual methods of cyber risk management untenable for ensuring effective risk visibility and foresight, threat mitigation, and compliance with changing regulations. Cyber risk management is now a business imperative and must undergo the same level of digital transformation as the rest of the organization. A robust, technology-based security infrastructure is now a non-negotiable priority. And the cyber risk leader must lead the organization’s drive to digitally transform its security platforms.
A secure cloud strategy, an in-depth understanding of the cloud providers’ security stack, coupled with investments in the right platforms to automate security functions is a critical responsibility of the cyber risk leader. Investing in AI and ML-powered tools to ensure seamless vigilance, real-time analytics, and timely threat detection, is critical for ensuring failproof cybersecurity. Continuous control monitoring (CCM) -- the automated and continuous testing and monitoring of cloud security controls -- enables organizations to proactively identify vulnerabilities, improve cloud security and compliance posture, and reduce audit costs.
Organizations today also leverage APIs to integrate with several third parties to stay on top of evolving regulatory frameworks, effectively manage vulnerabilities, and more. The cyber risk leader must lead the effort to not only have a sound API and app strategy but also address the associated security risks.
Connecting Risks for Better Visibility
Managing enterprise and cyber risk is a complex and challenging task today. Technological advancements are changing the world as we know it. The expansion of the internet, widespread cloud adoption, and increasing penetration of smartphones and mobile internet have brought the world closer than ever before. At the same time, they have created a complex and deeply interconnected web of risks, where each risk can trigger another, creating a domino effect that can result in severe consequences.
As the digital dependencies between people, processes, and organizations continue to intensify, cyber risk leaders must understand the interconnected risk landscape and the cascading effect of risks. For example, cyber risks do not exist in isolation. A cyber incident at an organization can not only disrupt operations, cause severe financial damage, and negatively impact reputation but also impact several other connected organizations. The CISO and enterprise risk leaders must ensure comprehensive visibility into the overall risk posture of the organization and risk relationships, for a more holistic approach to cyber risk management.
Connecting to Industry Trends
No organization exists in a vacuum. It is part of an ecosystem and is impacted by events and trends occurring within the larger market it operates in. The cyber risk leader must stay updated with changing and emerging risks and continuously improve the organization’s decision-making abilities and security posture. And as a strategic advisor to the C-suite, the CISO or CSO must also stay abreast of the latest trends in cybersecurity and provide decision-makers with market intelligence for strengthening the organization’s cyber defenses. They must provide the leadership team with information on cybersecurity best practices, guidance from supervisory authorities, upcoming regulations and regulatory changes, and intelligence on significant cyber incidents. They must help decision-makers understand the impact of these external events and trends on the organization as well as the industry. These insights are invaluable for business leaders to make decisions that are aligned with their risk appetite and the overarching business strategy.
Connecting to the Business
Cyber risk is one of the biggest risks to today’s digital-first organizations, with the potential to impact every aspect of the business – financial repercussions, reputational damage and lack of stakeholder trust, derailment of day-to-day activities, and more. Cyber risk is directly linked to business health, and cyber risk strategies must be aligned with the organization’s business goals. The role of the cyber risk leader is moving beyond the mere technical aspects of security to a more strategic one.
Embedding security into the heart of the enterprise’s strategic business goals and objectives is an important new responsibility of the cyber risk leader. They are responsible for explaining the critical link between cyber resilience and business growth to the business leaders and enabling them to make better-informed and cyber-aware decisions.
Cyber risk quantification can help CISOs and CSOs to effectively communicate the cybersecurity posture and investment decisions to the leadership team and board. Expressing cyber risk exposure in financial terms can help organizations make an informed decision on the next course of action: pass the risk by buying cyber insurance, forgo the risk when the investment required is more than the financial implications of the risk, or act based on their risk appetite.
How MetricStream Can Help
The role of the cyber risk leader will continue to evolve and expand as organizations adapt to the new digital economy. Not only will CISOs and CSOs have a seat in the boardroom, but organizations are also expected to institute cybersecurity teams at the board level to ensure cyber health and resilience across the extended enterprise.
MetricStream offers a suite of purpose-built IT and cyber risk and compliance software solutions, aligned to established security standards, which help cyber risk leaders and security teams strengthen their organization’s cyber GRC posture. MetricStream CyberGRC provides comprehensive visibility into the organization’s overall cyber risk and compliance posture and helps prioritize security investments. The solution comes pre-packaged with content and industry frameworks including ISO 27001, NIST CSF, and NIST SP800-53, and can help the security organization map policies to IT controls and policy exceptions.
Cyber risk leaders are empowered to implement a comprehensive, enterprise-wide approach to cyber risk management and compliance. This will help build confidence with the leadership, board, and regulators. The robust technology platform provides real-time visibility into cyber risks including vendor and third-party risks and offers mitigation measures through risk quantification and contextual risk information across processes and assets. Cyber risk teams can correlate vulnerabilities with IT assets and prioritize remediation efforts based on criticality.
With MetricStream CyberGRC, organizations can:
The cyber risk landscape is more interconnected today than ever before. One risk can snowball into several more, requiring different management and mitigation approaches. A prime example of this is the COVID-19 pandemic which began as a health and safety risk but quickly evolved into business continuity, remote access, and cyber risk and has changed how the world works and lives forever.
As the world went into lockdown and businesses went online in 2020, malware attacks increased by 358%. Over the next year, cyberattacks across the world increased by 125 percent.
Amidst this fraught risk environment, the role of cyber risk leaders, such as the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), chief security officer (CSO), and others, have gone through a paradigm shift. The cyber risk leader has long been considered to be the enforcer of rules pertaining to cybersecurity, telling organizations what not to do in order to prevent breaches. Today, they need to take on a more powerful, strategic, and business-oriented leadership role where they can embed cybersecurity into core business strategy. Gartner predicts that by 2025, 40 percent of boards will include a dedicated cybersecurity committee.
Cyber risk leaders have an essential role in aligning the cyber risk management program with organizational goals and the overall operating strategy to ensure a watertight security posture. They must also take the lead in integrating cyber governance, risk, and compliance into the larger GRC framework. This also aligns with the recently announced cybersecurity risk management rules by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
To better align to the evolving role, CISOs or CSOs need to undertake a connected approach – connecting not just internally across the enterprise but connecting to the latest developments in the cyber space, such as apps, cloud, automation, etc., connecting cyber to the business aspect and industry trends, and more, to deliver a more holistic and forward-looking cyber governance, risk, and compliance strategy.
In this eBook, we delve deeper into the five key connections that today’s modern CISO and cyber risk leaders must make to enable secure and resilient cyber strategies.
Until now, the security team alone was responsible for protecting an organization from cyber attacks. They have been the ones that set down the rules of what not to do to prevent cyberattacks. Unfortunately, this approach is not effective enough to meet new challenges posed by a rapidly evolving cyber risk and threat landscape. Increased digitalization and the growing popularity of hybrid working models have resulted in a highly fragmented IT infrastructure, significantly expanding the surface area of attacks.
Traditional cybersecurity measures spearheaded by the CISO or CSO office are not enough to protect the organization across endpoints. There must be an enterprise-wide understanding of new and emerging cyber risks. Every member of the organization, from the leadership team to the frontline staff, must be aware of cyber risks, be equipped to identify them, and make the right decisions to mitigate the risk.
The modern cyber risk leader needs to go beyond the role of enforcer to that of an advocate. Today, they are responsible for ensuring effective and open communication about cyber risk management across the organization. They must provide strategic counsel to the leadership team and help shape organizational cyber risk strategy. Most important, they must drive risk and security awareness amongst employees to ensure risk awareness and alertness across every level of the organization. As the focus shifts to cyber resilience over mere attack protection, a cyber risk leader has a critical role to play in ensuring a cyber risk-aware mindset amongst employees and providing training on addressing evolving cyber threats.
The cyber risk landscape is evolving at an unprecedented pace, rendering traditional and manual methods of cyber risk management untenable for ensuring effective risk visibility and foresight, threat mitigation, and compliance with changing regulations. Cyber risk management is now a business imperative and must undergo the same level of digital transformation as the rest of the organization. A robust, technology-based security infrastructure is now a non-negotiable priority. And the cyber risk leader must lead the organization’s drive to digitally transform its security platforms.
A secure cloud strategy, an in-depth understanding of the cloud providers’ security stack, coupled with investments in the right platforms to automate security functions is a critical responsibility of the cyber risk leader. Investing in AI and ML-powered tools to ensure seamless vigilance, real-time analytics, and timely threat detection, is critical for ensuring failproof cybersecurity. Continuous control monitoring (CCM) -- the automated and continuous testing and monitoring of cloud security controls -- enables organizations to proactively identify vulnerabilities, improve cloud security and compliance posture, and reduce audit costs.
Organizations today also leverage APIs to integrate with several third parties to stay on top of evolving regulatory frameworks, effectively manage vulnerabilities, and more. The cyber risk leader must lead the effort to not only have a sound API and app strategy but also address the associated security risks.
Managing enterprise and cyber risk is a complex and challenging task today. Technological advancements are changing the world as we know it. The expansion of the internet, widespread cloud adoption, and increasing penetration of smartphones and mobile internet have brought the world closer than ever before. At the same time, they have created a complex and deeply interconnected web of risks, where each risk can trigger another, creating a domino effect that can result in severe consequences.
As the digital dependencies between people, processes, and organizations continue to intensify, cyber risk leaders must understand the interconnected risk landscape and the cascading effect of risks. For example, cyber risks do not exist in isolation. A cyber incident at an organization can not only disrupt operations, cause severe financial damage, and negatively impact reputation but also impact several other connected organizations. The CISO and enterprise risk leaders must ensure comprehensive visibility into the overall risk posture of the organization and risk relationships, for a more holistic approach to cyber risk management.
No organization exists in a vacuum. It is part of an ecosystem and is impacted by events and trends occurring within the larger market it operates in. The cyber risk leader must stay updated with changing and emerging risks and continuously improve the organization’s decision-making abilities and security posture. And as a strategic advisor to the C-suite, the CISO or CSO must also stay abreast of the latest trends in cybersecurity and provide decision-makers with market intelligence for strengthening the organization’s cyber defenses. They must provide the leadership team with information on cybersecurity best practices, guidance from supervisory authorities, upcoming regulations and regulatory changes, and intelligence on significant cyber incidents. They must help decision-makers understand the impact of these external events and trends on the organization as well as the industry. These insights are invaluable for business leaders to make decisions that are aligned with their risk appetite and the overarching business strategy.
Cyber risk is one of the biggest risks to today’s digital-first organizations, with the potential to impact every aspect of the business – financial repercussions, reputational damage and lack of stakeholder trust, derailment of day-to-day activities, and more. Cyber risk is directly linked to business health, and cyber risk strategies must be aligned with the organization’s business goals. The role of the cyber risk leader is moving beyond the mere technical aspects of security to a more strategic one.
Embedding security into the heart of the enterprise’s strategic business goals and objectives is an important new responsibility of the cyber risk leader. They are responsible for explaining the critical link between cyber resilience and business growth to the business leaders and enabling them to make better-informed and cyber-aware decisions.
Cyber risk quantification can help CISOs and CSOs to effectively communicate the cybersecurity posture and investment decisions to the leadership team and board. Expressing cyber risk exposure in financial terms can help organizations make an informed decision on the next course of action: pass the risk by buying cyber insurance, forgo the risk when the investment required is more than the financial implications of the risk, or act based on their risk appetite.
The role of the cyber risk leader will continue to evolve and expand as organizations adapt to the new digital economy. Not only will CISOs and CSOs have a seat in the boardroom, but organizations are also expected to institute cybersecurity teams at the board level to ensure cyber health and resilience across the extended enterprise.
MetricStream offers a suite of purpose-built IT and cyber risk and compliance software solutions, aligned to established security standards, which help cyber risk leaders and security teams strengthen their organization’s cyber GRC posture. MetricStream CyberGRC provides comprehensive visibility into the organization’s overall cyber risk and compliance posture and helps prioritize security investments. The solution comes pre-packaged with content and industry frameworks including ISO 27001, NIST CSF, and NIST SP800-53, and can help the security organization map policies to IT controls and policy exceptions.
Cyber risk leaders are empowered to implement a comprehensive, enterprise-wide approach to cyber risk management and compliance. This will help build confidence with the leadership, board, and regulators. The robust technology platform provides real-time visibility into cyber risks including vendor and third-party risks and offers mitigation measures through risk quantification and contextual risk information across processes and assets. Cyber risk teams can correlate vulnerabilities with IT assets and prioritize remediation efforts based on criticality.
With MetricStream CyberGRC, organizations can:
