With aggressive changes in the digital and technical risk landscape, making decisions around cybersecurity spending has become one of the biggest challenges to business leaders. Most executives know that their organization should be taking proper cybersecurity measures but have trouble determining what specific cybersecurity measures are critical to their organization.
This past week, Forrester published their report, “Transform Cyber Risk Management with Cyber Risk Quantification,” and accompanying blog post, The Emerging Cyber Risk Quantification Market: When CISOs Need Decisions, Not More Dashboards, echoing what has been Axio’s cyber risk philosophy for years: for the modern CISO, Cyber Risk Quantification (CRQ) is the way forward.
Here are some key takeaways that stood out to us:
- Business leaders can leverage CRQ to justify cybersecurity investments
In the past, studies have shown that implementing basic cyber hygiene controls such as password management, least-privilege user management, updating operating systems, etc., effectively prevent a significant percentage of attacks. However, budgetary spending on preventive cybersecurity measures can still be difficult for CISOs to rationalize to their CEO and Board.
Data breaches occur daily, but not all risks are created equal, and this is where cyber risk quantification comes in. As a risk-management approach to security, CRQ ensures that cybersecurity spending is focused on the right areas and projects. Using real-life scenarios specific to your organization, it answers questions like “how much will a ransomware attack cost my business?” to determine optimized spending. This scenario-based approach allows decision-makers to understand the business impact of potential events.
- CRQ bridges the language barrier between technical and business
For CISOs, communication is a “must-have” skill in today’s cyber risk landscape. While most CISOs start their career working through technical security roles, when it comes to this executive-level role, technical skills become secondary to the importance of effective communication and a holistic understanding of the business and its needs. It’s the CISO’s job to advise their CEO and Board on business decisions by translating the cyber risk landscape. Clear messaging is essential to achieving this task.
In the past, business decisions have relied too heavily on KPIs, stoplight scoring, and the like. Of course, the CEO and Board need data presented in a way that translates to business terms, but this outdated approach to representing technical data is not a sustainable solution for the modern cyber program. CRQ enables the CISO and CEO/Board to work together to determine how risk fits into their organization.
- CRQ can be complicated, but business solutions like Axio360 can help
CISOs face an overwhelming amount of data from their teams and must be prepared to take this wealth of information to the Board in a cohesive package that provides meaningful updates. Even with quantitative analysis, reporting this information upwards concisely and accurately can become a challenge. Solutions like Axio360 provide a centralized cyber risk platform with built-in workflows and visualizations that represent the organization’s risk posture in terms that the Board and CEO can quickly understand.
Through a practical, user-friendly, and streamlined platform, Axio360 takes a holistic approach to measuring risk, providing a clear picture of numerous cost scenarios for various solutions. It removes unnecessary complexities by generating a Board of Director’s report that gives CISOs the tool they need to communicate risks and priorities to the Board.
- Where do I sign up?
The relationship between CISOs and CEOs/Board members should be symbiotic, especially when developing a cybersecurity program that fits the company’s needs. CISOs have a reputation for constantly asking for more money never seem to have enough. Consequently, Board members are left asking why the budget increases year after year and what is their CISO spending their budget on? Axio understands these pain points and has created a platform designed to answer these questions. To see a demo and learn more about the Axio360 platform, sign up for a demo here.
For more detailed information on CRQ, its current state in the market, and overall guidance, check out the full report from Forrester Research.