Cybersecurity & Risk Management

Poor cyber security threatens your company’s private data, but worse, it threatens the relationship your business has with its customers. If the weakened trust customers have for you comes as a result of a data breach that negatively impacts their financial well-being or privacy, then the harm caused is worse than lost trust. That’s why the cyber security industry is expected to grow to over $170 billion by 2022. So what is cyber security risk management, and how can your company implement it effectively? We’ll break it down in this post.

What is cyber security risk management?

Cyber security risk refers to the likelihood that your business will suffer from a cyber attack. Like any risk management solution, the goal of cyber security risk management is to mitigate those chances and respond appropriately should an attack occur. Put simply, cyber security risk management is about ensuring that none of your digital assets are accessed by someone who doesn’t have permission to do so and that any data accessed is only used in accordance with company policy.

Risk mitigation strategies

Proper cyber security and risk management requires more than just a simple checklist of ideas, but there are some initial steps that every business should be taking to ensure that their data, and the data of the customers who trust them, is safe.

• Limit internet access to approved devices
• Install anti-virus protection software
• Set up a firewall
• Limit the number of people with administrative access
• Only allow users to access what they need to do their jobs
• Require two-factor authentication
• Set your software to automatically update
• Replace any software that has reached its end of life
• Regularly backup important data

5 Tips for successful cyber security risk mitigation

The previous section contained simple steps to begin your cyber security and risk management process. Now let’s take a deeper look at some of the ways you’ll want to change your company to ensure that those preventative steps are properly executed and to be able to quickly respond when something goes wrong.

1. Foster a security focused company culture — The switch to focusing on cyber security required a fundamental change in your thinking, but can’t be successful unless that change in thinking happens company-wide. Cyber security isn’t something that an IT department can do on their own. Everyone with access to a computer can pose a potential threat, which means every one of those people is part of the solution. Everyone in the company should know the ways in which they are responsible for cyber security.
2. Conduct employee training programs — Simply telling employees that they are part of the solution isn’t enough. Many cyber attacks are successful simply because the victim didn’t know any better. Opening shady email attachments, entering personal details into phishing sites, and making easily cracked passwords are just some of the ways the lack of cyber security knowledge of an employee may come back to bite your whole company. Simple training programs will give everyone the knowledge they need to play their part in your company’s cyber security goals.
3. Craft a risk assessment procedure — When an attack does happen, seconds count. To ensure the fastest response, you should prepare a list of your digital assets, the threats that are posed to them, and a plan of action to enact if they are compromised. This will ensure that your staff will be busy correcting the issue instead of scrambling to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it.
4. Address risks by priority — When you first start out with a cyber security mindset, it’s easy to treat every possible threat as though it’s the end of the world. At best, you’ll end up with diminishing returns thinking this way. At worst, you’ll be too busy focusing on the small stuff to pay the proper attention to the big stuff. Prioritize your risks according to their likelihood and the damage they could do and use that priority list to manage your time.
5. Follow a cyber security framework — In the section below, you’ll find a listing of common cyber security frameworks. These will provide a complete blueprint for keeping your systems secure. Pick the one that appeals to you the most and implement it.

Common frameworks for cyber security risk management

So far, you’ve seen some simple tips for preventative risk management, to include some ways to alter company culture to be more risk aware and prepared for an attack. What you haven’t seen a detailed plan of action. Such a plan would require more than a simple blog post could cover, and wouldn’t make for very casual reading. Thankfully, a number of organizations have crafted risk management frameworks that can be used to guide your company’s cyber security and risk management efforts. The major ones are listed below.

• NIST CSF — The National Institute of Standards and Technology Cybersecurity Framework is one of the most frequently used frameworks for cyber security risk assessment and management. It consists of five core areas: identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover.
• ISO 27001 / 31000 — International Organization for Standardization maintains two frameworks related to cyber security. ISO 27001 is a detailed set of standards for minimizing risks associated with information systems. ISO 31000 is a broader standard, covering risk management as a whole for enterprise, with cyber security being one of the components it covers.
• FAIR — Developed by the Open Group, The Factor Analysis of Information Risk is a framework specifically designed to help enterprises understand the threats that they face from a cyber security perspective and craft a strategy to measure and analyze that risk. The goal is to help companies make better informed decisions about their cyber security risk management practices.
• Department of Defense RMF — The DOD’s Risk Management Framework was designed for DOD agencies to assess and manage the cyber security risks to their systems. It is composed of six unique categories of risk management: categorize, select, implement, access, authorize, and monitor.

The time to act is now

The average cost of a cyber attack is $1.1 million. For victims of the 35% of attacks that result in data theft, the costs could be even higher. The increase in cloud computing has brought with it great flexibility and cost savings, but comes at the cost of much more of your data being accessible to the outside world. Putting a cyber security and risk management plan into place is a vital part of keeping those risks at bay. Contact Geospark to learn more about how your business can get started on the path to a more secure IT infrastructure.