The Importance of Cyber Risk Management
Organizations face more cybersecurity threats than they can manage, a problem that is exacerbated by expanding IT environments and the evolution of the cyber threat landscape. As a result, businesses need to choose where to spend their limited resources to manage cybersecurity risk.
Cyber risk management enables organizations to make these decisions in a structured, data-driven fashion. Instead of a first-come-first-served approach, the organization identifies the threats that pose the greatest risk and focus its efforts there. By prioritizing threats based on risk, an organization ensures that it doesn’t waste its resources on minor threats and maximizes the impact of its security investment.
Stages of Cybersecurity Risk Management
The cybersecurity risk management process can be broken up into the following four stages:
- Identify: To manage risks, an organization first needs to know that they exist. The first step in the cybersecurity risk management process is performing an audit of an organization’s IT environment and security infrastructure to identify potential risks that may need to be addressed.
- Assess: Different risks pose varying threats to the organization’s operations. For example, attacks against critical assets — such as the corporate database server — are likely to be more impactful than ones against employee workstations and other lower-priority systems. Organizations can calculate risk based on the likelihood and impact of a threat occurring and prioritize threats based on this information.
- Remediate: After building a prioritized list, an organization can take steps to address these risks. Common risk management strategies include remediation (eliminating the risk entirely), mitigation (reducing the risk impact or likelihood), transference (transferring the risk to someone else), or acceptance (doing nothing).
- Review: An organization should perform risk assessments and review the effectiveness of existing controls on a regular basis. This helps to ensure that risk prioritizations are up-to-date and enables the company to address failed controls or evolving risks.
NIST Cyber Risk Management Framework
To help organizations to manage their cybersecurity risk, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has published a Cyber Risk Management Framework (RMF). This document is also known as NIST 800-53. The primary focus of the NIST RMF is to ensure that US federal contractors have strong cybersecurity, and compliance with the framework is mandatory for them.
However, even if compliance is not required, the framework provides useful guidance for implementing a cybersecurity risk management program. For example, the RMF defines an expanded, seven-step process for cyber risk management and provides guidance for implementing each step.
Cyber Risk Management Benefits
Cybersecurity risk management can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of a corporate cybersecurity program. Some of the benefits that cyber risk management can provide to the business include the following:
- Enhanced Security: A cybersecurity risk management program helps an organization identify the biggest threats that it faces. With a prioritized list of cybersecurity threats, an organization can more rapidly improve its security posture by addressing the biggest threats first.
- Improved Cybersecurity ROI: A cyber risk management program is designed to ensure that an organization focuses its risk remediation efforts on the greatest threats to the company. This helps to improve cybersecurity ROI by ensuring that resources are used to manage the biggest threats to the company and preventing resources from being wasted on lesser threats.
- Regulatory Compliance: Data privacy laws are focused on protecting sensitive data and often require a risk management program. Implementing cybersecurity risk management helps to ensure that an organization is meeting its compliance responsibilities.
- Cybersecurity Insurance: The growth of ransomware, phishing, and other cyber threats has made insurance coverage more difficult and expensive to acquire. A strong cybersecurity risk management program can help an organization to demonstrate that it is a safe risk and reduce its insurance premiums.
Cybersecurity Risk Management with Check Point
Cyber risk management can enhance an organization’s security program by focusing its efforts and resources on the biggest threats to the business. By identifying and prioritizing threats based on risk, cyber risk management can help an organization to reduce its exposure to cyberattacks and improve the ROI of cybersecurity investment.
Check Point offers security consulting services to help organizations to implement a cybersecurity risk management policy. This includes no-cost cybersecurity risk assessments to help an organization identify and prioritize cybersecurity risks in its environment.
Check Point’s Infinity Enterprise License Agreement (ELA) enables companies to manage cyber risks at scale by providing access to the full range of Check Point security solutions under a single corporate license. To learn more, sign up for an Infinity ELA consultation.
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