Why did cybersecurity become a business risk?
Why did cybersecurity become a business risk? Because of ransomware ? Or
maybe, because of something we've all heard about called: the Digital Transformation (DX) ?
CISO's have been calling it out for quite a while. Today, more and more organizations acknowledge that Cybersecurity is not an IT, but a Business risk.
Good, now that we've established that, what are we going to do about it?
Having senior leaders actually act upon this acknowledgement is easier said than done, as IT and Cybersecurity challenges are often too complex to understand, while they are actually sustaining the operational aspects of the organization's business processes.
To overcome this challenge, CISO's should own or develop business leadership skills, enabling them to truly see what it actually means when we say cyber risk as a business risk, and communicating in the same language as the leadership team.
More organizations select their CISO specifically on these skills, often compromising IT technical depth. These CISO's have a harder time understanding technical challenges themselves, and rely on their technical security experts for information, whom again are often not equipped with the right skills to articulate matters in non technical terms unless screaming blood and apocalypse. It's a vicious circle.
Risk Management Frameworks give us a set of tools to think of security risks in terms of likelihood and impact, proving that not all cybersecurity risks are apocalyptic. But to say that this solves our challenge to adequately report and communicate in terms of business risk, we're not quite there yet...
What if we view this from another angle? The why? Why did cybersecurity become a business risk? Because of ransomware? Or maybe, because of something we've all heard about called the
Digital Transformation (DX) ?
Companies have been evolving all aspects of the business, including people, processes and technologies, to enhance their business models, improve efficiency and customer experience. Transforming the way we work all together. As a result of DX, companies’ dependency on IT systems and processes to be able to operate their business went through the roof.
Digital Transformation has also introduced a myriad of data protection and intellectual property (IP) threats.
In order to evaluate security risks in the business context, and communicate about them in the right tone, we need to start with understanding what business processes are involved and what is the data that is at risk on the system(s) we are assessing.
By doing so, the security team will discover that it is truly refreshing to analyze security in terms of business risk, enabling them to put things in the business perspective and ultimately report and mitigate risk better by implementing remediation plans that are prioritized in function of their importance to the business.
Pro CISO® experts have a wealth of experience in supporting CISOs with the development and management of security risk management programs that are truly integrated, understood and supported at the top. We can implement smart tools such as OneTrust for centralized Risk Management programs in which Privacy and Cybersecurity are fully integrated. Or we can leverage whatever tools are in place already.
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