In PWC’s 27th Annual Global CEO Survey, most CEOs in Western Europe and the US have high concerns about today’s cyber threats.
But although cyber security is moving up the list of board-level concerns, years of increased security spending without quantifiable results have created decision fatigue and exhausted board members on the topic.
With cyber fatigue at an all time high, one of the biggest challenges for chief information security officers (CISOs) today is how they can successfully rally business leaders and boardrooms behind their cyber security efforts.
To do this, they need to be able to translate security concerns into tangible impacts on the business and convince the board that cyber risk and business risk are, in fact, the same thing.
How to communicate cyber risk
Here are four key ways CISOs can help the board develop a meaningful understanding of their organisation’s cyber risk landscape and make informed, effective and collaborative decisions:
1. Translate cyber risk into business impact
During conversations with the board, it can be easy for CISOs to get lost in the technicalities, obscuring the bigger picture. Instead, CISOs should always give context and connect any decision back to the financial impact or quantifiable risk to the business.
By posing questions like, “What will the business risk reduction be if a particular cyber security policy is undertaken?” you can help the board to gain an understanding of the cyber security posture of the business that they previously didn’t have.
2. Quantify the current cyber security posture of the organisation
CISOs can prepare a quantitative assessment of the current cyber health of the organisation, comparing it with industry benchmarks and peers. This helps to establish a baseline from which to report back progress back to the board.
These realistic figures and tangible insights will help to explain:
- where weaknesses lie
- the current requirements of the organisation
- the direction that the security strategy needs to move towards to reach its target secure state, while remaining aligned with the overarching goals of the business.
3. Make a prioritised list of security actions
By quantifying the risks to the organisation, and gaining a real-time perspective of where the greatest risks lie, CISOs can establish which risks are a priority according to the potential business impact. They can find ways to accept, mitigate, or transfer these risks using quantifiable data. This will help CISOs structure their future planning, security actions and investments.
4. Measure and track the residual risk
In any business, there will always be some residual risk – no matter how much effort is put towards reducing uncertainty. What matters is that the CISO and the board work together to identify and measure the risks to the best of their knowledge. This helps them understand the potential legal, financial, operational, and reputational consequences.
By establishing these four key areas, CISOs can build a solid foundation for future conversations and collaboration with the board on cyber security planning.
Taking the SAFE route
Quantifying risk in terms of business impact is integral to proactive and progressive communication at the board level.
At SAFE, we’re experts at helping global enterprises take advantage of Cyber Risk Quantification. We’ve even devised an effective and scalable approach to implementing a framework in under four weeks.
Our dedicated Cyber Risk Quantification and Management platform automatically collects signals from our customers’ internal attack surfaces, aggregates them and combines them with external threat intelligence.
This data is then processed through specialised data algorithms to generate a SAFE score, which represents:
- the entire enterprise’s cyber security health
- expected financial loss by attack vector
- a priority order of security actions.
The end result is a set of contextual board-ready reports to help CISOs clearly communicate cyber risk to the wider organisation.
Our SAFE solution was voted the best risk management solution at the 2022 CISO Choice Awards.
Assess your risk
Our aim is to make the SAFE score the industry standard for measuring and managing cyber risk. That’s why we’re proud to partner with BT.
We can help to quantify and mitigate cyber risks for businesses all over the world by combining BT’s extensive reach and network capabilities with our longstanding security solution and credentials.
Ready to find out how SAFE and BT can help you?
