How to measure your cybersecurity performance

How to measure your cybersecurity performance

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  CYBERSECURITY BENCHMARKING A CIO’S GUIDEFOR REDUCING SECURITY ANXIETY
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  Page 2 In otherwords, CIOs today must be highly effective at benchmarking. But as the CIO, you know you can’t outsource risk—and you have to consider the risk posed by every new business function in your organization. With constant technological advances in business today, cyber risk is one area that requires a great deal of thought from the CIO. If you don’t have a complete picture of your organization’s security performance compared to your peers, you’re flying blind. INTRODUCTION In order for a business to be competitive, it must be continuously improving. This is something the modern chief information officer (CIO) knows all too well—and has likely lost some sleep over! But in order to build out the business structure and technical functionality that enables your organization to deliver products and services quickly and efficiently, you have to know how you’re doing compared to how your competitors and peers are doing. So in order to understand whether you need to drive cybersecurity improvements across the organization, you have to consider whether you’re accepting too much risk in comparison to your peers and competitors. Below, we’ll walk through the following: Why cybersecurity benchmarking is difficult for the modern CIO. Different methods of benchmarking you may be involved in (or want to consider). How Security Ratings may solve many benchmarking challenges.
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  Page 3 YOUR JOBMAY BE ON THE LINE. CIOs and CISOs are often the first on the chopping block when things go wrong in the cybersecurity space. So as the CIO, you want to know with certainty how your organization’s cybersecurity performance is doing so you can feel confident in your practices (and sleep better at night). YOU HAVE TO KNOW THAT YOUR BENCHMARKING EFFORTS ARE EFFECTIVE. For example, If you are gathering data on the best practices of your peers and competitors, simply knowing that many of them have a cybersecurity training program for employees isn’t enough. WHY CYBERSECURITY BENCHMARKING IS A CHALLENGE FOR CIOS TODAY WHY CYBERSECURITY BENCHMARKING IS A CHALLENGE FOR CIOS TODAY As the CIO, you have to know whether or not this training program actually works. In other words, gathering qualitative information without any hard and fast metrics to back it up is useless. ACCURACY IN BENCHMARKING IS CRITICAL. One of the most famous pieces of advice in cybersecurity is the oft- quoted “trust, but verify.” If you or your consultant gather data through interviews and discussion with peers and competitors, you may not have any way to verify that the information you’ve been given is accurate. Your employees, consultants, and peers are only human and are prone to misinformation, misinterpretation, and error.
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  Page 4 YOU HAVETO BE ABLE TO CLEARLY COMMUNICATE CYBERSECURITY EFFECTIVENESS TO THE BOARD. Ten to 15 years ago, cybersecurity was an afterthought—and certainly wasn’t a critical issue in the boardroom. Today, this has changed dramatically. Boards today expect good cybersecurity hygiene and need to be updated on the status of a cybersecurity program regularly. Your board will expect you to discuss a number of cybersecurity metrics, which are often divided into two categories: Audit and compliance metrics: These deal with legal or fiduciary requirements like “Are we ISO- WHY CYBERSECURITY BENCHMARKING IS A CHALLENGE FOR CIOS TODAY 27001-compliant?” and “Do we have any outstanding high-risk findings open from our last audit or assessment?” Operational effectiveness metrics: These are quantitative metrics—backed with actionable data—that take a deep dive into the state of your cybersecurity program. Operational metrics are backed with actionable data. For example, “How quickly can we (or our vendors) identify and respond to incidents?” And, “How did we compare to our peers across a certain time span?” The latter question could be difficult to answer if you don’t have the right data—but with BitSight Security Ratings (which we’ll discuss later on in this guide) you can easily compare your performance to a number of your competitors’ over a period of time.
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  Page 5 There aretwo traditional methods used for cybersecurity benchmarking: formal and informal. Both are used frequently in today’s business landscape and have a number of benefits and risks. FORMAL BENCHMARKING Formal benchmarking takes place when you gather data on your peers and competitors, analyze that data, and use it to form a benchmark. This service can take place in-house or through a consulting firm working on your behalf. Benefits Of Formal Benchmarking Ideally, formal benchmarking allows you to get a comprehensive picture of your peers’ and competitors’ performance. You can compare what they’re doing in regard to cybersecurity to what your FORMAL VS. INFORMAL CYBERSECURITY BENCHMARKING FORMAL VS. INFORMAL CYBERSECURITY BENCHMARKING organization is doing so you can bear down in the areas that need more work. Risks Of Formal Benchmarking Your analysis only gives insight for a particular point in time. Your peers and competitors are constantly changing—just as you are—and that change can bring about major differences in cybersecurity posture. Your analysis is subjective and may focus too heavily on feelings rather than data. Whether this is done in-house or with a consultant, this may be costly. It can get expensive quickly! Formal benchmarking is time- consuming. You must account for “the human element” and how long it may take those involved with the benchmarking to get contact information, set up meetings, and analyze and present the data.
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  Page 6 INFORMAL BENCHMARKING Informalbenchmarking takes place in a more casual setting and doesn’t necessarily involve hard and fast data. For example, you may be a part of a CIO online forum or a group that meets monthly to discuss cybersecurity best practices. Benefits Of Informal Benchmarking This process is significantly less time-consuming than formal benchmarking, so you can do it more frequently. Informal benchmarking is also much more cost effective. It’s a good starting point for younger companies that are just beginning the benchmarking process. It can also be a good supplement to formal benchmarking. ACTIONABLE RISK VECTORS CONFIGURATIONS TO CONSIDER Risks Of Informal Benchmarking This method of cybersecurity benchmarking tends to be more subjective and qualitative. The takeaways may be helpful for the CIO in his day-to-day activity, but may not offer direct insights that can affect the organization as a whole. Some organizations won’t be interested in sharing their best cybersecurity practices, as those practices may be a part of their competitive advantage. Participants in these types of forums must consider antitrust issues and other legalities. Informal benchmarking methods are helpful for the CIO in day-to-day activity, but don’t always offer direct, actionable insights.
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  Page 7 Security Ratingshelp you measure your performance and the performance of your peers over time by looking at externally accessible data and configurations on your network. This data does not require the permission of any company you examine and is updated daily. If there is a major change in your rating or the rating of a competitor, you’re alerted right away—so you can easily stay up- to-date on how you’re performing compared to your peers when it comes to certain metrics. When you combine Security Ratings with data you’re able to gather internally or through other formal and informal benchmarking activities, it gives you the easier, most quantitative, cost-effective approach for cybersecurity. Using BitSight can help you with three critical areas of cybersecurity benchmarking: DATA-DRIVEN BENCHMARKING WITH BITSIGHT DATA-DRIVEN BENCHMARKING WITH BITSIGHT If you want a quantitative, objective view of your cybersecurity effectiveness compared to thousands of other organizations in your same sector, you need BitSight Security Ratings.
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  Page 8 IDENTIFY SECURITYISSUES RIGHT WHEN THEY HAPPEN. Using the BitSight platform, you can examine specific threats, infections, and security issues that are targeting your competitors and peers. This will give you the insight you need to prepare for this type of attack vector or harmful security issue. REDUCE RISK IMMEDIATELY. The Security Ratings platform is web-based, so you can get started with your data-based cybersecurity benchmarking in no time. The BitSight platform also makes it easy to integrate Security Ratings into your existing benchmarking tools and processes through CSV downloads, PDF reports, and an API. COMMUNICATE PERFORMANCE TO THE BOARD EFFECTIVELY. Security Ratings are set up like a consumer credit score, making them easy to understand. This gives you a simple and effective way to communicate benchmarking information in the boardroom.
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  Page 9 DO YOUKNOW WHERE YOUR ORGANIZATION STANDS IN REGARD TO CYBERSECURITY? Being able to properly harvest and digest cybersecurity benchmarking information is critical for today’s CIO. If you realize that your cybersecurity is not at the level it should be, evaluating it properly can help you raise appropriate resources to fix the issues. If you’re overperforming, you can rest assured that your cybersecurity policies are meeting the standard of care required. (And having a handle on where you’re at with cybersecurity performance will help you rest easier, as well!) If you want to see how BitSight’s Security Rating platform can help you benchmark your cybersecurity performance (and the cybersecurity performance of your vendors), request a free demo today. REQUEST FREE DEMO