What is Cyber Risk or Cybersecurity Risk? 

What is Cyber Risk or Cybersecurity Risk?

What is Cybersecurity Risk or Cyber Risk? 

Risk is commonly defined as threat times vulnerability times consequence. There are many threats actors out there including nation states, criminal syndicates and enterprises, hacktivists and insiders. These threats actors have a variety of motivations including financial gain, corporate or government espionage, and military advantage. These threat actors are able to launch cyber attacks through the exploitation of vulnerabilities. There are a number of vulnerabilities in both hardware and software that can be exploited from outside or inside. The causes could be unpatched software, unsecured access points, and misconfigured systems. 

LIFARS’ CISO as a Service is designed to address organizations’ cybersecurity risk management and can discern security need, design effective solution & program, and deliver results while steering through challenging organizational culture.

The consequence is the harm caused to an exploited organization by a cyberattack, the organization will have to face a lot of things including a loss of sensitive data. It will affect the company’s customer base, reputation, financial standing and may lose a great deal of customers. The consequence can be very costly to the organization. Therefore, risk in cyber is called a Cyber Risk or Cybersecurity Risk. In other words, Cyber risk is commonly defined as exposure to harm or loss resulting from breaches of or attacks on information systems. 

What are the Key Cyber Risks and Threats? 

From small companies to large sized companies, they have their own business operations and objectives, as well as compliance with regulations and laws. An organization will typically design and implement cybersecurity controls across the entity to protect the integrity, confidentiality and availability of information assets. To understand the cyber risk profile, it is very important for the organization to know what data could be more exposed to vulnerabilities like personally identifiable information (PII) like names, social security numbers and biometric records. In additions, below are some examples that are potential targets to cyber criminals: 

  • Customer data 
  • Employee data 
  • Intellectual property 
  • Third and fourth party vendors 
  • Product quality and safety 
  • Contract terms and pricing 
  • Strategic planning 
  • Financial data 

 Cybersecurity Risk Management  

With the understanding of the definition of cyber risk or cybersecurity risk with the given helpful formula, it is also important to understand how to properly manage the cyber risk in the organization.  

  1. Senior Management involvement  

Cybersecurity risk management is generally supported by a leader called a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), who is directly responsible for establishing and maintaining the enterprise vision, strategy and program to ensure information assets and customer data is adequately protected. When a company does not have enough funds to hire a CISO, board members will experience cybersecurity risk that is extremely valuable. For small companies who do not have enough funds but they have some IT team members, they are highly recommended to take support from the cybersecurity consultancy.  

  1. Access users privilege 

There are several steps that could be taken to monitor and observe their behavior when there are more third-party networks or partners are given access to the privileged information. By identifying the data that each employee has access to and determine if it is necessary to make it accessible to the employees. If it is unnecessary, put in place measures to limit access to sensitive data. Finally, it’s important to closely monitor those who have access to highly sensitive data and information. It also includes the company’s vendors, to ensure that the information is only used for necessary purposes. 

  1. Identify your material data 

Material data can vary by industry or line of business to include sensitive customer, constituent, or patient information; intellectual property data; consumer data; or even the data that ensures the reliable operations of your IT systems or manufacturing capabilities. In addition, encryption of sensitive data and information will protect the data from being breached, and always restores all data in backup storage in case of malware virus.  

  1. Implement the right technology 

There are many cybersecurity tools out there in the market to make the best use to protect information and data of the organization. The Cybersecurity tools like BitSight allow the organization to monitor the organization’s and your vendors’ Security Ratings, which gives you a good indication of overall security posture. It enables you to monitor both the performance of your own security program and also third parties in real time. It is also essential to make sure all the tools and software are timely updated with new updated patches.  

Conclusion 

In order to mitigate cyber risk, the company should have every department’s help and as well as from every employee to ensure the protection of the company from the cyber attacks. Cybersecurity risk management is a long process and it’s an ongoing one. Cyber attacks can come from any level of department of the organizations. If the company fails to take the right precautions, the company, customers, vendors and employees could all pay the price. Therefore it is very important to be able to control e to control third-party vendor risk and monitor your business for potential data breaches and leaked credentials continuously.