Cyber threats are raining down on your business daily… threat actors have one objective in mind— to make a quick profit. They do this most successfully by stealing your data to sell to other threat actors that will get even more data (and money) from you and around it goes.
As a business owner, it is hard to quantify the monetary value of cybersecurity unless you’re paying thousands of dollars to regain your data, which we do NOT recommend. Your business priorities probably include getting new clients, reducing your costs, providing an exceptional product or service, and making a healthy profit in the process. That’s all well and good, but do you really want to leave the fate of your business up to…CHANCE?
A clear and proactive cybersecurity plan is even more valuable than insurance. While both may protect your business in case of an emergency, a robust cybersecurity plan is critical to protecting your company before things happen.
How does cyber risk quantification (CRQ) affect your business?
The Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA) published a white paper, that addresses this very topic. In fact, CRQ translates cybersecurity risk into monetary value and financial impact for all small or large businesses.
Larger enterprise-level corporations are beginning to realize the benefits of quantifying their risks. This is great news, since once their methods are shared and adopted into the market, they will trickle down to small to medium-sized companies.
Again, this is great news because as large enterprises invest in remediating new threats, their solutions will be scaled down for smaller companies and offered at a more affordable cost point.
The benefits to your company.
Managed Service Providers (MSPs) are at the leading edge when it comes to technology and security. By working with MSPs, rather than hiring in-house staff, smaller organizations can operate more efficiently and protect their data and devices at more affordable rates. Their best-in-class products and services will help mature your technical operations and cybersecurity posture.
Additional benefits to using CRQ and working with an MSP include:
- Your company’s risk exposure profile can be baselined, measured (and justified) over the long term.
- Your company’s return on investment (ROI) can be expressed in terms of real dollars, not only in baseless assumptions.
- Your company’s reputation is elevated due to increased security. Your company has a competitive advantage over your competitors, because you’ll reduce your risk and be able to quickly remediate any suspicious activity
What the industry data is telling us.
A survey, that spanned multiple industries, was conducted to investigate which technologies they used to avoid financial losses. The findings were quite eye-opening
- Organizations saved the MOST money by using security intelligence and threat sharing.
A combination of antivirus protection, malware detection, and Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR) was the #1 defense against threat actors.
- Cyber analytics and automation (AI, correlation engines…etc.) are NOT being utilized.
In fact, only one-third of enterprises and 5% of small businesses took advantage of these tools. However, this technology has shown to nearly DOUBLE the cost savings when combined with a security intelligence and threat sharing strategy.
- Post-breach fraud investigation charges are ALARMING.
About 60% of the time, post-breach, the cybercrime cost the same or LESS than the breach investigation itself. The costs of the crime exceeded the investigation costs, only 30% of the time.
The data tells us that you’ll SAVE money by investing in proactive measures to reduce your company’s overall threat risk.
However, to articulate the cost difference more clearly, what does your business lose if you just wait for a breach to happen before you invest in proactive security controls?
The benefits of balancing cyber resilience with your company’s business strategy.
In their recent article, Accenture identified four levels of cyber resilience. This included an elite group identified as Cyber Champions organizations. The thing that makes them “Champions” is that they align their cyber resilience investment and execution with their business goals. business
Cyber Champions outperforming their competitors.
It is not easy to excel at both cyber resilience and attaining your business goals. However, high-achieving organizations significantly outperformed their competitors in these four areas:
- Stopped more attacks
- Found breaches faster
- Fixed breaches faster
- Reduced breach impact
Quickly identifying and remediating threats will prevent workflow disruptions, lost productivity, and will protect your financial resources in the long run.
Your company will experience huge gains by becoming a Cyber Champion
Cyber Champions demonstrate that with the right balance of cybersecurity and business strategy, an organization will reach their business outcomes, while also increasing their cybersecurity maturity. This significant difference between the Cyber Champions and their competitors stood out sharply.
The findings showed that Cyber Champions:
- Were THREE times better at stopping attacks from breaching their systems and data than the Cyber Risk Takers.
- Able to successfully identify breaches in less than a day. This is 5 percentage points higher than the Business Blockers and 44 percentage points greater than Cyber Risk Takers.
- Remediated breaches with 100% success in less than 15 days.
- Experienced significantly fewer successful breaches. They were8 percentage points less than Business Blockers and 36 percentage points fewer than Cyber Risk Takers.
Again, striking the right balance between accepting high cyber risk and stifling business growth can be hard. However, the data shows that organizations stand to reduce their cost of breaches by 48% -71% just by increasing their performance to Cyber Champion levels.
How to move towards becoming a Cyber Champion.
- Give Chief Information Security Officers (CISO) a seat at the top table
By drawing on the experience and insights of the wider leadership team, CISOs will gain a broader perspective that serves the whole business well. This is beneficial for your business because a CISO can come into a meeting armed with the tools and relevant data to identify areas of the company most at risk. Thus, reducing your company’s financial risk significantly. For smaller companies that don’t have a CISO, invite your MSP VCIO to the table to provide strategic input on how to best align your technology with your business objectives. For better security, be sure to implement and manage secure cloud solutions.
- Be threat-centric and business aligned
Security leaders must be treated as business partners in driving down risk. This alignment helps to embed security into business priorities.
- Get the most out of secure cloud
Organizations should seize the opportunity to reset their security posture earlier and more effectively by migrating to the cloud just like our Cyber Champions do.
Organizations that focus solely on business objectives miss out on all the benefits of cyber resilience. By embedding cyber resilience as one of your business priorities, you’ll not only achieve better business outcomes, but you’ll also quickly outpace your competitors.
If you’d like to learn more on how your business can become a Cyber Champion, click here.