Leverage DPRM Solutions in Cyber Risk Models for Better Business Outcome
Risk models and frameworks span a wide range of essential topics for the business. So, it is not uncommon to see risk modeling used throughout an organization. When it comes to cyber risk models, there are many use cases for building a model to assess the risk of a business opportunity. Cyber risk models are commonly used to determine the risk vs. business opportunity for M&A initiatives, introducing new customer services and online applications, and measuring risk with their supply chain partners.
There are several frameworks that GRC professionals use to gauge risk and reward for IT initiatives to help companies make good decisions about risk.
NIST is one of the most well-known producers of IT frameworks for cybersecurity risk management. The newly released 2.0 version of the cybersecurity framework heavily emphasizes a new Govern function incorporating cybersecurity into a broader enterprise risk management strategy.
Factor Analysis of Information Risk (FAIR) is another methodology and framework for quantifying cyber risk designed to measure, manage, and report on information risk from the business perspective.
Service Organization Control (SOC) Type 2 is a trust-based cybersecurity framework and auditing standard and one of the most challenging frameworks to implement.
Prioritizing Vulnerabilities and Business Risk
Digital risk protection management (DRPM) solutions offer security leaders a way to aggregate thousands of data points to identify internet-facing systems and data that need to be protected. This data identifies IT security gaps, offering a view into an organization's risk profile. This information is vital for vulnerability management professionals who must prioritize CVEs by the business that pose if exploited.
A zero-day attack is a high risk, but that same exploit can be higher if the CVE presents on a critical system that provides access to customer information or acts as the core system that keeps supply chain or manufacturing systems online and productive. A modern DRPM solution will consider these scenarios and prioritize mitigation to reduce business risk.
Today's business environment requires versatile tools beyond numerical calculations and best estimates. DPRM platforms continually ingest and aggregate multiple sources of information to continually discover externally facing infrastructure and prioritize business risk. DPRM data fed into a risk model or GRC system is critical in evaluating the balance between risk and business opportunity. This assessment is crucial for mergers and acquisitions, new online customer services, and supply chain partnerships.
Actionable Insight: Use data from DPRM systems to feed risk models to evaluate risks and opportunities across various business domains, especially in M&A, customer service innovation, and supply chain partnerships.
Create a Blueprint of Cyber Risk for Better Decision-Making
Cyber risk frameworks and DPRM platforms complement each other as navigational guides, offering a structured approach to assessing digital vulnerabilities to the right level of business risk. They are central to evaluating many business scenarios requiring cybersecurity and business leaders to collaborate to assess risk vs. opportunity. Business situations where this is evident include M&A evaluations, introducing online services, and gauging new supply chain vendors. They provide the business with a panoramic view of potential risks and prioritization in a way that is easy for business counterparts to understand and help them make informed choices.
M&A Evaluations - M&A opportunities and subsidiaries are ripe for sophisticated
to find new ways to infiltrate parent organizations. Proactively searching for ongoing threats relating to M&A activities and within subsidiaries pays off in the early identification of compromise.
New Online Services – Fighting fraud is essential to defending any new service and must be evaluated early and often in any new application launch.
Supply Chain Partnerships – Vital to business, no company can ignore strategic partnerships supporting the launch of new products or aiding new corporate capabilities. At the same time, they represent a significant risk as every new partnership represents another way for a threat actor to access core systems.
In each scenario, essential risk and threat models support a proactive defense. It is vital to any enterprise organization as most partners are smaller and more vulnerable to an attack.
Actionable Insight: Develop cyber risk models using a framework to comprehensively understand digital vulnerabilities and potential impact, including qualification of the business risk. DPRM solutions, in context with the framework or model you choose, will enable well-informed decisions in areas like M&A due diligence, online service deployment, and supply chain management.
Real-Time Threat Intelligence Informs Predictive Cyber Risk Models
Your initial asset discovery and prioritization efforts are the tip of the spear as you get started with your DPRM solution and using risk frameworks to aid in decisions about prioritizing vulnerabilities and collaborating with the business on cyber risk. Your DPRM solution should aggregate data for discovering assets within your environment and partner infrastructure supporting external applications.
Discovery must be continual to aid security leaders in identifying and safeguarding critical internet-facing systems and data. These solutions highlight vulnerabilities by analyzing multiple data points, offering insights crucial for effective vulnerability management and risk prioritization. Real-time threat intelligence complements these processes by providing up-to-date information about active threat actors and their tactics.
The knowledge you get from a DPRM platform aids in risk scoring and quantifying potential financial impacts that empower organizations to focus on reducing attack risks. External Attack Surface Management (EASM) platforms, such as Pure Signal™ Orbit, is an example of a DPRM solution focusing on external digital risks that offer the benefit of informing risk with real-time threat intelligence.
Actionable Insight: Leverage real-time threat intelligence to prioritize risks effectively and quantify potential financial impacts, enabling the allocation of resources to high-priority areas.
Start Early and Collaborate Often
Even if you don't have a DPRM solution in place or have someone on your team that is a wiz at creating bespoke models for risk analysis (most teams don't), you can start now.
Involve business unit leaders to support the discovery of applications and understanding of their usage of cloud services.
If you subscribe to threat intelligence, ensure that it is real-time data, not curated information that may not be timely or support proactive defenses. Find solutions like Pure Signal to support your digital risk program and assessment.
Create criteria that you would use to prioritize vulnerabilities by cyber risk and evaluate your environment for weaknesses.
Start asking questions to understand the company's appetite for cyber risk.
Use tools like the MITRE ATT&CK framework to understand adversarial behavior and gaps in your ability to detect and mitigate attacks.
Further Reading:
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Read our customer case study about the discoveries made when external Threat Intelligence is applied over a Threat Model.
Learn more about the value of monitoring external risks and how that empowers organizational success. Read our customer case study here
Read our customer case study about the discoveries made when external Threat Intelligence is applied over a Threat Model.
Learn more about the value of monitoring external risks and how that empowers organizational success. Read our customer case study here
Mature threat intelligence teams add tangible financial business value and reduce business risk. Learn more about how our customer gained success integrating real-time threat intelligence to enact a proactive defense that goes beyond the MITRE ATT&CK framework to offer pre-compromise defense.