What is Cybersecurity Risk Management?
Cybersecurity and risk management is a process that involves identifying, analyzing, and addressing potential cybersecurity risks in your organization. It provides a structured approach to handling cyber threats and helps you prioritize security investments, prevent breaches, maintain compliance, and protect your reputation.
Identifying Cybersecurity Risks and Vulnerabilities
No matter how prepared you think you are, it’s unrealistic to believe you’ll be able to eliminate all risks. Cybersecurity and risk management can help you identify your organization’s potential internal and external risks and understand the corresponding financial, legal, and reputational consequences.
The Role of Risk Assessment in Cybersecurity
You don’t know what you don’t know. A cybersecurity risk assessment allows you to identify and categorize potential risks impacting your organization’s digital assets. By understanding what’s at stake, you can more effectively monitor risks and take appropriate action.
Why Cybersecurity and Risk Management is Crucial for Your Business
Business Impacts of Poor Cybersecurity and Risk Management
It may be tempting to put cybersecurity threat management on the back burner, but that decision can have severe consequences for your business.
In the event of a breach, aspects of your business may come to a standstill, leading to delays, lost sales, and unhappy customers. One breach makes you a target for another; a severe breach can draw unwanted attention to your business from other attacker groups, tempting hackers to try their luck in your systems.
Financial and Reputational Risks
According to IBM, ransomware accounts for one in three data breaches in small and medium-sized businesses. These breaches can have significant financial costs: IBM found that the average cost of a ransomware incident was $4.88 million. Your organization may also face further monetary penalties for failing to adhere to regulations.
Other risks are more difficult to quantify. For example, if hackers target your customers’ sensitive data, you could lose all the client trust you’ve worked so hard to build — impacting your sales, reputation, and bottom line.
Benefits of Proactive Cybersecurity Risk Management
Taking a proactive approach to cybersecurity means addressing potential threats before they happen instead of fixing the problems they’ve caused after the damage is done. If your monitoring detects an attack, you can quickly sprint into action, minimizing its potential impact.
Proactively managing your cybersecurity risk includes proactive monitoring, implementing robust backup and recovery strategies, conducting regular employee training, strengthening endpoint security, and keeping systems and software up to date.
Cybersecurity Risk Management Frameworks
The NIST cybersecurity guidelines and other frameworks provide organizations with structured approaches to identifying, protecting against, detecting, responding to, and recovering from security threats. For example, Xantrion uses the NIST framework to enhance the cybersecurity programs we develop for clients, helping ensure clients reach their cybersecurity goals.
Understanding the NIST Cybersecurity Framework
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) cybersecurity risk management framework helps organizations understand, manage, and reduce risk. It can also help your organization prioritize its time, money, and resources related to cybersecurity efforts. The framework’s core functions include:
Identify
Understand and document your organization’s cybersecurity risks, capabilities, and assets to establish a robust risk management foundation. Asset inventories, risk assessments, and business environment analyses are all part of this process.
Protect
Implement security safeguards and controls to help prevent or limit the impact of potential cybersecurity events. This includes implementing access control systems, providing security awareness training, and maintaining protective technologies to shield digital assets.
Detect
Deploy ongoing monitoring and analysis, allowing your organization to identify (and mitigate) security threats quickly. Ensure you’ve also implemented anomaly detection that will help alert you to cyber risks.
Respond
Take immediate action to contain and remediate threats and notify stakeholders. Your incident response plan should include detailed playbooks for different cybersecurity scenarios, as well as a list of roles and responsibilities and clear communication protocols.
Recover
Restore your operations and services after a cybersecurity incident, ensuring you incorporate lessons learned into future cybersecurity plans. Ensure you document your recovery procedures, test and maintain your backup systems, and update your business continuity plans.
Other Key Frameworks
ISO/IEC 27001: Global Standard for Information Security
An internationally recognized standard, ISO/IEC 27001 provides an information security management system (ISMS) framework aimed at helping protect organizational data.
CIS Controls: Critical Security Measures
Developed by the Center for Internet Security (CIS), CIS Critical Security Controls help protect organizations from cyber threats and attacks by providing actionable best practices and security measures.
Government and Industry Standards for Cybersecurity Risk Management
Regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, and industry-specific standards provide additional frameworks to help organizations protect sensitive data and enforce strong security practices.
Regulatory Requirements
GDPR
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a public data privacy and security law. It gives individuals greater control over their personal data and sets guidelines for how EU-based companies should collect, store, and process personal data.
HIPAA
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) protects people’s personal health information and sensitive medical records. Companies that process or store US citizens’ health information must adhere to this law.
SOX
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) mandates the implementation of stringent internal controls for publicly traded companies that do business in the United States. These controls help protect investors and customers by promoting transparency, integrity, and confidence, safeguarding against fraud, and ensuring accurate financial reporting.
Industry-Specific Compliance Standards
In addition to the broader regulatory requirements outlined above, organizations in select sectors must adhere to industry-specific compliance standards, including:
SEC
Registered Investment Advisers (RIAs) must disclose significant cybersecurity incidents to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) within 48 hours of their occurrence.
FDA 21 CFR Part 11 for Medical Device Manufacturers
21 CFR Part 11 is the US Food and Drug Administration’s guidance that outlines how companies in regulated industries (e.g., medical device manufacturers, pharmaceuticals, biotech) should work with electronic systems, records, and signatures. The regulation aims to prevent unauthorized access or record changes while maintaining data integrity and authenticity.
CMMC for Department of Defense Contractors and Sub-Contractors
The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) is an assessment framework designed to increase compliance with NIST standards. Used extensively in the Department of Defense (DoD), CMMC protects sensitive information shared between the DoD, its contractors, and subcontractors.
How to Align with Government Guidelines
So, how does your organization ensure its cybersecurity risk management policies align with government guidelines? It depends. The specific guidelines your organization must follow depend on numerous factors, including your location and industry.
Before you get started, conduct thorough research to identify which regulations impact your business. Or, consider working with a partner with extensive government and regulatory experience . An experienced partner can help determine which guidelines are relevant to you and then take the lead on seeing how your current cybersecurity measures stack up. A professional partner can work with you to identify strengths and weaknesses, then create and implement policies, procedures, and employee awareness and training programs to ensure your organization is aligned.
Best Practices for Cybersecurity Risk Management
Effective cybersecurity risk management combines proactive planning, ongoing monitoring, and incident response readiness.
Developing a Risk Management Plan
The best time to prepare your organization for a cybersecurity incident? Before it happens With a robust risk management plan, your organization can identify vulnerabilities early and put adequate measures in place before they cause damage. Risk management plans can also help you minimize the damage if a breach does occur.
While self-assessments are better than nothing, the most effective way to conduct a thorough cybersecurity assessment is to work with a third-party managed security services provider (MSSP). A cybersecurity partner can assess your current protection levels and help you develop a comprehensive risk management plan.
Continuous Monitoring and Threat Detection
Threats don’t stop just because your business is closed or it’s a holiday; in fact, hackers are more likely to strike when they think no one is watching. That’s why it’s so important to perform continuous monitoring and threat detection. Some organizations address this by deploying security operations center (SOC) and network operations center (NOC) teams to continuously monitor your network for threats.
Sound expensive? It is. If an in-house monitoring team isn’t in your budget, or you’re struggling to find qualified professionals, consider outsourcing monitoring tasks to a supplemental IT provider. Working with a trusted partner for your monitoring gives you 24/7 access to skilled IT professionals without the extra admin and costs of hiring employees directly.
Incident Response Planning and Testing
It’s impossible to predict when a cybersecurity incident will occur — which is why you should always be prepared. When developing your incident response plan, involve representatives from every department within your organization. An incident has the potential to impact different business units in different ways, and you’ll want to take all of these perspectives into account as you’re planning.
In addition, consider collaborating with external experts, including lawyers, public relations professionals, and third-party IT experts, ensuring you have the right people on hand who can take on defined roles and help minimize damage should an incident occur.
Comprehensive Resources and Tools for Cybersecurity Risk Management
Today’s organizations have access to many cybersecurity tools and resources — from basic management platforms to advanced managed detection and response services.
Top Risk Management Tools and Platforms
Not sure which risk management tool or platform makes sense for your business? It all depends on the level of support you need.
Basic: Inventory management and patching are among the most basic services available. They keep records of everything connected to your network and keep it updated against the latest threats.
Intermediate: Services like Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) can help your organization spot attackers that manage to evade your anti-virus software. And Extended Detection and Response (XDR) tools search for threats across your entire IT infrastructure.
Advanced: Cybersecurity partners like Xantrion offer Managed Extended Detection and Response (MDR) services, which leverage more sophisticated intelligence tools to identify threats and trigger automated solutions. And human specialists are available 24/7 to step in as needed, helping contain and mitigate security incidents before they spiral out of control.
Cybersecurity Risk Assessment Templates
Cybersecurity risk assessment templates can help you assess your organization’s compliance with regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, and SOX — ensuring you adhere to relevant requirements and allowing you to avoid costly penalties and fines.
However, these templates are a good starting point, not a complete solution. They’re sufficient for helping you identify areas for improvement, but these generic resources aren’t intended to be a comprehensive solution.
Free vs. Paid Resources for Cyber Risk Management
While free resources such as online surveys may help your organization better understand its infrastructure weaknesses, they can often provide an incomplete picture. For example, employees who complete these surveys often provide outdated or inaccurate information or may give more favorable answers than reality. This can create an illusion of safety while actually increasing your risk.
Automated scans have similar issues; while they may appear to be an inexpensive solution, like surveys, they often provide incomplete information, missing potential breach issues in cloud-based applications.
For the most comprehensive cyber risk management, invest in third-party reports provided by trained experts. An assessment from a managed third-party service provider can pinpoint risk areas and identify technology solutions that can mitigate these risks.
Conclusion: Enhancing Cybersecurity with a Strong Risk Management Strategy
Key Takeaways for Implementing Effective Risk Management
Building a comprehensive cybersecurity program requires an ongoing commitment and strategic planning. To implement effective risk management across your organization, remember to:
- Embed risk management into every aspect of your organization. Incidents can happen anytime, so train your employees to expect the unexpected. By integrating risk management into all activities across your organization, you can swiftly take action should a breach occur.
- Follow cybersecurity best practices. Following best practices for cybersecurity threat management minimizes the likelihood of breaches and limits damage if a breach occurs. For the greatest level of security, develop a risk management plan, continuously monitor systems for potential threats, and perform frequent incident response planning and testing
- Invest in third-party experts. While using free resources to identify security gaps is a good start, it shouldn’t be your entire cybersecurity defense. Trained security experts — who live and breathe cybersecurity — are your best bet for identifying your security strengths and weaknesses and keeping your organization safe.
How to Evolve Your Strategy with Emerging Threats
Hackers constantly update their nefarious methods and tools, and your organization’s cybersecurity must adapt accordingly. This requires:
- Regular threat intelligence monitoring to identify new attack vectors
- Flexible security controls your organization can rapidly adjust
- Proactive testing and updates
- Ongoing training to keep informed of emerging threats
Want Help with Your Cybersecurity and Risk Management?
Need help identifying areas of risk and bolstering your organization’s security strategy? Get in touch with Xantrion.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What is cyber risk management, and why should I care?
Cyber risk management is the process of identifying, assessing, and mitigating digital risks within your organization. Effective cyber risk management helps protect your reputation and ensure you stay compliant with industry regulations, allowing you to avoid costly breaches and business disruptions.
Which cyber risk management framework should I use and why?
Your organization’s best cybersecurity risk management framework depends on its industry, size, regulatory requirements, and risk profile. Working with a third-party cybersecurity provider can help you evaluate options and select the framework that best meets your needs.
What are your cyber risk management best practices?
Best practices for cyber risk management should include:
- Regular risk and security audits
- Multi-layered security controls
- Creation of a risk management plan
- Continuous monitoring and threat detection
- Incident response planning and testing
- Regular backups
How do I ensure my cyber risk management practices fit my budget?
Your organization can’t afford to be without a cybersecurity and risk management plan. A third-party MSSP like Xantrion can help identify your current level of risk and assist you in creating a strategy that meets your needs — and your budget.
Are you ready to work on your risk management plan? Start with our 5-minute online cyber-assessment.
