Just about every organisation in the UK has got some form of cyber security risk management strategy in place. The scale and scope of the strategy varies significantly from organisation to organisation, but at the very least all organisations understand the risk and severity of cyber attacks and data breaches.
Cost of a Data Breach
In an extensive IBM study, the average global cost of a data breach was estimated to be about $3.86 million (about £2.9 million). For medium-sized enterprises, the cost alone can sink the company or at the very least financially damage them. Not only are the costs of a data breach immense, but the intangible damage to reputation amongst customers and clients can be irreparable.
Whilst cyber security management and risk assessment strategies can help mitigate costly data breaches from occurring, compliance with regulatory acts such as the UK GDPR is also a must. In a famous case, British Airways received a fine of £20 million for a data breach affecting over 400,000 customers.
Compliance is key, but the best approach must integrate practical risk management strategies with rigidly enforced compliance.
Fold Cyber Security Risk Management into Organisational Risk Management
Perhaps a decade or so ago, it may have been possible to view cyber security risk management as a siloed, standalone risk as a greater part of organisational risk. Nowadays, that’s simply not practical or feasible for most organisations. Cyber security risks can carry across multiple streams of everyday business operations.
Whether it’s a customer placing an order online for a good or service and having to securely input their personal data to the storage and collection of customer data for marketing campaigns, all of these processes now largely take place in whole or in part using digital assets. The risks that can be introduced along any of these vectors are cyber security risks.
Striving for ‘Zero Cyber Security Risks’ is Not Enough
Naturally, metrics to evaluate the performance of a risk management strategy should see a decline in cyber security risks rather than an increase - provided everything is carried out according to plan. But simply putting a plan into action and not seeing any data breaches, for example, isn’t good enough.
This would be something like working with IT stakeholders to develop a robust end-to-end encryption platform and calling it a success because there hasn’t been a massive data breach yet. The only constant is change, and in the world of cyber security, changes come hard and fast, so what worked yesterday is no guarantee of what will work in the coming months and years.
For this reason, it is important to establish performance metrics that consider the reduction of cyber security risks across a varied and dynamic swathe of factors, as well as evaluating compliance and security measures on an ad hoc and/or routine basis.
In order to assist with the assessment of risk management for IT assets and cyber security, consider leveraging the power of an intuitive, complete risk management software package such as Risk Wizard. We’re confident that you’ll be satisfied with our quality software solutions.
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